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### **Community Policing and Kindergartners Get High Fives in Lake St. Louis**

 August 2020 | Volume 13 | Issue 8

*The COPS Office is pleased to  feature the Lake  St. Louis (Missouri) Police Department as the August 2020 winner of  the Community Policing in Action Photo Contest. The winning photo shows Officer  Chris Schneider with kindergartners from the Wentzville (Missouri) School  District.*

 It’s easy to imagine how thrilling  it was for a five year old boy to ride to school in a police car with sirens  blaring and lights blazing last September—or the excitement of the kindergarteners  waiting to cheer their classmate, who had won the ride in a raffle at the Lake  St. Louis (Missouri) Police Department (LSLPD) Open House.  

 It’s just as easy to understand how  good LSLPD Officer Christopher Schneider felt giving this child a ride to  remember and getting high fives from the children when the car arrived. 

#####  Building Relationships for the Future

 “I feel that doing these things are  very important,” Officer Schneider says. “We need to give people a good  experience with us. A lot of the time the only contact we have is in negative  situations, like a stop for a traffic violation or response to a crime.

 And having positive interactions  with young people is especially important,” he adds. “We’re building relationships  for the future, when we’ll be connecting with these kids as adults. Even 10  years from now, the interaction they had with us is the impression that will  stay with them.” 

 Schneider says that this approach  to relationship building is one of the things that drew him to the LSLPD, and  is characteristic of the department as a whole. Chief Chris DiGiuseppi stresses  that community partnerships, collaboration, and outreach are essential to the  safety of the area’s neighborhoods and business districts. 

#####  Increasing Safety through Community Policing

 This approach has worked well for  Lake St. Louis, where the crime rate has continued to go down over the past  several years. “Our success has been built upon the foundation of community  partnerships, public trust and helping people in need,” Chief DiGiuseppi says.

 Adds Susan Ochs, the Lake St. Louis  Community resource officer, “Community policing is built into our departmental  culture. We work to create a climate that encourages people to collaborate in  maintaining the well-being of our community, and cooperate with a lot of  different entities in area, including businesses, nonprofits, the faith  community, government agencies, and schools.  

 “We do a lot of outreach too, from  blood drives to a bicycle co-op, and work with community volunteers to serve a broad  spectrum of people,” she says. 

 The department also hosts a wide  variety of events, such as the Open House, which brought representatives of local  services—the fire, ambulance and public works departments, a local hospital, and  child advocacy center among them—together with residents. 

 But their most unusual event is the  annual Polar Plunge, a February fundraiser in which residents and LSLPD  personnel alike run into the freezing lake to raise money for Special Olympic  athletes.

#####  Going Above and Beyond to Provide Care and Compassion 

 Mental health is also an important  focus of the department’s outreach activities. Both Schneider and another  officer, Derek Akins, were recipients of the 2020 John J. McAtee Award from Mental  Health America of Eastern Missouri, a regional division of  the nation’s leading nonprofit devoted to promoting mental health.

 The award, which recognizes officers  who go "above and beyond" to provide care and compassion to citizens  with mental illness, was given to Schneider for his responses to a restaurant  worker on the brink of a mental breakdown.  

 After coworkers overheard the man say  “I have a shotgun and am going to end it all tonight,” they called the LSLPD  for intervention. According to Schneider, “When I arrived, he was clearly at  the end of his rope. From my crisis intervention training (CIT), I knew how to calm  him down. We had a long conversation, during which I convinced him to get help.” 

 Schneider drove him to a local  psychiatric hospital, where was admitted, and has checked up on the man since.  “He said he is doing better, and other people I have spoken with have agreed  with that.”

 Officer Akins won the award for his  response to a unusually angry driver during a traffic stop. Instead of reacting  to the man’s strange behavior, Officer Akins asked if he was okay. As the driver  began talking about his divorce and job problems, it became apparent he was in  need of mental health resources. Akins arranged for him to be taken to a  hospital for treatment. Later, the man wrote to Chief DiGiuseppi expressing  gratitude for the compassion of Officer Akins and other officers who arrived on  the scene, praising their professionalism in controlling what he described  himself as a hostile situation.

##### Stressing the Importance of Body Language 

 Asked to comment on how he, Akins,  and others with CIT training handle these events, Schneider says “We’re not  trained to provide psychiatric help. We’re like Band-Aids that keep people  together until they can get that kind of help.”

 He also stresses the importance of  good communication in handling potentially dangerous situations. “Young officers  today have grown up communicating electronically. But you have to be able to talk  to people in person, to be able to read body language and see their faces, to  know if they’re angry or frightened, for instance. 

 “And the way we handle ourselves is  very important too. A part of how we communicate is the way we stand and look;  you have to be cognizant of all those things.”  

 And it’s evident from LSLPD’s  winning photo that Schneider practices what he preaches, bending down to child  height and smiling as he high-fives a gleeful crowd of kindergartners—creating  a memory that the children, their parents, and teachers will carry with them  for years to come. 

*Written by Sr. Technical Writer,  Faye Elkins, with contributions from Officers Chris Schneider and Susan Ochs of  the Lake St. Louis (Missouri) Police Department. Photo taken by Joe Richter,  Public Relations Manager from the Wentzville R-IV School District., which  submitted this entry to the photo contest.*

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