When the police partner with their community, it helps to build trust and cooperation. They start to hold each other accountable and rely on one another. But this doesn’t happen overnight and there is not one single way to accomplish such a partnership. Most of the time, it just take an extra step to show that you care about the people and place within the community. People like the idea of having someone on their side, even where there isn’t an immediate crisis.

The police department becomes a stronger entity when they coordinate their offers and increase public awareness. Encouraging community engagement is key to their success. This occurs on so many levels and can be as simple as daily interactions with the people living in their community to attending community events and providing supports for those in need of specific services.

The first step in police partnering with community is to have better training that includes transparency, competency, bias training, and more. Positive interactions have momentum. Another area that needs attention is youth development. Having programs in schools, mentoring, and coaching kids allows them to develop positive relationships with officers. Through such program, kids learn valuable skills and start realizing that the police are people they can trust.

Another area where police officers can build trust within their communities is to provide resources to its residents. Being a resourceful person who can offer advice on where to go for help shows the community that the police care about them and they can be trusted. Offering resources for mental health, daycare needs, abuse, and low-income housing, for example, is an added value for residents.

Police can also help by being aware of problem areas within the neighborhoods, such as areas with poor lighting, parks in need of better care, missing street signage, as well as problem businesses. Looking at the neighborhood as a whole and making it better for the people who live there is a good way for police to partner with their communities to strengthen their trust.

Lastly, mingling with the members of the neighborhood is great for partnering with the community. Host a BBQ or police station open house, participate in bike patrols, attend various meetings, and visit churches, for example. All of these activities allow for conversation, recognition, and bonding. These are activities that help build trust between the officers and the community. It is the smile, the handshake, and the familiar face that make the difference. It is just that little extra on top of patrolling and protecting the neighborhood that can increase trust in the police and develop a sense of partnership between them and the community.

           A report entitled, “Cost Savings of School Readiness Per Additional At-Risk Child in Detroit Michigan” was released today to an audience of municipal officials, teachers, parents, and concerned citizens by the faculty members of the authoring foundation: the Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation. The focus of the report is on the financial improvements made possible by preemptive fiscal and social support of our early youth in the Michigan educational system.

A statistic was presented that stated for every additional child who arrives in early education already prepared to learn saves upwards of $50,000 for taxpayers in Michigan, this figure is nearly doubled for children from Detroit.

The hope is that this and other objective data found in the report (which may be viewed in full at http://www.mmfisher.org/wilder_foundation.html) can be used as legal leverage in the future when it comes to legislative decisions relating to public investment in Michigan’s early education system.

The report also proposes that greater investment in education can effect and effectively cut costs in the varied government facets of: crime reduction, health care and other state/social programs that are often correlated with higher expenditures for impoverished populations. By extrapolating their findings, the foundation approximates an upwards of $50 million in savings for Michigan taxpayers with every 1% increase in early educational preparation for the estimated 150,000 kindergarteners in Michigan.

Already, progress has been made-two years ago Michigan officially became a “no-wait state” (a state that has expedited public funding for a certain cause, allowing quicker enactment of a policy) in regards to the social provision of preschool for at-risk children aged 4 and below. Plans for 2016 include: expanding the previous program and implementing new programs to further develop educational aptitude for children up to the third grade.

Of the many in attendance was Hamtramck Chief of Police Max Garbarino, who put his passion for the issue with the educational system bluntly: “The choice is simple: Pay for quality early education and care for Michigan’s kids now, or pay far more for the costs of crime in Michigan in the decades to come. We can continue with the status quo, which is leading too many people to failure in school, over dependence on welfare, involvement in crime, and incarceration – at a huge cost to Michigan taxpayers. Or, we can take a different course – leading more kids to success in school, high school graduation, and savings to taxpayers for years to come.”

Garbarino continued by saying, “These crucial outcomes you’ve heard about today – higher graduation rates, lower crime and incarceration rates, and lower costs to taxpayers – are why Michigan policymakers need to do everything possible to strengthen and expand access to high-quality early education and care programs in Detroit and Michigan. To make it happen we have to recognize that we are standing in the fork of a road, with an important choice ahead of us.”

Garbarino is one member of a group of public authority figures involved in the research of the study. Other members include: Wayne County Sheriff Benny N. Napoleon, Washtenaw County Prosecutor Brian Mackie, Auburn Hills Police Chief Doreen Olko, and Commander Todd Bettison of the Detroit Police Department. The non-profit and anti-crime group entitled, “Fight Crime: Invest in Kids in Michigan” boasts a far-reaching comprisal of over 5000 law-enforcement officials, from fellow chiefs of police, to sheriffs, to DAs, prosecutors and perhaps most importantly- actual victims of crime.

Yet, a very common thread runs through the breadth of the organization: the ideal that education is the most powerful tool we have for the reform of impoverished communities predisposed to criminal activity.

Of the few statistics and measures mentioned in this brief article, there are countless more available in the full document (linked above in the second paragraph) it is also necessary to make clear the origin of these statistics. All research conducted herein, was conducted using official data obtained by the U.S. Census Bureau, Michigan Department of Education, and National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, among other certified and veritable sources. The Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation funded the “Cost Savings of School Readiness Per Additional At-Risk Child in Detroit and Michigan” study, was assisted by the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation and endorsed by over 25 groups and organizations-a conclusive list of sponsors can be found at http://www.mmfisher.org/all_grant_partners.html

Hamtramck Chief of Police Max Garbarino, fellow officers, and the Hamtramck Fire Department are still investigating the origin of a fire that started on the morning of February 17^th on Yemens St. and resulted in four fatalities. With funeral arrangements looming in the coming days still the only known information is that the fire began somewhere towards the rear of the property, and that the home was not equipped with a fire/smoke detector. The deceased are named as follows: James Parker, wife Freddye Parker, and their children, James Jr., (11 years old) and Jarred (7 years old). Paul Wilk, the Hamtramck Fire Chief has not been available for comment. Both James Parker and his wife Freddye were integrated with many aspects of the Hamtramck community, including coaching football and cheerleading for teams associated with the Detroit Police Athletic League.

In a precedent setting commencement on Friday in the 31^st District Courtroom at Hamtramck City Hall, both acting Chief of Police Max Garbarino and acting Chief of Fire Paul Wilk were officially sworn in as Hamtramck’s new serving police chief and serving fire chief.

This is the first concurrent swearing in of two chiefs of public service in the history of Hamtramck and has garnered much attention from friends, family, municipal officals, and even U.S. Representative John Conyers.

 

The official oaths were administered by Judge Paul Paruk who entreated the two acting chiefs Max Garbarino and Paul Wilk to consummate their oath to Hamtramck as sworn and serving officials. Garbarino and Wilk gracefully agreed to uphold the municipal responsibilities appointed to them. Garbarino received former chief Marek Kalinowski’s badge and the audience erupted into celebration as the swearing in was made official.

 

The commencement was an inspiring boost of morale, in an otherwise particularly delicate time for law-enforcement and the city of Hamtramck-in part due to several heinous crimes committed in the preceding weeks.

 

Two young women, Ashley Conaway and Abreeya Brown were kidnapped on February 28^th from a house on Andrus St. and found dead on the west side of Detroit on March 25^th, five men were charged with their kidnapping and murders.

 

Police Chief Max Garbarino responded to a carjacking turned sexual assault on March 2^nd. Later arrested, 25 year old Tonio Dace was charged with sexual assault, kidnapping, and carjacking for his abduction and abuse of three women attending a music festival in Hamtramck.

 

It was the expedited resolutions of these atrocious acts, undoubtedly due in part to the newly appointed officials that reinvigorated the spirit and city of Hamtramck.

 

Garbarino went on to expand his vision for economic reparation in the city consulting his experience in the study of law, (which he will substantiate with the receipt of a law degree in the coming weeks). One of his directives was to place greater importance and encouragement on the neighborhood watch groups which would assist police patrols and allow for more specific and necessary allocation of public resources.

 

When the Ideal Islamic Center moved into its current Hamtramck location on Holbrook Avenue, a short distance from the Hamtramck Senior Plaza; to say the least, heads turned and ears perked up.

It is a condition of the Muslim faith that the Islamic prayer, or Salah, is conducted five times every day. Typically, only mosques are permitted to recite prayer with the aid of amplification; however, Hamtramck municipal workers granted the Ideal Islamic Center (an Islamic youth activity center) the same right.

Carol Marsh, a resident of the Hamtramck Senior Plaza says, “When it first opened up [and] was gonna be an activity center for the Arabic youth, [it was] no problem with me.”

It wasn’t until earlier this year that Marsh felt disturbed by the volume and particular delivery of the prayer, “…now they got a youngster doing the call to prayer a couple times a day,” she says, “And he starts with ‘Hellooo! Wake up! And it’s in the afternoon when a lot of the senior citizens are taking their naps.” Understandably, the city of Hamtramck has placed restrictions on the volume of Salah broadcasts. Yet to the dissatisfaction of Carol Marsh and her fellow senior citizens, an independent study has confirmed that the volume of the prayer is in fact consistent with city-mandated decibel restrictions.

The initial ruling on Hamtramck’s noise statute occurred in 2004, with a special provision approved by voters for the allowance of amplified Salah. The essence of the decibel dispute comes down to the disjointed chain of command that receives and resolves complaints regarding the call to prayer.

In every other incident involving a noise complaint, a call is made to the police who are dispatched to the reported location and are responsible for resolving the conflict. Instead, in the case of Salah broadcasting, complaints and incident reports are directed to Hamtramck’s city clerk, and consequently funneled to Hamtrack’s city council. This misconnection and miscommunication lends an unnecessary political spotlight to Hamtramck’s Islamic population and confounds authorities as to the appropriate method of legal enforcement.

Hamtramck Chief of Police Max Garbarino and his department weigh in on the dilemma: “We don’t really have a horse in this race; we’re actually not in the process for complaints. We’re just trying to do our best to mediate it…I prefer to handle it personally and what I’ve been trying to do is just smooth it over the best I can.”

Though mediation can be difficult especially when two radically different cultures are sharing spaces in close proximity, Carol Marsh is quoted as saying, “…all of a sudden one Friday we couldn’t figure out where it was coming from but the loudness. We were looking up like we were looking for flying saucers.”

Garbarino continues by claiming that complaints have mounted proportionately with the increase of amplification, “There wasn’t really a whole lot of mosques of Islamic centers actually broadcasting. But as time progressed and the city acquired more mosques and Islamic centers, the call to prayer spread.” This increased frequency, and allegedly increased volume has certainly caused some disturbance among certain citizens; yet, Garbarino says he and the rest of his department have been specially prepared to resolve these types of conflicts: “…we’ve kind of been raised on it. As long as I’ve been here the community has been diverse. For myself and all of my officers…our careers have grown in this community so it’s just second nature to us.”