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By Joe Munoz
It was just past one in the morning when the blue and white patrol unit rolled to a slow stop, lights off in a shopping center at West McDermott and Central. The former military police officer behind the wheel spotted something that didn’t look quite right.
Two cars pulled into the lot and parked side by side. No one was getting out to pick up a vehicle that had been left behind during the day, no one was getting out to greet an old friend they hadn’t seen in some time.
Driver Mike Purcell and his partner Mike Robinson watched from a far corner of the parking lot as windows in both sedans rolled down, a quick exchange took place and the cars lit out, one heading south, the other west.
Purcell and Robinson followed the westbound car for about a half-mile when they made the call.
"947 to headquarters, suspicious activity, black vehicle heading west on McDermott, occupied two times…"
In less than a minute the patrol unit dropped back as an Allen police officer shot past, tailed the suspicious car, threw his overhead lights on and pulled it over. A quick search turned up a bag of marijuana. The weed and car were confiscated and the two young men in the vehicle were provided with accommodations at the city jail. They’d had the misfortune of attracting the attention of two of Allen’s finest…volunteers.
Mike Purcell and Mike Robinson are part of Allen Police Department’s Citizens on Patrol program. Among their duties after 80 hours of intense training by veteran police officers: patrol the city and radio problems into law enforcement. "We’re just extra eyes and ears for the police department," Purcell says. "We’re not peace officers. As C.O.P.s we can not make an arrest."
Members of the Citizens On Patrol may not be able to slap handcuffs on alleged criminals, but they have a broad range of responsibilities. Sergeant John Felty has headed the program since its inception in 1999. "They assist disabled motorists, they assist officers by waiting on a wrecker, they hold non-hostile perimeters, they do traffic direction at accident scenes, they remove signage from city right of ways that violate city ordinance, they do Homeland Security checks on water towers and electrical facilities, and of course, they cite vehicles in violation of handicapped parking laws."
The 75 active Citizens On Patrol, or COPs, wear uniforms— white shirts with black pants— that clearly indicate they are a civilian arm of Allen police. They cruise the city streets in retired squad cars that differ from full-blown police cars only in the graphics package, lack of a siren and red emergency lights.
The similarity is intentional. "They’re out to be seen," says Sgt. Johnny Thomason, who is over the department’s traffic division. "Their vehicles are similar enough to ours, that if a bad guy is thinking about doing something, he’s going to think he’s seeing a police car. Our first job is to deter crime, not catch the criminal after he’s done it.
"The more visibility we have, the better. We’ll never know how much crime COPs have deterred, but I’m convinced they’ve done a lot."
The organization is comprised of dedicated volunteers. Some are retired; others have full time jobs and raise families in addition to their work with the police. In 2006 they logged around 2,500 hours patrolling. Though they have no powers of arrest, they take a load off Allen’s finest. As growth continues, that load grows as well.
The city currently has 100 sworn officers. They’re split into three daily shifts and not all of them are in patrol. Allen is nearly 27-square-miles with 77,357 residents who reside in 22,000 homes and nearly 3000 apartments. There’s more than four million-square-feet of retail space filled with more than 3000 businesses. Office space and light industry add another four million square feet. There are more than 1000 acres of parks and facilities as well as 18 public schools that need to be kept secure.
Less than a hundred cops on the streets watching over all that, and emergency response times are still just a hair over five minutes. Pretty impressive.
Letting COPs take on some law enforcement duties allows officers to be more effective, to take care of matters of higher priority and that is appreciated. "One of the big things is the acceptance of the COPs by officers," says Allen Police Chief Bill Rushing of the famously tight knit law enforcement community. "It wasn’t overnight but there are a lot of officers who understand that without the community support we wouldn’t be where we are at today."
Citizens like Hoot Clark are more than happy to help out. Clark put in more than 500 hours of time in 2006 in two different police department programs. "You’re not an officer, but you do help others," he says. "This is an opportunity you won’t forget, it’ll give you the warm fuzzies because you’re helping the police and your community."
