It was the opposite of a crime scene. Police officers moved around the room speaking to neighbors, but it was the residents asking the questions and the cops giving the answers. The location was the back room of the North Bergen Public Library Kennedy Branch on a rainy Wednesday night in late March, and the occasion was the town’s first “Coffee with a Cop” event.
The session was designed to give North Bergen residents a chance to get to know their local police, to ask questions and share concerns, and for the police to get to interact in a positive way with the community.
“It was very informative,” said Gabe Chelala, who lives nearby the library. “I work from home and a couple of things go on down the street and I wanted to tell these guys what’s happening. I know they have a hard job and I’m trying to make their jobs easier.”
Mayor Nicholas Sacco opened the event by making sure everyone was aware of the help desk available on the town website. Residents can log on to share their comments or raise issues, which are then distributed to the appropriate department in town. Responses are subsequently sent to the resident within 48 hours.
Police Chief Robert Dowd, who initiated the Coffee with a Cop session, encouraged residents to share their concerns, no matter how minor. “I told them that they really shouldn’t feel leery about bringing small problems to the table. I like small problems. They require small solutions,” he told the North Bergen Reporter. “I gave them the analogy of a snowball rolling down a hill and gaining speed and mass. We don’t want it to turn into an avalanche. We’d rather take care of it when it’s a little snowball.”
The eyes of the community
About a dozen citizens braved nasty weather to attend the event. After initial introductions over coffee and donuts, residents shared their comments, which included requests for stop signs on specific corners and similar issues.
Rosie Kovacs attended because her car was in an accident a week earlier and she was interested in the town’s surveillance cameras. She wanted to know how they operated and if they might have monitored the accident.
“I got an appointment tomorrow to go check the cameras to see about my car,” she said happily, after officers offered to take her on a tour of the town’s CCTV facility. “I thought it was really nice.”
Coffee with a Cop events are run in municipalities across the nation as a way to build trust and rapport between police and citizens. Dowd saw the program mentioned on “60 Minutes” and immediately recognized the benefits.
“We’re not going to be successful here in crime prevention unless we have the community involved,” he said. “We only have 120 officers. According to the census, there are 60,000, 70,000 people living in this town. It doesn’t take a criminologist to look at those numbers and say hey, we need a little help.”
“We’re not going to be successful here in crime prevention unless we have the community involved.” –Chief Robert Dowd
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“There’s this theory of natural surveillance in crime prevention where you know who lives in your neighborhood,” said Dowd. “You know who belongs there. So if you see somebody else entering a home that you don’t recognize, you call the police. You get neighbors looking out for each other.”
Darlene Dugan, who attended the Coffee with a Cop session, is a perfect illustration of the concept. “I’m a crossing guard on 43rd and Newkirk in North Bergen,” she said. “Crossing guards are eyes, too. If they were paving on the block, I would know whose car goes to what house.”
Monthly events
The session was largely run by Lt. Arthur “Artie” Del, the commander of the town’s new Community Policing Unit, established earlier this year. Currently the unit consists of three officers reporting to Del: Officers Alfredo Echeverria, William Brown, and Saray Durango.
“The Chief chose these officers,” said Del. “All three of them are lifelong residents. They grew up here, never left. They patrol the areas where they live. Officer Echeverria lives downtown, he’s the downtown guy, he knows all the residents over there. They’re patrolling their home, basically, and these are the people they have contact with every single day.”
“In the 90s, community policing was big,” said Dowd. “And I think that’s when the county saw its biggest crime decline. But then after 9/11, things shifted and everything went toward a Homeland Security type paradigm. But now that we have that component pretty much situated – there’s all different departments that handle that, like county, state, department of Homeland Security – policing is starting to come back around to a real focus on community policing.”
The Coffee with a Cop session was designed as an icebreaker, to help introduce the new Community Policing Unit to the public. “I’ve tasked the unit with the idea of coming up with different plans for different events,” said Dowd. “I’d like to do something monthly.”
That may include everything from bicycle registration events in the summer, held at the various schools throughout town, to town forums on how to protect oneself against burglary or identity theft.
“I got some great feedback,” said Dowd after the first Coffee with a Cop event. “We’re going to run one uptown. The coffee shop that just opened on 76th and Bergenline, they called us the next day. They want to run one. They love the idea. They want to provide the coffee and the space and we’ll provide the officers.”
Already the police were working on adding signage to streets and other suggestions offered at the first meeting.
“It’s nice for them to come out and meet the community,” said Library Director Sai Rao. “That’s what it takes to see beyond the uniform. You see the people.”
Art Schwartz may be reached at arts@hudsonreporter.com.