Cd'A to add more police officers

COEUR d’ALENE— The Coeur d’Alene Police Department will use grant dollars to build community relationships and a stronger force.

Through two separate grants, the city will welcome four new officers during the next year. The federal grants provide for much needed community outreach and patrolling, Cd'A Police Chief Lee White said.

A $375,000 grant received from the U.S. Department of Justice's COPS Hiring Program will allow White to hire three officers to combat certain issues.

White said the officers will focus on maintaining and building relationships with the community and reducing crime.

The three officers will work from Station No. 2 on Sherman Avenue, putting them right in the community, he said.

“What we will do is take a look at our crime statistics and figure out where we are experiencing highest incidence of crime, then we’ll deploy our officers accordingly,” White said. “This is not going to be a group of officers that is necessarily responding to regular calls. Instead they proactively go out and address problems.”

White noted the crime statistics map from December 2014 compared to those of January 2015.

“You can see we had quite a few vehicle burglaries in this area,” he said. “Our patrol guys go out and hit the area hard and you can see the next month they're entirely gone.”

He said his department arrested just two or three people to stop the trend of the burglaries in the area. Officers used data and the information they get on the streets to tailor their methods to be more effective in their fight against crime.

White said education and community relations will be a huge aspect of the Station No. 2 officers. He said he is not a big fan of his officers issuing minor infraction tickets.

“It probably doesn't do any good for anyone to give those tickets, you can solve the problem and build relationships better with an education piece rather than a ticket,” he said.

A smaller grant, from the Office of Highway Safety, a division of the Idaho Transportation Department, will provide for one patrol officer to join the force.

“The patrol officer will be assigned to the Care Unit,” White said. “They will primarily handle things like DUI, and enforcement in areas where we historically have more crashes.”

According to the ITD website, the goal of the grant is to eliminate deaths and serious injuries from motor vehicle crashes. This is done by funding programs and activities that promote safe travel on Idaho’s transportation systems, and through collecting, maintaining and disseminating reliable crash statistics, the website stated.

To get the ball rolling sooner, the department will be moving officers into the positions created by the grants. White said they will soon seek new officers to fill the positions within the department left vacant by the shift of officers to Station No. 2.

Jamie Sedlmayer can be reached at jsedlmayer@cdapress.com