BLOOMINGTON
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Protecting and serving every day
The Bloomington Police Department provides around-theclock public safety service and community outreach programs to residents throughout the year.
Police Chief Booker Hodges leads a department with an authorized strength of 129 sworn police officers and approximately 50 full-time clerical, dispatch, community service and animal control employees. The department headquarters is part of Bloomington Civic Plaza.
The department’ s Mall of America Unit, housed in a substation at the mall, allows officers to respond quickly and efficiently to calls for service at the nation’ s largest shopping complex.
The department also has a highly-trained Emergency Services Group, which includes an Emergency Response Unit and a bomb squad, one of four bomb squads serving Minnesota.
Besides responding to criminal matters, car crashes and medical emergencies, the department offers a variety of services to Bloomington residents and businesses.
There are approximately 430 Neighborhood Watch organizations in Bloomington, identifiable by signs posted in neighborhoods across the city. Those groups represent more than half of the 17,000 homes in Bloomington. The Neighborhood Watch program trains and educates residents in ways to be involved, stay informed and work together with their neighbors to address mutual concerns and find solutions.
If your neighborhood is not part of a watch group, the Bloomington Police Crime Prevention Unit will help set one up.
The department also works to duplicate the concept for Bloomington businesses. With more than 4,000 businesses in the city, the department works with business owners through its Business Watch program. This group receives crime alerts and works with the department to reduce crime and enhance public safety in the business community.
To further support community well-being and reduce the number of mental health crisis calls, the department has embedded social workers and therapists who provide immediate mental health services to those in need.
The annual Citizen’ s Police Academy is a law enforcement education program designed to give participants an inside look at how the police department operates, including its policies, procedures, programs, priorities and challenges.
The department provides an online crime map with statistics from the previous 90 days, as well as arrest reports and historical data through the police department’ s online data dashboard.
Throughout the year, police officers make time to meet the community through“ Coffee with a Cop,” National Night Out and other community events.
Information about police services is available by calling 952-563-4900 and online at tinyurl. com / bloomingtonpd.
BLOOMINGTON | COMMUNITY GUIDE | 2025 | 5