HAMMOND — When the Hammond Police Department has its Coffee with a Cop outing next month, they’re going to need a bigger room.
Officers and residents scooted around each other in The Wheel Restaurant’s small banquet room Wednesday afternoon as Chief John Doughty and several officers from its Community Affairs Department met with them. Born out of a need to connect more with the community, the first outing, held at the now-defunct Round the Clock restaurant in Columbia Plaza, attracted maybe five or 10 people at the most, police said.
Doughty was encouraged.
“This is a wonderful turnout,” he said, looking around the room. “If this keeps up, we may need to do it more often.”
The department created the Community Affairs Department 16 years ago and used to get out more but got away from it in recent years. Several incidents last year, including the incident where a Hammond man was removed from a car and shot with a stun gun after refusing police orders, became the impetus for resurrecting the practice.
But more than that, Doughty recognized the value of getting “a friendship” of sorts going residents, he said. To that end, the department is working to identify leaders in each community as part of the outreach.
The first community they went into was the 3rd District — the East Hammond section — which is predominantly African-American. Doughty said people were very interested in reaching out and starting a conversation.
“We want to establish a direct pipeline into the communities before something goes wrong,” Doughty said. “If we get to know everyone in a more congenial manner, it produces more honest dialogue. And it’s just as good for us as it is for the citizens if we’ve already formed a solid relationship.”
Hammond Police Captain Kelvin Alcox admitted he was a bit skeptical of the initiative at first but quickly saw the benefit in reminding residents that cops are just people, too.
“We’re not standing up and giving speeches; we’re just having conversations instead of making people afraid,” he said, perusing the room. “One of our biggest goals is to get people to understand the things we do from our perspective, such as how we back each other up in the department. When someone gets pulled over and several squads respond, many people look at it as an overreaction, but we do that to protect each other in case it turns out to be not routine.
“Once it’s established as a routine traffic stop, though, the extra guys go off and do other stuff.”
Another benefit to the outreach is getting to tout the department, something most officers tend not to do, Doughty said.
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“Most of our guys are tight-lipped about the stuff they do every day, so I want to sell that to the community,” he said. “Like the other day when officers stopped a car and the driver was holding a gun —who knows what they were going to do with it? Luckily, the guy surrendered instead of shooting it out, but people need to know that a routine car stop can turn very easily. That was just for rolling a stop sign.
“Our guys are very good at what they do, and I believe it’s undermarketed, as it were.”
Linda Ashley, a former Hammond resident who now lives in Gary’s Black Oak section, came to have coffee because she still wants to be involved with the community in which she grew up.
“My thing is, I want people to not be afraid of the police,” she said. “This was my first time meeting (Doughty), but (former Chief Brian Miller) was always there when I had a problem. I’m trying to keep Hammond safe before it gets worse.”
Evelyn Kellams, of Hammond, worked for the department when Community Affairs was created. She believes the effort should’ve never stopped.
“Our officers are very smart and very involved. Most are even assigned to the districts they live in,” she said.
And if there’s a community watch program in that neighborhood, the benefit is even greater, Lt. John Muta said.
“I was a member of a community watch when I was in patrol, and what these people knew about their community? I was impressed,” he said.