The Durango Police Department wants feedback from residents about how best to serve the community during the next three to five years related to crime prevention, community engagement, traffic control and improving infrastructure.
The agency is creating a strategic plan that will serve as a “north star” to guide the police department’s overall mission, said Chief Kamran Afzal. An outline of the plan will be presented Wednesday night during a town hall hosted by the police department.
“We want to make sure we let our community know this is what we’re doing and seek their input,” Afzal said.
Officers know how to respond to day-to-day calls, but without an overarching plan, they lose sight of how their daily work achieves the department’s greater mission, he said.
“You’re doing crime prevention, but what’s the focus?” Afzal said. “Right now, I can tell you we don’t have a strategic plan that says you’re doing these things for this purpose.”
Afzal joined the department earlier this year. Previously, he worked about 24 years with the Arlington County Police Department in Virginia. Police chiefs come and go, he said, but the Arlington department always maintained a strategic plan, which gave the department some continuity.
In addition to seeking the public’s input, the chief is working with officers and staff members to craft the plan, he said.
“The culture we’re trying to create is make sure everybody understands this is their department; it’s not the chief’s department,” he said.
The Durango Police Department needs to identify a strategy for improving officer retention, he said. Seventy percent of officers hired don’t stay for more than three years. That level of turnover is expensive and time consuming, he said.
“It takes several months to replace someone, so I’d rather not lose as many people and retain them for more than three years,” Afzal said. “... What can we do from a strategic level that will say we’re able to retain people?”
Afzal plans to publish an annual report that identifies successes and failures of the plan’s strategy.
“Before we start putting pen to paper, we want to see from the community, what are some of the things they want us to be paying attention to,” he said. “Because it’s very possible if you don’t have a dialogue with the community, you might write a plan that looks great on paper but it doesn’t serve any needs of the community.”
shane@durangoherald.com
If you go
The Durango Police Department will host a town hall meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Durango Community Recreation Center (Peaks Room), 2700 Main Ave.
