Community Policing Cleans Up the City

Earlier this week, the top brass of the police department met with the media to build on relations and to improve the flow of information. And today, officers rolled up their sleeves in a clean-up campaign to tidy up neighborhoods. According to Officer in Charge of Community Policing at Precinct Two Sergeant Brent Hamilton, the cleanup is part of the mandate of the precinct. Their first stop was in the south side where News Five caught up with them.

Sgt. Brent Hamilton, O.C., Community Precinct 2, Eastern Division

Sgt. Brent Hamilton

“ Community Policing Precinct Two has the entire St. Martin De Porres, Jane Usher Boulevard and all the way to Customs. As a result of that, when we do our meet and greets, our house visits, we get concerns from our residents and our mandate is to assist in any way we could in the neighborhood. We have found about forty properties that have been left abandoned. Of the three, we decided to partner with the City Council today, which they always do, and we decided that this building at the corner of Jasmine and Poinsettia Streets that needs urgent attention. Since I have been working in the area for about almost two years now, nothing happens to that building. So today, we decided that we are going to clean it up and try to see how best we can make it look. Some residents of this area are saying that people throw garbage in there, dead dogs…even said some drug peddlers go and hide their drugs and firearm. So not to have any more of that, we are trying to clean it up and to elevate that problem. What we have in place in the future is to work closely with City Council to do some snipe operation to see who is putting what and so we don’t have any incidents to occur in the future.”

Duane Moody

“This is only one of several locations that you guys will be targeting. Talk to us about the other locations.”

Sgt. Brent Hamilton

“The other location is behind Jane Usher Boulevard Basketball Court where some bushes are about ten to twelve feet high around the basketball court area. And what we decided is that since we have a police little booth there too, we want to assist. And so we are also going to team up with City Council and cut that area there too. And if time permits we are also going somewhere on Unity Street to clean up another property. But every week, every month, we will do some project like this.”