OPD’s community engagement efforts include its coffee with a cop program, a yearly citizens police academy, a fishing derby, a holiday dinner and shopping event for children and more.
“We’ve always done community programs here in Oxford … so I wanted to kind of highlight some of those efforts,” said OPD Chief John Jones.
OPD’s recognition comes after a tense few months for the department. A video circulated on social media in December in which a cop struck a Miami student in a use of force incident. The video led to both an internal and external review, and the use of force was found to be justified, but the incident led to community scrutiny of the department.
“We had some procedural and communication type lapses that we need to fix, and we’ve said we will do that,” Jones said. “... While that incident was controversial, it doesn’t necessarily negate these other positive things we’re doing in the community.”
Larry Nadler, chair of Oxford’s police community relations and review commission, said he was initially concerned when the use of force incident came to light but felt that the department handled it professionally. In the six years Nadler has served on the commission, he said, this was the first time he recalled handling an incident like this, and he said the department approached it with transparency.
The community engagement efforts of OPD which OACP has recognized have been genuine, Nadler said. He added that the department’s work in Oxford’s Section 8 housing has been especially beneficial to the community.
“I think officers do a good job,” Nadler said, “and I think it’s great to get some recognition for those efforts.”
The workforce at OPD is also growing this month as three new officers were officially sworn in: Austin Lovins, Bo Staat and Jeremiah South. Lovins, 21, comes from a law enforcement family and is joining OPD as his first job with a police department, while Staat and South have both served on additional forces in the past decade.
For South, who has previously served as a firefighter in the Navy and worked in hospitals for eight years, the training he’s received in Oxford so far has been a positive development.
“The knowledge level of everybody I’ve worked with so far and met, coming from where I came from, just that kind of police knowledge base wasn’t there,” South said. “So being opened up to this is a good experience.”
Staat said the level of detail in OPD’s training has been helpful, too. He highlighted small details like hand and body positioning in various situations that he hadn’t honed in on at his previous job with the Brookville, Indiana, police department.
Both Staat and South said they look forward to getting involved with the community events OPD leads as they progress through their training and get out on their own in the coming months.
“I know that there are a lot of things we do here like the fishing derby and the citizen observer patrol,” Staat said. “I would love to help out with that stuff.”
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