EPPD scales back on ‘community policing’ due to smaller force

A lack of officers and resources has the El Paso Police Department becoming more reactive when it comes to “community policing.”

“Community policing is a philosophy, a management style, that most police departments are using,” EPPD Sgt. Robert Gomez said. Recent ambushes against police departments across the country has re-ignited talk of community policing as a way to improve relations between departments and the communities they serve.

“It’s meant as a proactive approach, officers in the field would go out and look at areas of their patrol area in order to address problems before they become problems,” Gomez said, “It’s very time intensive and it’s very manpower intensive. As the number of officers dwindles, that becomes more limited with the shrinking size of the department.”

Gomez said EPPD would like its officers to be more involved in the community, but it has had to cut back on a practice it implemented in the 1980s as response times increase and the number of officers decreases.

There are three key components to community policing. The first is partnerships between the police, individuals, and the organizations they serve to develop solutions to problems and increase trust. The second is organizational transformation, the process of aligning management, structure, personnel and information systems to support those community partnerships. The third is problem solving: a proactive and systematic examination of problems to evaluate effective responses.

The EPPD force currently consists of a little more than a thousand officers, a 20-year low, Gomez said.

55 new officers are currently enrolled in the El Paso police academy and the department is in the process of increasing its staff.

Jacob Junell, co-owner of Smoking Skulls Hookah Lounge, started the “Days of Peace” movement, which put care packages together for police officers

“We want to do something for someone who puts everything on the line for us,” Junell said, adding El Pasaons can help police by solving minor issues on their own.

“You don’t need to call an officer if a dog jumped over the fence and you guys can settle it like human beings, like responsible adults,” Junell said.