The Centretown Community Police Centre, which suffered flooding in January, will stay at 393 Somerset St. for the next year while police decide whether to make changes to the current community policing model.
The Centretown Community Police Centre, which suffered flooding in January, will stay at 393 Somerset St. for the next year while police decide whether to make changes to the current community policing model.
The centre has been tucked into a small storefront near the intersection of Bank and Somerset streets for 13 years.
In January, a series of floods – one caused by a broken water line – caused the centre to close for three months.
The closure sent officers packing and forced community groups who used the facility’s boardroom to go elsewhere.
Police were trying to find a new home for the centre at the time, but its lease has since been extended on a month-to-month basis until August 2012, said a report released by the Police Services Board.
Since the centre’s re-opening there’s less of a push to find a new location, says Sgt. Matthew Skof, who oversees Ottawa’s community police centres.
“With the flood, it definitely brought (the building) to our attention. But we won’t move without finding a location that works,” Skof says.
Reviewing the effectiveness of community police centres is something that happens on an ongoing basis, Skof says. Any changes have to fit the needs of the community.
“There’s a couple of leases up, and with that lies an opportunity for us. If we’re looking to ditch the old model of community policing then perhaps now’s a good time to do it,” says Const. Khoa Hoang, Centretown’s community police office.
The current community policing model focuses on engaging the public through crime prevention programs, he says.
“It’s not that we don’t appreciate what we have, it’s that we constantly need to assess whether what we’re doing is effective,” Hoang says.
Not everyone understands the concept of having 17 outreach centres that only serve specific pockets of the city, he says.
“People wonder why you would invest so much time and money when no investigations are done here – no bad guys are ever booked in the back.”
For Centretown, Hoang says he thinks the current model of community policing has made a difference.
Hoang grew up nearby on the corner of Bank and Nepean streets. The intersection used to be a seedy area, he says.
“We are visited very regularly by residents who tell us that since the centre has been here the intersection of Bank and Somerset has changed dramatically into an area people are no longer afraid to visit,” Hoang says.
The centre sits under an apartment building owned by Ottawa Community Housing. There’s a methadone clinic next door. It’s the perfect location to serve the community, Hoang says.
The flooding caused a major setback, Hoang says. Community groups are only now starting to book the centre’s boardroom again for meetings, Hoang says. “Every time there’s a flood, we come to halt – like we hit this wall.”
Each flood was caused by something different and each was equally unexpected.
“Moving is stressful, not only for the staff and myself, but we’re still trying to deliver all of our programming, so we don’t lose our community partners,” Hoang says.
The Centretown Citizens Community Association has a safety committee that has partnered with the police centre in the past.
Association president Jordan Charbonneau says if the centre moves in the future, keeping it near the Bank and Somerset streets intersection would be best.
“The more central the better,” Charbonneau says. “Accessibility is very important, especially when you’re considering things like residents who have mobility impairments.”
It can’t be tucked away to one corner of the community, Charbonneau says.
“That’s great for the residents of that local area, but those in the other corner seem to lose out,” he says.
Police are taking their time making a decision because any changes will be around for a long time, Hoang says.