Federal Task Force on Policing to Work With COPS

 Posted for Lexington Park Business and Community Association & Congressman Steny Hoyer

WASHINGTON, DC – The executive order signed in reaction to recent tragedies associated with recent police shootings builds on the Community Oriented Policing Services Office, which includes a successful COPS program in Lexington Park, MD.

Commenting on the executive order creating the Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Congressman Steny Hoyer called it “an important step forward . . .  to enhance police training and strengthen trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve.  I applaud the President for establishing a Task Force that will work closely with the Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Office.

“Community policing has helped build trust and increased cooperation in municipalities across the country, and I hope that the Task Force being launched today will draw on best practices in this area as it prepares its recommendations in the months ahead,” said Rep. Hoyer.

That is how the program has operated in Lexington Park, MD, since launched in 2013. Community policing is accomplished via a special force out of the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Department. The COPS officers are assigned to Lexington Park and have come to know business owners, neighborhoods, and frequent offenders. Amplifying their presence by extending their reach into the community, the Lexington Park COPS launched and operate a trail-bike patrol. The flexibility allows the officers to  pursue suspects into alleyways and even wooded trails that previously enabled culprits to evade capture.

In concert with launching COPS, St. Mary’s County committed to building and opening a full-service sheriff’s office on Great Mills Road in Lexington Park. A facility with cells has been long regarded as the necessary element to end the nuisance crimes that plague the area. County plans anticipate renovating the building on Great Mills Road vacated this year by the Lexington Park Rescue Squad.

This would place a full-service sheriff station between the Church of the Ascension and the Lexington Park branch of PNC Bank across the street from from Canopy Liquors. The liquor store is known as a hub of the petty criminal nuisance behavior blamed for business losses and property value declines along the Great Mills Road corridor. The sheriff’s station and its location are seen as pivotal to ending this criminal activity.

Already the presence of the force, even without a Lexington Park full-service office, has substantially reduced nuisance crime in Lexington Park and in its core residential neighborhoods.

“Justice must always be blind – to color, creed, economic status, and every other factor,” said Rep. Hoyer in praising the executive order to expand COPS style policing. “We must come together as a nation to ensure that our citizens need not fear those charged with keeping them safe.  It is also necessary that those who enforce our laws do so in a way that is both effective and respectful of due process.  I will continue to work with my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus to find ways to build greater trust between law enforcement and communities so that tragedies like those we saw in Ferguson, MO, and New York do not happen again.”

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