Letter: Police coverage will be decided by Wellington citizens

Editor:

The Wellington Police Department Proposal Team formed in November 2012, and its mission was simply to research the feasibility of a local police department. But the data was so convincing that we soon decided to propose a full plan and budget to Wellington’s Town Board.

We raise families in Wellington, and over the past several years we saw that the law enforcement services were less here than in other towns our size. Our neighbors noted that our community lacked a visible police presence, that there were extended response times to calls when deputies were not “in town,” that there were no significant crime prevention programs and, finally, the three Wellington schools did not have a full-time school resource officer. This is all still true today.

During our research, we spoke with six chiefs of police managing smaller town police departments in Northern Colorado. We have examined the budgets for the police departments in: Timnath, Kersey, Eaton, Frederick, Ault, Gilcrest, Yuma and Berthoud. We also reviewed the International Association of Chiefs of Police smaller police department program documents and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services “Guidelines for Starting and Operating a New Police Department.”

The proposal we brought forward is not modeled after any specific police agency, and most small town police departments provide exceptional service to their communities.

The citizens of Wellington will decide what is appropriate for our town’s public safety and law enforcement needs, and we will continue to bring them facts.

For more information visit www.facebook.com/WellingtonPDProposal

Dan Frazen
Wellington