A little after 5:00 p.m. on an early April evening, Police Car Six pulls out of the Bristol police department parking garage, light rain hitting the windshield. Officer MJ Fisher drives down North Main Street, passing the McDonald’s and Burger King, then turning right. Over her dark blue uniform, Officer Fisher wears a bulky bulletproof vest and duty belt. Her dark brown hair is tied back into a bun. She taps her fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for the light to turn green while chatter comes out of the radio on her chest.
“I like busier zones,” Officer Fisher notes while driving towards ShopRite, the first call of the night. “It keeps me busy and gives me more opportunity to interact with the community.” Officer Fisher is twenty-nine years old and has been on the force for four years. After graduating from the police academy in May 2020, she applied to Bristol PD and was accepted. She started patrolling on her own in February 2021. Officer Fisher explains that community interaction is one of the best parts of her job, “I get to meet new people every day and the job is fun.”
“The community needs to understand how they need law enforcement and law enforcement needs the community’s support.”
She pulls into the ShopRite parking lot, parking the car near the front of the store. Inside, she heads straight for the office of the supermarket’s loss prevention officer. The office space is a small rectangle. Right across from the door is a chair and to the left is where the officer sits behind the desk, reviewing the security footage of the recent shoplifting. The recent incident involved a white male in his 30s stealing over $200 worth of meat and seafood, holding the items in some of the store’s reusable bags. After he was confronted by management and the items were recovered, the suspect refused to cooperate and drove off in an unmarked white Honda.
A form detailing the incident is filled out, which will allow the police to pursue the case. Officer Fisher exits the office, heading into the vast supermarket.
“If people see a police officer, they’re more likely to be on their best behavior.” Despite standing at about five foot seven, her presence is enough to deter any potential shoplifter. She passes the cashier area, walking confidently as she heads for the aisles. “I also get to interact with the public and have a positive impact, especially with children.” She expresses disappointment with how empty the store is, noting that the weather is likely keeping people away. Minutes pass by before she spots a mother and her three sons in the middle of an aisle near the marshmallows. Two of the boys are no older than ten and the youngest sits in the shopping cart seat. Officer Fisher gives each child a color changing pencil, receiving thanks and a smile from the boys and their mother. At the exit, Officer Fisher encounters two elderly women whom she’s seen around town on multiple occasions. They greet each other and have a friendly chat about the rainy weather.
The Bristol Police Department practices community policing. Community policing is more proactive than traditional policing, dedicating people and resources to build community partnerships. The goal of community policing is to improve public safety by working with community members to identify and solve problems. Across the nation, police departments reach out to their communities through partnerships, programs, and daily interactions.
Officer Mark Kichar has been a Bristol police officer for twelve years and is the department’s main community relations officer. He sits behind the desk in the interview room in the police department on North Main street in downtown Bristol. He’s a large man sporting a stubble and a welcoming smile. Officer Kichar covers the social media feeds for the department and works with Lieutenant Robert Osborne, the director of the Community Relations division and coordinator of most outreach events like the Christmas time shop with a cop and coffee with a cop.
Social media has been an important tool in reaching the community. “I would never have thought twelve years ago that I’d be using Facebook and Instagram to get through to a lot of the community these days, but it’s the way the world’s going.With that, the police have to change as the community changes.” Officer Kichar names Bristol Talks, a Facebook community group that allows residents to post about anything happening in Bristol, as a resource for discovering community concerns or possible flash points that aren’t reported to the police. Officer Kichar recalls a recent instance of using Bristol Talks to address a community problem.
“There was a mini gathering or a protest, if you want to call it that, about the geese on the boulevard.” Officer Kichar adjusts himself in his seat, placing his forearms on the table. Officer Kichar explained that they had no problem with people protesting, and that officers were simply there to keep everyone safe. “We were there on standby in case something else got out of hand. But also standing by their side and letting them speak their piece.”
