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**The Grand Rapids Police Department:Grassroots Initiatives for Recruitment and Trust-Building**
 February 2019 | Volume 12 | Issue 1

*The COPS Office is  pleased to feature the Grand  Rapids Police Department as a 2019 winner of the Community  Policing in Action Photo Contest. The winning photo captures a spontaneous  moment when patrol Sergeant Wojczynski stopped to assist an elderly woman shoveling  her driveway.*

Grand Rapids, the second largest city in Michigan, has a  population of 200,000, served by only 295 sworn officers. The department lost  more than 100 officers in the economic downturn of the early 2000s and has not  yet rebuilt its staffing levels. According to Grand Rapids Police Department (GRDP)  Interim Chief David Kiddle, “We are actually in the middle of a staff  deployment study to try to increase those numbers, and get some proof for our  city commissioners that we need more officers.”

As a result of this staffing deficit, the GRDP recently  combined hiring and recruiting with the community engagement unit in order to  better coordinate efforts. The department’s recruiting process now starts at  the grassroots level. “One of our big recruiting pushes is trying to ‘grow  our own,’” Chief Kiddle says. “We’re trying to focus on growing the interest in  our own community, spurring that interest, and following it through by bringing  them onto the police department.”

In the past five years, the GRPD has launched a variety of  community policing programs such as Pathways to Policing, the Youth Police  Academy, and Police Explorers to cultivate interest and engage youth, with the hope  of ultimately recruiting candidates. The department is “starting to see the  fruits of that now,” according to Chief Kiddle; having “hired people from our  Explorers program, Youth Academy, and more.”

These programs also assist  with the department’s focus on trust building. Like many agencies across the  country, the GRPD receives pushback from the community due to the lack of trust  towards police officers. GRPD’s chief youth advisory board, Impact, works to create  dialogue between youth and police. “Our purpose is to understand what the youth  issues are and for these [students] to help us guide some of our youth  policies,” says Chief Kiddle.

The GRPD’s initiatives aren’t  limited to the young; the department is also sending officers and adult community  members to a training program called “Policing at the Speed of Trust.” This workshop  pairs a community volunteer with an officer to “build trust and see each other  as individuals,” Chief Kiddle explains, rather than “police versus citizen.”

This hands-on approach to  trust-building permeates the department’s community policing strategy. Each of  the city’s five service zones has been assigned a specific community policing specialist.  These specialists, and the zone captains they report to, focus on those areas  in order to facilitate relationship building and to create an environment of  trust. “The community comes to love their specialist because it’s a familiar  face,” says Chief Kiddle. “The specialists work very closely with the  neighborhood and are just a phone call away from the citizens, so that has been  a very successful program.”

To further understand  community concerns, the GRPD began working with Elucd to track trust, safety, and  satisfaction. The company is able to measure real-time sentiments by issuing  short surveys via social media. Each month the department receives the scores and  is able to use the data to help better direct their community engagement  efforts.

The GRDP’s wide range of  resources and initiatives demonstrates its commitment to the community, and its  hands-on approach makes those initiatives successful even with a staffing  deficit. Chief Kiddle encourages all officers to do what Sgt. Wojczynski is doing in the winning picture –  simply lending a hand. The GRPD understands that every interaction matters,  even if it only affects one individual or one individual family—and the GRPD  officers are all in. 

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The Community Policing Dispatch is the e-newsletter of the COPS Office. 

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