Port Police Department Earns Award for Community Work

The is slated to receive the 2011 Sir Robert Peel Award for its community oriented policing work, and more specifically an iniative that focused on improving Port's downtown.

The Sir Robert Peel award is given annually by the Wisconsin Community Oriented Policing Association to the agency that best exemplifies the principles of problem solving, according to a press release from the department. The award is named after Robert Peel who is considered the father of modern day community policing.

"We are very excited to receive this award and are very proud of Officers Bergin and Nye for the great work they did over the last three years in our downtown business district," Police Chief Richard Thomas said in the release. "I believe this award symbolizes the distance the department has come over the last six years with a focus on building relationships, customer service and problem solving."

The submission that won the award was made by Officer Jason Bergin and Officer Jerry Nye, a project called "Sweeping Franklin Street." The initiative was a three-year project that focused on criminal damage, disorderly conduct and open intoxicants in downtown Port Washington.

According to Bergin, the idea of the project was to use bike patrol and plain-clothed officers to increase the department's presence in the area to address issues such as having open intoxicants in public, littering, disorderly conduct, battery and vandalism — especially during the warmer months.

Bergin and Nye started the project in the summer of 2009, but it wasn't long before they realized they were on to something more.

"We didn't realize how broad of an idea we had come across," he said, adding that's why the program came back in 2010 and 2011. Bergin also of the Wisconsin Community Oriented Policing Association earlier this year.

The Sir Robert Peel Award will be presented on Jan. 26 at the annual Wisconsin Community Oriented Policing Conference at the Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells.