Beginning the week of July 21, the Crestwood community — or those who have been victims of certain types of crime while in Crestwood — will receive a survey from the Crestwood Police Department via text after reporting a crime.
“It’s a community engagement tool, and basically what’s going to happen is kind of twofold,” Lieutenant Kent Meier, support services commander at the Crestwood Police Department, said. “One, we’re using it for a survey aspect, where with certain call types, (approximately) six hours after we’ve handled the call for (a resident), they’re going to get a survey. Community response is pretty important to us; we want to know how we’re doing.”
The survey will be brief, with only two questions for community members to answer. The first section will be to rate your recent interaction with the Crestwood Police Department from one to five, giving the department an idea of how satisfactory its services are, while the second will be an open space for the reporting party to add any additional comments.
“Even if there are positive things going on, we don’t hear about it unless someone comes up and fills out a commendation form for an officer,” Sergeant Dennis Bosslet, accreditation manager at the Crestwood Police Department, said. “An officer can do a great job on a call, somebody’s just completely satisfied, and they just never know about it. So that will be a way for us to say, ‘Hey, look, somebody wrote a nice thing about you. Keep up the good work.’”
As this new software is text message-based, it will only work for those who call on cellphones. The majority of surveys will be sent approximately six hours after a call reporting a crime is received by the police department, though from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., no texts will go out, meaning if a crime occurs in the middle of the night, a survey will not be sent until the following morning.
Additionally, surveys will not be sent in every instance, particularly when a crime is sensitive in nature.
“It’s your simple, everyday calls: stealing, property damage, traffic accidents, whatever. More of the daily, everyday stuff versus if it’s a sensitive matter,” Meier said. “Or a traffic stop, we’re not going to do a survey on that.”
The department plans to acclimate itself with the new software over the coming weeks and allow the community to do the same, before adding a second aspect of the program, which will include pre-arrival instructions and up-to-date information on cases.
“For an accident, a text will go out saying ‘An officer has been dispatched. If there are no injuries and it’s safe to do so, please move your vehicle to the side of the road.’ It’s kind of pre-arrival instructions,” Meier said. “We’re hoping that once they can get the software aspects to co-mingle, if somebody makes a report (that) something was stolen and a detective gets assigned, then a text message would go out saying, ‘This detective has been assigned to your case,’ and then there would be that direct communication via text between the detective and the reporting party.”
There is currently no time frame for the release of this part of the program, though it will likely drop “pretty soon after” the surveys are rolled out.
