IDA Sector Community Partnership

About the Program

Category: Criminal Justice and Public Safety (Best in Category)

Year: 2011

An effective way to fight crime is to get community members actively engaged in prevention. The IDA Sector initiative is an innovative partnership between the east County Regional Services Center (ECRSC) and the Third District Police. Using strategic outreach, public education, and targeted community policing, the IDA Sector effort actively engages a wide range of members of the community to partner with their local police in crime prevention. ECRSC and Third District Police have connected key stakeholder in the community – residents, business owners, apartment managers, school, library, and recreation officials, with law enforcement through a serious of bi-monthly “IDA Sector” meetings, and by “Weekly Crime Report” emails, which are sent to nearly 700 subscribers. ECRSC, which is routinely in touch with more than 3,300 community members, also issues special crime alerts to all subscribers and to specialized databases when police become aware of significant crime trends. As an outgrowth of the IDA Sector initiative, residents around East County have formed neighborhood Watch groups, business owners, and apartment managers have asked police to conduct crime prevention and security assessments of their premises, and resident s have forged trusting relationships with their District police that have ultimately led to arrests.