GAINESVILLE – If recently you have seen an unusual number of Gainesville Police Officers walking the sidewalks of downtown or riding bicycles on the city’s network of public trails, it isn’t an effort to improve officer physical fitness, rather it’s an exercise in community relations.
Most likely those you have seen walking and riding are part of a special detachment of the GPD known as the Community Relations Unit.
The Community Relations Unit has been around for several years, but recently their number has increased.
Sergeant Kevin Holbrook is in charge of the unit and he says it’s all part of creating and strengthening relationships between the public safety department and those they encounter. He said the unit will have several unique responsibilities. “They will patrol the downtown area; make contact with the business owners; work events that are going to be downtown.”
“One of the things Chief (Jay) Parrish wanted to do was expand upon the downtown growth, so we have three additional officers coming on with us and they will focus on the downtown area, as well as the Midtown Greenway, and the Highlands-to-Islands trail system.”
Their ranks will further increase, Holbrook said, whenever the city schools are not in session. He explained that the SRO’s (School Resource Officers) will work, walk, patrol and ride with the Community Relations Unit during those times.
“This week has been Spring Break so those officers have been out on the Square, have been out in apartment complexes, have been out on the Highlands-to-Islands Trail. We hope the community has noticed it."
Holbrook pointed out that neither the unit’s presence downtown, nor the fact that the unit has been expanded, correlate to ordinances passed by the Gainesville City Council in October governing loitering and soliciting in the downtown area.
“It has nothing to do with that,” Holbrook said. “It’s more of a positive approach to policing. We have worked with other cities such as Athens, Savannah…to see how they police and handle their downtown areas…and what we are doing is simply doing similar things that they are and making it the ‘Gainesville Way’.”
Holbrook says “being out there so people see us, get that safe feeling” is the aim of the program.
“The downtown merchants want to have someone that they can call by name.”
He explained that the unit is not limited to just reaching out to those downtown. “We do a number of things from teaching classes to the public, to working in the school system, to working with neighborhood watches.”
Holbrook said the trio of officers joining the Community Relations Unit will not reduce public safety coverage elsewhere. “These will be dedicated officers, not new positions to the police department. What we did was some restructuring and reorganizing.”
