The Dallas Police Department recently announced that all Interactive Community Police officers (ICPs) are now being called Neighborhood Police Officers (NPOs). Is this anything more than a name change?
The goal of this is we want everybody to be geographically responsible, where officers in their beats know the people in their neighborhood, and the people in the neighborhood will have more than just one officer (formerly the ICP officer) to contact. The NPOs are getting assigned to specific sectors and working with the beat officers in helping them become more aware of how to address problems, just like the ICP officers have been doing all along. A lot of people know who their ICP officers are, but they don’t know who their beat or sector or geographic command officers are. With this, a person should be able to learn who their geographic commander is and who their sergeants and beat officers are, so they’re going to have a variety of places to contact for help — not 911 help, but to address ongoing problems. We’re going to get sector sergeants and beat officers to community meetings as well. It’s trying to expand the ICP concept across the division. It’s not an overnight thing; it’s a learning process for everybody.
