City of South Salt Lake

Community policing is the philosophy that police officers and citizens can work together in creative ways to solve community problems such as crime, fear of crime, social disorder, and neighborhood conditions.

An important aspect of community policing is geographic responsibility. Through geographic responsibility, officers and supervisors are responsible for certain areas within the city. As a result all citizens will have a direct contact in the police department. Citizens will know police department staff personally and have someone that will follow up with them on long-term problems.

The South Salt Lake Police Department has created a new system of geographic responsibility called Community Policing Zones (CPZ). It is important to know that the uniformed patrol division is comprised of six squads, staffed with one Sergeant and four officers each. Additionally, the city has been divided into six CPZs. Each Sergeant has responsibility for a CPZ. CPZ assignments are based on the time of day a sergeant works and previous history regarding crime trends and calls for service in each CPZ. Contact information for that particular sergeant will be made available to the community as well as boundary designations. This will ensure that citizens will know who to contact in order to facilitate long term problem solving. If you are familiar with the Community Council boundaries, the CPZs will be understood with greater ease.

Although each Sergeant works a different shift, the Community Resource Division Sergeant will also be responsible for tracking information that is gathered via the Patrol Division. The Community Resource Division is comprised of the Street Crimes Unit, Crime Prevention, School Resource Unit, Code Enforcement, and Crime Analysis. This will ensure that all problems can be addressed effectively, regardless of the time in which they occur.

It will be the responsibility of patrol sergeants and their officers to make contacts within the community and their assigned CPZs. They will be responsible for keeping track of crime trends and unique problems for each CPZ. While the entire patrol division is responsible for coverage of the city as a whole, Patrol/CPZ Sergeants will ensure that proper communication occurs throughout the police department, to include the Community Resource Division, and that the appropriate resources are utilized for problem solving efforts.