Public safety plan proposed

Mayor Dennis Hession, Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick and Fire Chief Bobby Williams have unveiled the city’s plan to improve both response times in the fire department and to raise police presence in the neighborhoods.

“It allows us to upgrade our performance,” Hession said in a community meeting announcing the plan last week.

The goal of the plan is to “make Spokane the safest city of its size in America,” according to a handout provided to attendees of the meeting.

Hession said the city has the money to pay for the plan which will include hiring an additional 24 police officers over the next two years and six firefighters. This will allow the city to adopt the plan without raising taxes, the mayor said. Police Maj. Scott Johnson explained the plan to adopt a neighborhood policing model, which he called a “new era for policing in Spokane.” It is also the most significant change to policing in Spokane in 30 years.

Kirkpatrick said the plan will involve the patrolling side of policing, or “the officers who are the boots on the street.”

The city will be divided into eight policing districts inside four larger precincts: Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast. The four larger precincts will be viewed as small cities with their own identities.

The precincts will have a lieutenant, sergeant, corporal and police officers assigned to each, and the lieutenant will attend neighborhood council meetings and COPS Shop meetings.

The lieutenant will be on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and will be sort of a police chief for that neighborhood.

The idea is to find out what issues concern the residents of each neighborhood. The police officers will get a chance to meet the residents and get to know them, since they will only work in those specific areas.

“I just couldn’t be more enthusiastic about it,” Hession said.

Johnson said that there was recently a string of burglaries in a neighborhood in Spokane. The police wanted to do what they could to curb the burglaries, but it turned out the residents were more concerned with party houses in the neighborhood.

Johnson said that the increased police presence in neighborhoods will help forge relationships between the residents, businesses and the police.

The Northeast and Northwest neighborhoods should have the new plan in place by the end of 2008. The Southeast and Southwest neighborhoods will implement the plan in 2009.

“It has a ton of potential,” Johnson said.

The city fire department has a plan to help improve response times. During the hours of peak activity, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, there will be a special engine company to respond to calls when the other companies are already involved with other emergencies.

Williams said that although the fire department has acceptable response times at the state level mandated by law, the response times aren’t as good at a national level or for comparable cities in Washington.

It is hoped that the peak activity engine company will improve on those response times and fill in the gaps of service during busy times of the day.

This new plan for policing will be included in the mayor’s budget, which he will present to the City Council sometime around Nov. 1. The council will vote on the budget in December.

As far as the fire department goes, the plan still needs to be negotiated with the union before it can move forward.