Putting police officers back in schools a priority for Sandwich chief

Plans are to reinstate the Sandwich Police Department’s school resource officer program this year and to improve the technology in the department’s squad cars.

Sandwich Police Chief Kevin Senne talked about those plans during a Jan. 29 community meeting at the Sandwich police station. Senne, who started in September as the city’s new police chief, has initiated a bimonthly community meeting program.

“It is another opportunity for the citizens to come meet with me and have conversations with me,” Senne said in talking about the community meeting program. “They’ll be different topics that we will look to talk about and they will be introduced to different members of the police department. It’s just another way to have a simple conversation and for us to get to know them and for them to get to know us as police officers, but also they get to know us as individuals.”

In October, the Sandwich Police Department hosted an open house at its new police station. As Senne told those who attended the community meeting, the department plans to reinstate its school resource officer program in August as its staffing numbers are increasing, Senne said.

“Currently, we have 14 sworn police officers and we have an authorized strength of 15, including myself,” Senne said.

There also are plans this year to install electronic printers in all the department’s squad cars along with new computers.

“Our current computers that we have in our squad cars are anywhere between five and seven years old,” Senne said.

In addition, the department aims to put automated external defibrillators in all its squad cars for officers to use in case of medical emergencies. And in March or April, the police department plans to start using the 20 body cameras it bought.

Starting Jan. 1, 2025, all police agencies in the state will have to use body cameras, Senne said.

“Each officer will have their own body camera assigned to them,” Senne said. “Overall, I think body cameras are an effective tool. And I think overall, just in talking to the officers here, nobody’s opposed to them. The expectation I think in society is that police officers are wearing body cameras. It gives a fair and practical sense of what happened.”

Senne also talked the department’s plans to acquire another police dog this year after having to retire its first police dog last summer because of health problems.

The department has secured a $7,000 grant toward its new K-9 team, and the department’s new dog and handler have a spot reserved in the spring K-9 Academy. The department’s new police dog is expected to be a Labrador which will help in locating missing/endangered persons and tracking criminals and fleeing suspects as well as locating evidence and narcotics.

The department also plans to again participate in National Night Out, an annual community-building campaign that promotes police-community partnerships and neighborhood camaraderie. National Night Out will be held on Aug. 6 this year.

“That’s something we really want to bring back,” Senne said. “It hasn’t been around the last couple of years.”

New mission statement

On top of all that, the department has a new mission statement. The entire department worked to come up with the new statement.

“The Sandwich Police Department in partnership with our community through Service, Pride and Dedication strives to continue to build community relationships through transparency, fairness, integrity and humanity to be an impartial, fair and honest city,” according to the statement.

“We need the community,” he said. “They are the eyes and ears. There are more people in the community than they are police officers. We want to make sure we have that strong relationship, that trusting relationship.”

Department goals

The department also came up with a list of goals.

“Our first goal is building the community relationships and partnerships,” Senne said. “One of the ways for us to achieve this is by attending community events and hosting community events like this event itself and making time for visits with businesses and residents.”

Improving traffic safety is another goal.

“When I say traffic safety, it’s just not meant to be geared towards going out there and making traffic spots,” he said. “Traffic safety is really geared toward the three e’s – it’s education, enforcement and engineering. A lot of times, there are engineering flaws in designs of roads. And that’s one of things we’ll see in traffic crashes. When it comes to education, a lot of people might not realize the speed limit is only 30 miles an hour and they’re going 45 mph or they just come out of a 45 mph speed zone and it goes down to 30 mph.”

Providing training for the department’s police officers is another goal. As he noted, two of the department’s new police officers are in their 20s.

“So they’re pretty young,” Senne said. “We work on our training and education and continue to implement the best practices.”

Reducing crime as a whole is another goal. That can be done in part by being proactive and preventing individuals from becoming victims along with educating the public on crime trends, he said.

On the months the department will not be hosting a community meeting, it plans to host Coffee with a Cop at different businesses on a rotating basis.

“The Coffee with a Cop program is more of a partnership with a business and to bring people there to have conversations within the business,” Senne said.

More information about the Sandwich Police Department is available at its website, sandwichilpolice.com.