BLOOMINGTON
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Providing safety, community service
The Bloomington Police Department’ s mission is to be respectful while keeping the community safe by providing compassionate and honest service.
Police Chief Booker Hodges leads a department with an authorized strength of more than 125 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.
Neighborhood Watch areas see an average decrease in crime of 16-20 % compared to other areas. With hundreds of Neighborhood Watches Bloomington, identifiable by signs posted in neighborhoods across the city, the 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 Crime Prevention Unit will help set one up.
The police department has also duplicated the Neighborhood Watch 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.
The annual Police Citizens 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 a crime map that shows recent incidents throughout the city as well as arrest reports and historical crime data through the police department’ s online data dashboard.
And 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.
2026 | Bloomington Guide | 5