New Wichita police patrol: No guns, no badges; but golf carts, eyes and ears
The newest patrol in the Wichita Police Department doesn’t have guns, or badges, or Tasers, or Mace — just golf carts, polo shirts, ID cards, cell phones and, most importantly, their eyes and ears.
And they don’t get paid.
Meet the men and women of the Volunteers in Policing program — 11 concerned citizens who attended the WPD Citizens Police Academy and an extra three hours of extra training in observation, communication, personal safety and golf cart operation and maintenance.
They’ve been deployed since Friday to cruise along the Arkansas River walkway downtown and report in if they see suspicious or unsafe activity.
Lois Kimble did her first patrol shift on Friday.
“We had one issue with a mental guy . . . he was screaming at all the kids going by,” she said. But before police arrived to check on him, “his girlfriend, wife, whatever finally got him to get in a vehicle and leave. I guess he’d been out there all day doing that.”
Then there were some kids playing on the Lincoln Street Dam in the river.
“All the guys that were fishing were scared about them being down there on the river,” she said. The patrollers called it in and an officer dropped by and told the kids to find a safer place to play, she said.
Not exactly the stuff of a great crime novel, but important, nonetheless.
“This is a great effort where concerned citizens that want to give back to their community can volunteer and be the eyes and ears of the police department — and it works,” said Police Chief Gordon Ramsay. “And I think it’s going to be a good thing for our city.”
In addition to watching for suspicious activity, the volunteers will also hand out flyers on where the homeless who frequent the river walk can get community services. They’ll also give safety pamphlets to users of the new rental scooters that have recently proliferated across Wichita.
Ramsay said the volunteers are under orders to avoid any violence or other real trouble they may see.
“We want them to disengage and get out of the area if something like that is happening . . . just be good witnesses,” Ramsay said.
But he said he’s not too worried about the volunteers’ safety. Almost always, criminals would rather try to escape than stick around to confront volunteers.
“These are done throughout the country,” he said. “While this is new for us, I had it in my old city (Duluth, Minn.) and many cities have it.
“We always look at worst-case scenario, and we talk about worst-case scenario, but the reality is that doesn’t happen too often,” he said.
The Wichita patrol is modeled on Boise, Idaho’s Greenbelt patrol, which City Council members Cindy Claycomb and Bryan Frye learned about when they went there on a chamber of commerce-sponsored “city to city” visit, Claycomb said.
“When we returned, I approached the chief and he was wonderfully receptive to implementing it here,” she said. “We’ve been working on this for about 10 months to ensure that we have the right infrastructure and the right volunteers in place to make this program a success.”
She said it’s especially important to create as safe an environment along the river as possible with new developments happening on both banks — the $75 million baseball stadium on the west and the riverfront legacy master plan group planning for convention and performing arts center improvements on the east bank.
“From the volunteers who are selflessly giving of their time, to the parks department who generously donated the golf carts, and to the police department who got this off the ground and are going to continue to run this operation, I want to thank everyone who’s had a hand in making this new initiative a success,” Claycomb said.
