KILLEEN, Texas — Across the country there is a call for police reform following the death of George Floyd.
"The national narrative going on over the last few months after George Floyd, one of the big things that came out of that which was a very common theme was police reform," Killeen Police Assistant Chief Jeff Donohue said.
According to Donohue, the department talked among themselves, looked at things going on around the country and talked with community leaders. He said one thing that was common throughout all of that was transparency.
There is a new section on the city's website for department transparency. There you will find a monthly break down of crime statistics and agency demographics. The public can see how many officers there are, how many spots are open and a breakdown of the officers race as well as gender.
"We wanted to be transparent so our community, our leadership, our politics, our laws are in play and the community can see what their agency is doing as close to real time as we can provide it," Donohue said.
On the site, they also release numbers of internal affair investigations and administrative reviews. Donohue said these categories were selected because it is usually what they are asked for through open records and media requests.
"They can see what we're doing, what we're not doing. If they have questions contact us," Donohue said. "We're not trying to hide anything and we really want to use it as a step to be fact based. If you want to make decisions, make decisions on informed factual based. Not what you've read on social media."
Five department policies are listed online as well. Donhue said, people typically ask about those policies.
"We're trying to update our policies and clean them up. In addition, to putting all that stats out there that we put, we also put the top five policies. That's the first time in the history of Killeen where we've actually posted our live police department policies online," Donohue said.
When it comes to other steps, Donohue mentioned they have a committee of five community members who are discussing no knock search warrants.
"After we are finished with that, I'm going to give the chief a brief on that from the community's point of view of what their ideas are. Do they like what we're doing? Do they want to see any changes," Donohue said.
He said hopefully within the next month, they will have that committees feedback given to the chief.
Donohue said crime is a community problem. The police and community work together as a team to solve it. The transparency and communication between the two creates a relationship.
"People are moving and going all the time, so it's something we constantly have to work on and I think this [dialogue with community] will help us be a little bit more community involved," Donohue said.
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