LIMA — At Monday’s Lima City Council meeting, the council will vote on approving an agreement between the city and St. Mark United Methodist Church on North Metcalf Street to form the second Lima Police Department community policing substation.
St. Mark would follow in the footsteps of New Life Assembly on East Kibby Street, which opened in September to work with the Midway East neighborhood, an area deemed to have the greatest concentration of crime in the city. The project is a revival of the community policing program the Lima Police Department used in the 1990s and was forced to discontinue in 2002.
“Nothing we have done since having lost the neighborhood substations has been as effective, from my perspective, as having neighborhood substations and having neighborhood officers assigned to specific high-crime areas and interact on a much more personal level with residents,” Lima Police Chief Kevin Martin said when the first substation was opened.
This second substation would service the city’s Northside neighborhood, helping create a new line of communication between neighborhood residents and law enforcement. Speaking about the program in general this summer, Martin said it is communication that can best foster a safe environment and curb crime.
“Nothing really matters if we don’t have the trust and confidence of the people we’re serving, and you can’t develop that trust without having a relationship,” Martin said. “We want them to have the trust and confidence that what we’re doing is the right thing for the right reasons.”
Lima City Council meets at 7 p.m. Monday at the Lima Municipal Building.
