Cops Failing To Keep Pace With Expanded Services North Central-Area Office Needs More Volunteers

As COPS North Central continues to add new services to its menu of community offerings, members are more often finding they are short-handed.

“We have about the same amount of volunteers as always,” said COPS North Central President Elizabeth Thielen, “but our activities have increased so much that we drastically need more volunteers.”

In addition to regular COPS shop duties like answering phones and taking police reports, volunteers are also needed for an array of other responsibilities.

Starting this year, COPS North Central is a designated SKID cop shop, meaning it is in charge of the “safe kid identification disk” program. For a $1 donation, parents can have their child’s picture saved on a disk so that an image is handy should the child ever get lost. Thielen noted that the program is also useful for those caring for people with Alzheimer’s disease.

The shop registers bikes and has recently started taking pictures of those bikes to aid in recovery if a bike is stolen.

COPS North Central is also one of three substations that offers a program to help people with suspended licenses pay fines and get out of legal trouble. The community restorative justice council relies on volunteers to act as mediators and help work out an agreement for paying of fines and getting insurance.

Among other things, volunteers also assist with fingerprinting, graffiti reporting and coordination of other volunteers.

“You do what you can,” Thielen said. “If everyone just volunteered one or two hours a month, the COPS shops would be a much better place.”

But what she and other COPS members have found, is that many people don’t volunteer because they don’t know really what COPS shops are.

“There are still lots of people who when you say `COPS shop,’ they have no idea what you’re talking about,” Thielen said.

So, she and other volunteers started a project to get the word out. They canvassed the neighborhood and went door to door telling people about their local police substation, how it provides a neighborhood link to police officers, and its need for volunteers.

“We were all amazed at how many people said they’d always been meaning to stop by and find out what we did and how to get involved,” Thielen said.

It is a project they plan to try once a month.

COPS North Central will also host a neighborhood block party Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the substation, 630 W. Shannon, to give neighbors a chance to visit and learn more about the COPS Shop.

“I’m hoping the more we do, the more the word will get out about who we are,” Thielen said. “People need to know this is their community and they can’t just sit back and complain.

“It’s the people who volunteer - in any organization - that make this a better place to live.”