For many officers, community involvement is an extension of the work they do out of uniform. Officer Kichar loves the practice. He has taught Sunday school, taught young children, and was the president of his college fraternity, giving him plenty of leadership experience. He is also in charge of recruitment for the Department. “I like to go out there and find people that I think will fit our department’s needs best.” When recruiting potential officers, communication skills are vital. “I always look at who can work with the community well and hold a good conversation, so we can use those skills and bring them to our police department.”
There are many methods to engage with the community in addition to cruising the aisles at the grocery store. Old school foot patrol, aka walking a beat, and bike patrol are two patrol methods used by the Bristol PD. Officer Kichar is one of the bike patrol officers and he loves it, because it gives him more chances to interact with the community. “Sometimes people see a police officer in a police car and they think it’s like a shield. When you’re on a bicycle, at least you’re in the open air.” Officer Kichar has bought ice cream from the Dollar General across from Rockwell Park and shared it with people in the park. “It shows that we’re humans and not just robots out there trying to protect the earth.”
Community relations director Lieutenant Robert Osborne extends his outreach into working with local organizations. He wrote over email, “I sit on several nonprofit boards which allows me to hear the needs of the community and how our agency can best address those needs.” He also oversees the four School Resource Officers (SROs) in Bristol’s middle and high schools. He explains that the benefit of having SROs is their ability to interact with the youth and build relationships with them into adulthood.
The bedrock of community policing is visibility. “We have booth displays with officers at all events we are invited to each year; Bristol Farmers Stand, health fairs, career fairs, nonprofit organization fundraisers, parades. The list goes on.” Lt. Osborne adds that the service therapy dog, Frankie, has been a great addition to Bristol PD’s efforts with the public.
Lt. Osborne lists three priorities that the department has in community policing. The first is that the police and the public must work together to control crime and disorder. The second is that Bristol PD must be present within the community and utilize all municipal agencies to help identify and solve community problems. He also notes that the community must be willing to support their police and that this can best be achieved through having channels to facilitate dialogue with the community. Lastly, Bristol PD must “continually build trust and legitimacy within its community. The community needs to understand how they need law enforcement and law enforcement needs the community’s support.”
When it comes to the future of policing in Bristol, Lt. Osborne believes that it will take a holistic approach, where all city and social service agencies work together to best serve the community. “It will remain community oriented and build upon the relationship and needs of the community.”
Back on the road, Officer Fisher makes a couple of stops before continuing the routine patrol. She first goes to the Public Works gas station to refuel her vehicle and then goes through the Dunkin drive-through, a medium iced coffee and a medium hot chocolate for the Blue Muse reporter filling the cup holder. Next Car Six is headed for Walmart. Along the way, Officer Fisher occasionally types into the computer on the middle console with her right hand. She explains that she is typing in the license plate numbers of random cars in front of us to check for outstanding warrants or other violations.
“It shows that we’re humans and not just robots out there trying to protect the earth.”
“I like to give people breaks when possible,” she says while stopped at a red light. She recalls an instance where she saw a person texting while driving. She pulled the man over, giving him a warning. “I make it known that their mistake was seen and give them the opportunity to correct it for the future, instead of giving a ticket.”
While driving, Officer Fisher talks a bit about her path to law enforcement. “I have wanted to be a police officer since I was a child.” Officer Fisher initially gave up on her dream of joining the police, due to growing up in a family with traditional gender roles. Women couldn’t be police officers. Officer Fisher studied fitness and became a personal trainer for eight years. She mentioned that she loved her job, but still desired to be a cop. “I wanted to help people more broadly.” The community oriented attitude of Bristol’s officers is shared among departments across the country. However, less than a century ago, community policing was virtually unheard of.
