- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
Lakeport Police Department launches survey on community policing, seeks input from around county
Chief Brad Rasmussen said the survey’s key points are community policing, law enforcement and procedural justice, or how police treat people and show concern.
The Lakeport Police Department is partnering with the Lakeport Economic Development Advisory Committee, or LEDAC, and Mendocino College Lake Center Police Community Relations class in rolling out the survey.
The online survey, available in both English and Spanish, can be found here.
For those who wish to print the survey out and fill it out on paper, it can be downloaded here.
Paper surveys also can be picked up and dropped off at the Lakeport Police Station, 2025 South Main Street, or at Lakeport City Hall, 225 Park St. Completed paper surveys can be faxed to 707-263-3846 or scanned and emailed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
The survey will be available at a town hall meeting on community policing to be held at Lakeport City Hall from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 5.
It’s not just for Lakeport residents and property owners. Rasmussen asks that people across the county take part, as he says that most residents come to Lakeport – the county seat – at some point for services or other reasons.
“The end goal is to try to get community feedback and better refine our community policing effort,” he said.
“We can’t get better without having feedback from the public to know how they think things are going,” Rasmussen added, noting that the community can offer valuable suggestions and share information about issues of which police aren’t yet aware.
“We know how we think we’re doing but we don’t necessarily know how the community thinks we’re doing in all areas of community policing,” Rasmussen said.
He estimated the last time the department did such a community survey was about 15 years ago, around the time his predecessor, Kevin Burke, took over as chief.
Increased emphasis on community policing
While it’s not a new idea, in recent decades there has been an increasing emphasis on community policing both locally and across the nation, Rasmussen said.
That effort has been guided in part by the United States Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, which issues educational materials and COPS grants that help fund officer positions.
In July, the Lakeport Police Department formally began additional community policing programs based on receiving a US Department of Justice COPs grant.
Rasmussen defines community policing as how the police department integrates and works within the community itself – building relationships with citizens, businesses, community service organizations and other government agencies, with common goals of promoting safety and welfare.
The more police can succeed at that kind of integration, the better they’ll be at solving crimes, he said.
“We’ve been practicing community policing forever, we just didn’t call it that,” Rasmussen said of his department.
Rasmussen hearkened back to Sir Robert Peel, a British prime minister who founded the Metropolitan Police Service and today is known as the father of modern British policing.
Peel summed up how police should act this way: “To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police.”
Rasmussen said it's a view that he and his officers share.
Community policing has become more formalized over the past decade, and it’s included events like National Night Out and the forming of more Neighborhood Watch groups in Lakeport.
Many survey participants wanted
The survey is adapted from one created by the US Department of Justice COPS office, Rasmussen explained.
Rasmussen said the survey, which should take about five minutes to complete, will ask participants about how officers treat people, and if they are fair, respectful, responsive and trustworthy.
The more trust the community has for the police, the better they’ll be able to provide public safety, Rasmussen said, as it will mean community members will be willing to work with the department and its officers.
Through the survey, Rasmussen said they’re hoping to reach every aspect of the community including groups they’ve not had as much contact with traditionally, such as the Hispanic community. The department now has Spanish-speaking officers on staff.
Rasmussen said the survey will be out for about six weeks, or until the start of April.
They need a minimum of 500 responses to have a valid survey. Rasmussen said he’s hoping to get about 1,000.
As the surveys come in, the 11 students in the criminal justice class will help in a variety of ways. Rasmussen said they will input paper surveys into the system and analyze the data as it arrives.
Rasmussen said Bill Eaton, a member of LEDAC and an expert in statistical analysis, will use his software to extract and analyze the data for the purpose of putting it into a report.
The criminal justice class, which will get real-world experience in a community policing project, will write a research paper on the survey before their term ends in the middle of May, Rasmussen said.
“We do plan to release all of this information to the public once it’s done,” he said.
He encourages people to fill out the survey and for them to ask others to do so, too.
“It’s their police department, we really need their input on how they think we’re doing,” he said.
For more information about this project, contact Chief Rasmussen by telephone at 707-263-9650 or email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.