Citizens On Patrol is one of the spin-offs of the Citizen’s Police Academy, which was put in place by Chief Rushing when he came to the department in 1997. City council asked him to strengthen the relationship between police and citizens. The academy was one way of doing that.
The CPA, a 12-week, 36-hour course, gives city residents a detailed look at what goes on in the police department. "You learn every facet of what it takes to keep the police department’s doors open 24-7," says CPA graduate Joe Jewett. "You see things a lot of people don’t see. You start to understand what an officer goes through in a ten-hour shift. The calls they go to, some are for a barking dog, some can be for tragedies and they face that daily."
Academy students learned how officers are trained to deal with crises like suicide attempts. They saw the outcome of seemingly everyday traffic stops gone badly. A narcotics officer showed them everything from marijuana to crack cocaine. They learned tell-tale signs of inebriation even the most functional of drunken people can’t hide.
Response to the academy was tremendous. But it wasn’t enough. Since some citizens now had a better understanding of the department, Rushing thought they could do more than walk away with interesting law enforcement based banter to toss out at cocktail parties. He thought they could actually work with the department.
Volunteers In Policing created the opportunity for that working relationship. VIP was the first of the CPA’s acronymed offspring. VIPs had to be graduates of the academy and were trained to take on various tasks in the department—everything from answering non-emergency police phone lines to assisting in Internal Affairs and Criminal Investigations.
One of their main responsibilities was, and still is, running the police department’s front desk during the day, Monday through Thursday. Nancy Pacheco, VIP coordinator, believes it’s an important task. "When people come into the station, they’re seldom there for a positive reason so they come and they’re either scared or ticked off," she says. "Nine times out of ten, people open that door and peek in before they walk in. We train our people to say ‘Hi, come on in, how can I help you?‘ It takes the edge off, because their first contact is with a citizen, not an officer."
Pacheco says some parents bring their kids in to let them look around the police department, meet an officer, get a coloring book and a small badge—a first lesson in being comfortable with law enforcement.
But VIP volunteer Smith King recalls one parent who brought her teenage daughter in for a different sort of schooling. "I asked if I could help them and the mother said ‘yes, she’s here to turn herself in.’ I asked what the issue was," King says. "She told me, ‘We received a notice my daughter has a warrant out for her arrest.’"
King offered to check the amount of the fine, expecting the well-dressed woman to pay it. "The mother shook her head and told me, ‘We know what the fine is, it’s five hundred dollars. She doesn’t have five hundred dollars.’ This mother brought her daughter in to sit out the fine in jail. Now that was a parent giving someone a life lesson."
The VIPs have seen all kinds of unusual things like this and handled each situation appropriately. When it was evident how successful the program had become, the police administration wanted to take that success into the streets of Allen.
So, the CPA’s second initialed scion came to be; Citizens On Patrol, or COP. Chief Rushing is blunt about his initial assessment. "It took me a little bit to buy into the Citizens on Patrol, not the philosophy, but the liability of the program," he says. "I had to be comfortable that we had a capable selection and training process."
Sergeant Felty put those processes together. People who are interested must be at least 18, live or work in Allen and undergo extensive criminal and psychological background checks. They must attend the Citizen’s Police Academy before being considered for Citizens On Patrol.
"We have three sergeants and two officers who do most of the training," Felty says. "We look at the individual, we spend time with them, we see the individual in action and make a determination amongst the officers as to whether that person is a candidate. Some people don’t do well in a tactical environment and this is a tactical environment."
Among those who "don’t do well in a tactical environment" are folks who may think being a COP essentially makes them a c-o-p.
Wearing a uniform, driving in a marked squad car can be prove to be a bit much for some citizens. "If you’ve got someone who wants to go out and kick in doors, that’s the guy who wants to be junior police and that’s the guy we don’t want." Sergeant Thomason says.
What they do want are citizens who are committed, hard working and observant.
Being observant, noticing things like background noise, something as normal as the sound of kids playing, can provide a happy ending to a frightening incident.
