Members of the Smithville Police Department want the community to get to know them better, and according to at least one officer, the effort has paid off.
Chief Richard Jennings says Officer Nathan Estes recently came up with the idea of handing out police department stickers to children in the housing project, in a get acquainted campaign.
Officer Estes says children should not be afraid of the police. “What it consisted of is a particular officer going through the housing authority on foot patrol when we had time and handing out these stickers. Basically what this is doing, when we hand out these stickers, is we’re interacting with the children and letting them know that they shouldn’t be afraid of us.”
According to Officer Estes, the effort has not only had a positive impact on the children, but their families have become more open in providing valuable information to the police. ” I saw this as something positive and I originally started it for the children but it wound up going further than that, because we wound up getting a lot of information we needed for investigations for the police department, through the moms and dads, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, and grandfathers. We had two fugitive from justice people that I helped locate from the housing authority. There were two or three drug deals we got interested in while we were over there, things of that nature. But the main thing I wanted to prove with this was that the housing authority people and their kids are just as important to us as anybody else in the city or the county.”
Officer Estes says he hopes to continue the campaign in other parts of the city. “Now that I’m back on nights, I’m going to start at a different place, such as Village Place subdivision, Morgan Avenue, and places like that while still keeping up the same streets such as Andrews and others where I have been going to let everyone know that just because we’re the police does not mean we don’t care about them or their kids. We’re not in this just to take people to jail and write tickets. We’re supposed to be a role model to the public and set an example for the public.”