In the 1960s, social unrest caused by anti-war protests and civil rights activism caught the police off guard. Departments were overburdened and poorly prepared. They were unable to effectively and appropriately handle urban unrest, leading to demands by politicians and civic leaders for the reexamination of police practices. Police officials were forced to do an about-face and reevaluate their traditional policing methods. Throughout the 1970s, organizations within and outside of law enforcement conducted research and field experiments evaluating policing methods. With millions of dollars of federal funding, these organizations studied new methods of policing and evaluated tactics that could promote more community involvement to protect and serve.
The San Diego PD conducted the first empirical study of community policing. They called it Community-Oriented Policing (COP). Participating officers evaluated the topography, demographics, and call histories of their beats. The COP project demonstrated that community interaction could improve officers’ attitudes toward their jobs and communities, along with encouraging creative solutions to complex problems.
In 1979, Herman Goldstein, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin who paid his dues in the early 1960s as an assistant to the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, developed Problem-Oriented Policing (POP). POP suggested that problem resolution constituted the substantive work of policing and advocated that police identify and address the root cause of problems that lead to repeat service calls. POP required a move from a reactive stance to one that actively addressed problems continually draining police sources. Goldstein’s POP was found to be effective in addressing many community problems.
Dr. Julie Schnobrich-Davis, professor and program coordinator for the Detective Certificate program at Central Connecticut State University, has studied policing since the mid 1990s. “Community policing took off with the creation of the Office of Community-Oriented Policing Services (COPS) in 1994 with the passing of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act,” she wrote over email. The COPS office is administrated by the US Department of Justice.
According to their official website, the COPS office is “responsible for advancing the practice of community policing by the nation’s state, local, territorial, and tribal law enforcement agencies through information and grant resources.” COPS awards grants to hire community policing professionals, develop, and test innovative policing strategies, provide training and technical assistance to community members, local government leaders, and all levels of law enforcement.
“Federal funding was made available for police agencies to develop strategies to engage with the community, build trust, solve recurring problems, and reduce crime,” Dr. Davis added. Since its inception, the COPS Office has been appropriated more than twenty billion dollars to the advancement of community policing. “Ultimately, the future of policing is likely to involve a mix of approaches, and efforts will continue to find the right balance between effective crime reduction strategies and building positive relationships with communities.”
Officer Fisher pulls into the Walmart parking lot as the sun sets in the sky. She enters the superstore with an upbeat gait, her duty belt making a jingling noise as she patrols the aisles. She greets anyone she comes across with a smile, one that becomes brighter when she spies a young boy standing with his parents in hardware supplies. She eagerly gives him a color changing pencil. She waves to a couple of people exiting the store. Her entire loop takes perhaps ten minutes. On the road, she states that one of the important questions she asks when serving her community is: “How can I help you?”
As much as Officer Fisher wants to continue her routine patrol of town businesses, police work takes priority. On the road, she receives and accepts service calls back to back. One call to assist Plainville police in serving a court summons to a man who repeatedly left his child at a daycare for long periods, and the next responding to a nine-year-old girl having hallucinations. The last call is to a group home that Officer Fisher is familiar with, regarding an agitated resident most likely suffering from a psychosis episode. She advises this Blue Muse reporter to stay behind her and out of harm’s way. Good advice. The resident resists, and it requires six officers to restrain the woman. She is eventually sedated and sent by ambulance to the hospital for evaluation.
Officer Fisher drives to Bristol Hospital to drop off some paperwork, before driving back to Bristol PD around 9:00 p.m. On the way back, Officer Fisher talks about her view on the future of policing in Bristol. She believes that the community-oriented approach will always be necessary, as traditional policing cannot address all challenges facing a community. “There are a variety of calls that go beyond responding to crime, like calls for medical assistance, that require officers to have communication skills and to be more than the person who arrests the bad guys.”
Ivory Bernazal is a Staff Writer for Blue Muse
Images courtesy of Dr. Julie Schnobrich-Davis, Lt. Osborne, Officer Kichar, and Ivory Bernazal
Great Piece Ivory! Hard work pays off, keep it up! -Sabrina 🙂