Frank Bates, a graduate of the first COP class in 1999, and his partner Ann Roemerman, were patrolling when a call came over the police radio about a missing seven-year-old boy. Dwanita Hines’ son Demarco Perkins had apparently disappeared.
"He’d told me ‘Mom, I’m going next door to play’, but when he got there the neighbors couldn’t come out," she recalls. "When I checked on him and he wasn’t there I called the police."
Bates and Roemerman responded and were instructed by an Allen officer to slowly cruise the streets and alleyways near the boy’s home. About eight blocks away something caught Roemerman’s attention. "It was 8:30-9 at night," she says. "It was dark and we heard kids playing in the streets and it was like ‘find the voices’."
The COPs located the kids in a front yard. "We talked to them and they didn’t know anything about a child being lost," Bates says. "We described what he was wearing and sure enough he was inside. He was visiting with folks who were going overseas, was seeing them off and he hadn’t told his mother."
The volunteers radioed the boy’s location to dispatch and an officer immediately picked him up. His mother was overjoyed. "When I first heard, I was so relieved, they made him call me before they brought him home. Everyone was in tears," she says. The boy had no idea what was going on. "He’d been playing video games, having cookies and punch, he was having at little party," she says with a laugh.
As for the COPs who found him, "I think they’re awesome!" Dwanita says. But it’s not just mothers of missing kids who appreciate these volunteers.
Ed Torres lives in one of the city’s newer subdivisions. This year it’s been hit with an increase of motor vehicle break-ins. A request from the subdivision’s safety committee prompted more attention from Allen police as well as Citizens On Patrol. "It’s good to have them in the neighborhood, its a great deterrent," Torres says. "Hopefully it will help reduce crime in the community. It’s great to know we’ve got a force out here backing up the police department."
That’s part of what the COPs do, patrol neighborhoods, alleyways, looking for anything unusual, leaving written notices to residents who may have left their garage door open at two in the morning, essentially an open invitation to thieves. They also focus plenty of attention on area businesses, stopping to look in on clerks in gas stations late at night, checking to make sure doors are locked at stores after hours.
Suzi Statham, Sales Director for Holiday Inn Express in Allen thinks highly of the COPs. "They’re real good about walking through our hotel, they’ve been dynamite. If they don’t come in they patrol the parking lot, we know they’re out there," she says. "It gives guests an extra sense of security and for staff at night it gives them a peace of mind knowing someone is out there. Anytime you have any kind of authority present, it has an effect."
That effect can also be felt financially by Allen’s residents. In 2006, more than 5000 hours were put in by both VIPs and COPs. According to the federal government that translates to more than $110,00 in services given to the city.
But that gift doesn’t come without risk. Patrolling in a vehicle that looks nearly identical to a police squad car can put volunteers in vulnerable situations. COPs do not carry weapons and do not wear body armor. The possibility that they could be attacked is quite real.
That’s why one thing is repeatedly stressed. "The thing that Sergeant Felty drills into you every single class, time after time, is safety, safety, safety, for you and your partner" says Joe Jewett who volunteers as both a COP and VIP.
That mantra has been taken to heart. In the last eight years, after patrolling thousands of miles, donating thousands of hours of their time, not one of the volunteers has been injured.
Both COP and VIP responsibilities will expand later this year, when, if they choose to, they’ll be trained to become victim’s advocates. "There’s assistance available for people who are victims of crime," Sergeant Felty says. "If someone isn’t there to walk them through the system they miss a lot of opportunity for help."
Another opportunity to help. That is what both the Volunteers In Policing and Citizens On Patrol are all about.
"In communities where citizens partner with the police department, they have lower rates of crime and a higher quality of life," Sergeant Felty says. "Communities that don’t do this suffer. Communities that do it prosper."
It’s up to the citizens of Allen to decide which community they want to call home.
According to the National Association Citizens On Patrol, there are an estimated 75,000 COPs nationwide. If you’re interested in the Citizens Police Academy, Citizens On Patrol, or Volunteers In Policing, contact Allen Police Department’s Community Relations at 972-678-2500.
Joe Munoz is a freelance writer. |
