North Side Cops Shops Entering Into Partnership With City Police

This will be a year of change for North Side police substations as they enter into an official partnership with the Spokane Police Department and assume even more responsibilities.

There are now four substations on Spokane’s North Side and a fifth one in Nevada-Lidgerwood is set to open by summer. The Neva-Wood COPS expects to assume ownership of a building at 4705 N. Addison at the end of this week.

Other neighborhoods, including Indian Trail, Emerson Garfield and North Hill have organized and are undertaking volunteer policing programs.

Since the first substation opened on West Boone in May of 1992, the neighborhood substations have become an increasingly important part of the Spokane Police Department.

A new structure establishes the COPS organization as the umbrella non-profit for all community policing activities in the city. It will enable the groups to engage in fund raising and allow donations of buildings or supplies to be deducted from federal income tax.

Volunteers who have worked in the substations applauded the City Council’s approval of the new structure, which came Monday night.

Council members voted 6-0 to shift the $60,000 earmarked in the police department’s budget for community-oriented policing to the non-profit group.

The money will pay the $40,000 salary of the coordinator, plus the leases, utilities and expenses of the substations.

Cheryl Steele who spearheaded community policing in the West Central neighborhood, was hired by the city to be its liaison with the neighborhoods. Her employment was challenged by the civil service panel which forced the city to terminate her by Friday.

That issue was part of the incentive to move forward with the non-profit status.

At a meeting of volunteers last week, Steele said the attention to her situation has been difficult. The neighborhood volunteers have sought their own identity and the new organization enables a full partnership with police.

“Somehow it’s gotten down to a let’s keep Cheryl Steel employed thing,” she said. “It isn’t about me; it hurts when people say it’s about me.”

Steele has been popular with the volunteers who have staffed the telephone and desk operations of police substations for three years. But she is quick to give credit to the training offered by the city as well as the 2,000 volunteers who put in more than 35,000 hours of service last year.

The success of the volunteer effort is leading police to rely on the substation structure further.

In the coming months, COPS organizations will be asked if they want to take walk-in reports on hit-and-run accidents and photograph gang graffiti on buildings, making contact with owners and helping them find a way to remove it.