Lansdale Borough Takes Community Approach to Policing

Keith Heffintrayer•

In August 2018, the Lansdale Borough Police Departmentcreated the Community Services Unit, with a focus on streamlining their presence and planning for myriad events in town and throughout the surrounding communities.

Now heading into year two, the unit has evolved into something more. In addition to organizing and attending events, the unit also addresses traffic concerns from residents, provides motor carrier enforcement to protect the borough’s roadways, and more.

"I think it’s been very successful,” said Lansdale Borough Police Chief Michael Trail. "I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from our officers and other agencies, and they’ve said it was a well thought-out plan.”

The unit itself is fairly unique in relation to surrounding police departments, but Trail said they drew heavily from a similar unit at the Montgomery Township Police Department.

"Officer Rob Johnson at the Montgomery Township Police Department has given us so much of an insight into community affairs and community relations,” Trail said. "He has been an asset to our department.”

Johnson has been a member of the Montgomery Township Police Department for 30 years, and currently serves as the department’s Community Policing Liaison. In that role, Johnson conducts public education programs, organizes happenings and attends community events, according to Montgomery Township Police Chief Scott Bendig.

"My hat goes off to Chief Bendig, as he gave Rob the initial latitude to start doing this, and quite frankly, we’ve copy-and-pasted a lot of what they are doing,” said Trail. "They do a great job, and we’ve been fortunate enough to model our unit after theirs.”

Event-Driven Origin

In the last two months alone, members of the Lansdale Borough Police Department have attended more than 100 community events, including First Fridays, Fairmount Fire Company’s Under the Lights Car Show, the North Penn Pride Walk and more. Smaller events, such as the Lansdale Farmers’ Market, PAL Movie Night and Variety Club happenings are also commonly attended.

Prior to the creation of the Community Services Unit, different officers were assigned to different events each year, which meant there was a lack of planning continuity for annual events, and officers faced a learning curve each time they became involved.

"I realized that a lot of what we do, especially in the Borough of Lansdale, is events,” said Trail. "It’s not just the big events. We do a lot of smaller events as well, and there’s a lot of value that comes from them. For me, it made sense to create the position, staff it with a sergeant and an officer, and push everything to them. It’s really important that we don’t miss events.”

The end result was the creation of the Community Services Unit, which is staffed by Sergeant Richard Bubnis and Officer Dan Gallagher.

"I have a much better handle on the community events. It’s much more organized than they have been in the past, thanks to really close cooperation between Rich and borough staff,” said Trail. "In year’s past, we would not have been able to do a fraction of these events. We just would not have had the availability.”

Building ‘Community Capital’

Having a presence at small and large events is vital to the police department’s ability to provide support to the community, as it gives residents easy and direct access to personnel, and allows police to hear their concerns directly.

"For the community, doing these events brings them access to the police department,” said Trail. "We have a community mindset, a cooperative approach to law enforcement. We really rely on the community. We need input from them, and we need to be accessible for them, so having a presence at events allows them to brings us their problems and issues directly.

"We work to build the public’s trust, which is very important to what we do,” Trail continued. "This can be an extremely difficult job. We’re fortunate in Lansdale that we don’t have a lot of crime. We don’t have a lot of burning issues in the sense of public safety, but we do have issues, and they are important to the residents.”

To that end, having a presence at events allows police to build what Trail calls "community capital,” and allows the department to survey how satisfied residents are with the service they provide.

"Most businesses are driven by profit as a measure of performance. If you do well, profits go up. If you don’t? Profits go down,” said Trail. "We don’t have that metric, but we do provide a service, so the issue then becomes that we need to find a way to determine that we are providing a service that the community wants, and that we are providing it effectively and efficiently.”

In addition to the events, the Lansdale Borough Police Department has partnered with DeSales University to create a community survey seeking feedback from residents to learn about their perception of crime, pressing issues and more. To date, the survey has been mailed to 900 residents, with a return rate in the low 100’s.

