PA to keep downtown police officer
July 1st, 2009 - 5:49am
(Port Angeles) -- The Port Angeles Police Department has been awarded a grant of almost 50-thousand dollars by the Department of Justice to help continue the Downtown Resource Officer program.
The D-R-O program was initiated in 2005 as a Port Angeles Police Department and downtown business stakeholder and community partnership. It was modeled after the P-A-P-D School Resource Officer program.
Analysis at the time showed that about one and a half percent of the City area generated over 20 percent of the calls for police services.
The program has since 2005 proactively addressed crime in the downtown area from a community and problem oriented policing perspective.
Law enforcement problems have been approached from both a proactive and reactive standpoint.
Police officials believe the program has contributed economic value to the community and enhanced the quality of life of all the residents and visitors to the area.
Crime in the downtown area has dropped dramatically since the inception of the Downtown Resource Officer program.
In 2004 the P-A-P-D responded to nearly 36-hundred calls for service in the downtown area.
In 2008 that crime response number dropped to 17-hundred-56, a 51 percent decrease.
The D-R-O position was originally funded in part by the various downtown stakeholders who contributed annually approximately 23-thousand dollars to augment City funding for the position.
The current economic climate has forced the stakeholders to withdraw their contribution.
Absent this augmented funding, the Port Angeles Police Department would have been forced to reassign the Downtown Resource Officer into more generalized patrol outside the downtown geographic area.
The Justice Department funding allows the Port Angeles Police to continue funding a very effective and valuable program for a minimum of two years.
Officer Duane Benedict is the Port Angeles Police Department Downtown Resource Officer.
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