Meet Your Neighbors Initiative
By Captain Wendell Shirley, Santa Monica Police Department
The City of Santa Monica, an 8.3 square mile beachfront city of 94,000 residents, is bordered on three sides by the city of Los Angeles. In the effort to increase community safety, the Santa Monica Police Department continues to recognize the importance and value in simply knowing one’ s neighbors. In today’ s busy digital world of Facebook, Twitter and a host of other online social media platforms, the likelihood that the average resident knows their neighbor continues to dwindle. At times, the more digitally connected, the more disconnected from the real world we become.
In October of 2016, the Santa Monica Police Department( SMPD) participated in National Coffee with a Cop Day. The event provided an opportunity for officers to interact with the community in a common space over a cup of coffee. This practice promoted a positive environment in which community members had an opportunity to not only ask questions, but to also get to know the men and women who work for their local law enforcement agency. After a series of events, the Department looked to take this idea one step further and in January of 2017, SMPD challenged our Santa Monica community to host their own community based events – in essence their own‘ Coffee with a Neighbor’ event.
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