Once the survey is completed in December, Trail said he will discuss the results with borough council and will release the findings to the public. From there, police can strategically set benchmarks to meet those needs and alleviate those concerns over the coming years.

Traffic Issues and Road Quality

When the Community Services Unit was created last year, Trail left the door open so the unit could organically adapt and evolve over time. Trail said he didn’t want the unit pigeon-holed with an event-only function, and instead envisioned the unit picking up additional duties and services based on the needs of the community and the department.

Two of the additional duties are traffic and motor carrier enforcement.

"The majority of comments that I see that are negative towards the police department involve our ability to deal with traffic issues, like speeders, stop signs, etc,” said Trail. "It’s hard for patrol to handle those issues, because they answer radio calls. Imagine that you’re an officer tasked with sitting on a stop sign, but as soon as you get there, your radio goes off to go across town to assist with an ambulance. It doesn’t flow, but by having a dedicated officer [with the Community Services Unit], we can prioritize and task-orient those issues.”

On the motor carrier enforcement side, Officer Gallagher has received specialized training and certification to deal with commercial vehicle traffic, which Trail says can help slow down the damage to the borough’s roadways and take dangerous vehicles off the road when they are out of compliance.

"Another big complaint is the condition of the roads,” said Trail. "They can fall into disrepair for a number of reasons, but one of them is commercial truck traffic. What we know is that communities that do motor carrier enforcement tend to drive the trucks elsewhere.

"These 80,000 pound tri-axel trucks on these hot summer days can just destroy the roads,” Trail continued. "We want to make sure we’re doing motor carrier enforcement, and also protect the roadways from unsafe vehicles.”

Trail mentioned that several weeks ago, Gallagher was providing motor carrier enforcement on West Main Street, and pulled four trucks out of service in the same day due to safety violations and non-compliance.

"Not only were these vehicles overloaded and overweight, but they’re unsafe,” said Trail. "They fail inspection, their brakes don’t work; these are vehicles that shouldn’t be on the road.”

While enforcement has become a focus, it’s not as important as education, according to Trail.

"I believe very much in education, probably more so than enforcement,” Trail said. "I’d rather have our officers stop people, advise them on what they did wrong, make sure their stuff is in order and then give them a warning. We don’t need to ticket the public. We’re not a revenue generator, and that’s not something that I would expect from my officers.”

Heading Into Year Two

"I’m very happy with the results of year one,” said Trail. "It has actually taken hold very well, and we’ve received feedback from neighboring police chiefs who would love to do something similar.”

The unit’s goals and focus for year two will largely be dictated by community need, as well as the results of the community survey. Trail said he would love to see a fully staffed, daily bike patrol added, and he would also like to add another full-time officer to the Community Services Unit.

"If I could do one thing, I would increase the staffing level of the unit,” said Trail. "I’ve had very preliminary discussions about adding another officer, and I’m hoping that the results of the community survey will help me buttress the need to get another officer here.”

Trail added that borough council has been supportive of the unit, and said they have been great with funding.

Currently, the unit is short staffed, as Officer Gallagher is recovering from a stab wound that he suffered while off-duty over the Fourth of July weekend. Gallagher is also up for promotion to sergeant, and in the event he receives the promotion, he would be moved out of the unit, which would again leave a vacancy.

Trail said the department itself is fully staffed, so they could allow other officers to rotate into the unit, which would both fill the ranks and allow officers to have a break from their demanding patrol schedules.

"The guys and gals that work patrols, they have that rotating shift of four 10-hour days every two weeks, and that can become monotonous,” said Trail. "By having that spot there, we can put it out every year and let them rotate off of the other shift. It gives them a break.”

In all, Trail said that he’s excited to see the unit continue to evolve.

"I came from a very large agency prior to coming here, so I know that there’s a degree of specialization required, especially in the borough,” said Trail. "We’re very compact, we know parking is an issue, traffic is an issue, road construction, and then throw on top all of the events … to have that Community Service Unit, it’s been a tremendous asset for the department.”