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Police Department

Safe Gresham

  • The safety of our officers and residents is of the highest importance to the City. 

    Safe Gresham is community violence prevention initiative including efforts from City leadership, Gresham Police and the community.

    City starts Youth Services division

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    • What is Safe Gresham?
    • What We're Doing
    • Contact
    What is Safe Gresham?

    Safe Gresham is a community violence effort to address gaps in the services provided to the community. 

    Collaboration, intervention, prevention

    Safe Gresham focuses on three strategies that work together at the same time: collaboration, intervention and prevention.

    Collaboration efforts

    Includes:

    • Producing solutions together between the Gresham Police Department and Gresham community.
    • Hiring additional staff, particularly non-sworn officers.
    • Analyzing crime data to guide crime reduction strategies.
    • Recruiting and retaining officers.

    Intervention efforts

    Includes:

    Prevention efforts

    Includes:

    • Creating a Youth Services division to provide youth violence prevention support. This program invests in culturally specific community-based organizations that can provide services for youth and young adults in Gresham.
    • Hiring a Youth Violence Prevention Coordinator.
    • Investing in positive recreational activities and engagement.

    Why this is important

    • Everyone is impacted by community violence.
    • For actions to work they must be community-driven and include health and behavioral perspectives to address the root causes of violence.
    • Working alongside culturally specific community-based organizations is critical. We want to meet our community where they are at and provide the resources they need.
    • Positive social activities and getting people engaged, while giving them protection to do so, contributes to health and well-being. Many of these activities are exactly what the pandemic took away.
    • Rebuilding safety requires keeping youth in the community surrounded by family, with health care, and easier access to recreational opportunities.
    What We're Doing

    Positive steps are happening to address each challenge, support our officers, and to create a safe community, including:

    • Partnering with the Gresham/Barlow School District to implement a Youth/Police Focus Group.
    • Conducting an organizational review of the Gresham Police Department through the BerryDunn Consulting Group.
    • Collaborating with the community for Safe Gresham, a Police/community-driven partnership using holistic community violence and crime reduction strategies.
    • Partnering with Operations of Safe Streets and other local restorative justice and gun violence initiatives
    • Creating a Special Victims Investigation Unit with existing staff.
    • Hiring non-sworn support staff including two crime analysts, three senior evidence technicians, and one criminalist.
    • Hiring a recruiter specific to the Gresham Police Department.
    • Installing a computer program to improve the backgrounding process. This lets the department digitize statements of personal history and other background information, greatly increasing the efficiency of these critical steps of the hiring process.
    • Dedicating funds to promote recruiting efforts.
    Contact

    Police Lieutenant Jeff.Miller@GreshamOregon.gov

    Youth Services Manager Emon.Ghassemi@GreshamOregon.gov

    Youth Violence Prevention Coordinator Marcell.Frazier@GreshamOregon.gov