It might not have much to do with high school football, but the initiative Savannah-Chatham police are calling “Friday Night Lights” is still about beating challenges.
Officers in Central Precinct — like the rest of the department — are understaffed, but they’ve still been pushing to increase “walk and talk”-style policing while still riding back-to-back calls and trying to curb rising violent crime.
A daytime show of visibility and community networking — the first Roll Call in the Streets of the year — took place late last month, but Capt. DeVonn Adams says Friday Night Lights is a bit different.
The public roll calls vary in their nature each time, but they typically involve police serving food, giving knickknacks to kids and standing in the early afternoon sunshine while residents watch them get assignments for the day. They tend to attract families, neighborhood leaders and elected officials — but Adams worried they weren’t reaching the elderly who have trouble leaving home, folks who work during the day and kids who are old enough to think they’re too cool to chill with their parents at a police cookout.
“As I watched (roll call) evolve over the years, I noticed I was missing the ages from about 15 to 25 and probably some of the youth we really need to get in contact with,” said Adams, who runs the precinct.
His officers will also go door to door Friday night and hand out pamphlets on crime prevention and seek input from residents.
Like the last roll call event, the first Friday Night Lights on July 17 will be in Cuyler-Brownville. It starts at 6:30 p.m., and it won’t be in a park.
Police will park the department’s mobile command center at 39th and Burroughs streets in the middle of what Adams said has recently been a hot spot for crime. A homicide took place just a few blocks away recently.
“We do realize that while we’re dealing in our hot spots that... it’s only probably about between 10 and 20 percent of the people in those neighborhoods that are responsible for maybe between 50 and 60 percent of the crimes that are committed,” Adams said. “We want to reach out to them and offer them some social services, some job opportunities and give them the opportunity to get on board with improving the quality of life in the neighborhood.”
The other end of that strategy is that if people don’t get on board with the communities where they live and lapse into crime, the police quickly will switch to enforcement.
It won’t just be police next Friday. Officers will walk the neighborhood with property maintenance employees from the city to scope out abandoned buildings and overgrown lots and identify problem areas. They’ve reached out to some business owners in the area for the event, too, and Adams said police have encouraged them to give local kids a chance at employment that will keep them off the streets.
And police want to talk about the weather when they go door to door.
“One of our main goals is to reach the elderly ... and talk to them about some of their concerns and make sure that they have air conditioning and things like that in this type of weather,” Adams said.
The captain says he’s seen slight drops in daytime residential burglaries and nighttime commercial burglaries in recent weeks — and he’s attributing it to foot patrols.
“They’re getting out of their cars and walking,” Adams said of the officers on foot patrol. “They’re checking doors, walking behind buildings and things of that nature... It’s not all about just the visibility — it’s them walking with a purpose and engaging people when you see them and talking to them about what’s going on.”
Overall for the year, there’s been a 4 percent decrease in total violent crime reported in Central, but a rise in shootings — nearly 50 have been investigated — and a 16 percent increase in reported property crime.
It’ll be a busy weekend as far as public image goes for Central Precinct officers. Less than a day after the first Friday Nights Lights, many of the same officers will be setting up shop in Habersham Village for the second of four Roll Call in the Street events this year.
While Roll Call’s just a summer thing, Adams says Friday Night Lights is here to stay. He expects to put on the events about twice a month. Neighborhoods already on the schedule are Ardsley Park/Chatham Crescent, Tatemville, Metropolitan, Thomas Square and the Waters Avenue corridor.
Van Johnson, who represents Cuyler-Brownville and a decent bit of Central’s jurisdiction in City Council, said “enhancing public engagement” between police and residents is crucial to reducing crime in Savannah.
“We have to take back what the criminal element is trying to take away from us,” Johnson said. “If a place is dark, you shine a light on it. If it is crime infested, you put presence there. If it is blight infested, you put remediation there.”
Johnson said he thought community visibility action like Friday Night Lights and the public roll calls can help “turn the tide” because it gives people a chance to see police in a light that’s not negative and to actually talk to them when they’re not busy responding to calls.
“I’ve seen them where they’re out there cooking and giving sodas to the residents and painting faces for the kids,” he said. “More importantly, that face-to-face contact when nothing is going on makes huge steps in building relationships.”
Police say they’ll return to the hot spot areas after community events conclude and continue to feed resources into those neighborhoods.
“We’re trying to look at it as a holistic approach,” Adams said. “It’s not just about us enforcing, enforcing, enforcing. We want to be empathetic, so we do realize that there’s some social challenges, and we want to give (residents) the resources that we have available to help them combat those challenges.”