Albany Georgia adds Community Safety Officers to force
ALBANY GA December 24 2018 — Citizens of Albany, holiday shoppers and downtown visitors may have noticed a splash of yellow out of the corners of their eyes in recent days. Seven Community Safety Officers hit the streets to provide assistance to the Albany Police Department and the community on Monday with three more officers pending implementation.
“This program was designed basically for us to take the low-risk calls, calls that didn’t involve a suspect or calls with no violence at all to help free up the police officers off the streets,” Community Safety Officer Eric Fluellen said. “That way, they can help with those more dangerous calls or the calls where you need the police right then.
“That way, for example, if someone had their bike stolen off their porch the night before, the police officer wouldn’t be sitting on that call while someone’s house is getting robbed or something like that.”
CSOs received training for almost 14 weeks in multiple aspects of law enforcement to assist APD officers. This training included the department’s standard operations and procedures, use of force and less lethal force, O.C. spray certification, a modified emergency vehicle operation course, a ride-along with APD officers to learn patrolling techniques, field training, special operations training and instruction for accident investigations, traffic directing and minor accident report completion. These officers do not carry weapons other than the O.C. spray and do not have arrest powers.
Some of the ways these officers can assist Albany police is with administrative tasks, patrolling areas such as the Albany Mall and downtown, as well as working as safety officers at community events so that APD officers can focus on more dangerous criminal activity. The officers also help the community with their presence around stores, providing increased security for business owners and retail employees and also during events within the community.
The officers in yellow, Albany’s Community Safety Officers, stepped up to the job with the intention of serving the community in a manner that assists law enforcement.
“I was interested in the job because I also do community development myself, so that’s why I wanted to be a part of it,” Community Safety Officer Latasha Sloan said. “I used to do that type of work anyway, and my background was in law enforcement also. So to bring both of those things together, that’s why I decided to apply for the job.”
Fluellen said that he never wanted to step right into law enforcement and that he felt that working as a Community Safety Officer would be a good way for him to test out the field to see what police officers actually do while also staying involved in the community.
On the first day, Sloan said she took part in foot patrol downtown, and meeting business owners was a good experience for her.
“They were really happy about seeing us,” Sloan said. “They said just around the holidays it was a happy feeling seeing us walking around, patrolling the area and that they felt safe.”
One of the new officers said he hopes the program grows.
“I’m hoping that this program will expand and we can do a lot more with it,” Rick McDaniel said. “I don’t know that the chief (APD Chief Michael Persley) has plans to hire more than 10 people, but we’ll see.”
McDaniel is one of the two part-time CSOs in the program. His background entails more than 35 years of public safety. McDaniel was a paramedic with Dougherty County for 30 years and a court security officer at the jail for five years. At 71 years old, he said he isn’t ready to quit working, and as a CSO, he can continue to serve his community without slowing down.
“It provides, I think, an extra layer of security for the community,” McDaniel said. “We’re visible. That’s the main thing. That way, the uniformed officers can go do what they need to do, but if we need somebody or we see something, we’ll just call them and say ‘I need somebody out here’.”
The Community Safety Officer program was introduced to and approved by Albany Mayor Dorothy Hubbard and the Albany City Commission in April.
Albany Herald
