The Durango Police Department has worked for more than six months on developing a strategic plan to tackle hot-button issues in the community.
Chief of Police Kamran Afzal and other officers will present the revised plan at 6 p.m. Monday at the Durango Community Recreation Center, 2700 Main Ave., during a town hall meeting.
DPD surveyed the community in August in an effort to identify the issues most important to Durangoans.
Afzal said the majority of responses highlighted four topics: homelessness; opioids; bicycle and vehicle conflicts; and a lack of patrols on the Animas River Trail and downtown.
“We got a lot of input from the community,” he said. “We wanted to put a plan together for crime control and prevention, community engagement, traffic safety and enhancing infrastructure.”
Afzal said officers worked together to develop the strategic plan around the community’s biggest concerns.
On Monday, community members will have the opportunity to weigh-in on that plan.
“From our perspective, we always have some trust issues, so we want to open ourselves up and give people the opportunity to tell us how to improve ourselves,” Afzal said. “We also want to make sure the community knows what we are doing, so that there is a collective vision for our law enforcement.”
Afzal said he hopes to hold more town hall meetings to meet with community members face to face to improve transparency in the department.
“I would love to do this a couple times a year because we’ve never really done this before,” he said.
mrupani@durangoherald.com
