The Kentwood Police Department

                               

          

The Kentwood Police Department, established in 1967,  is located in the southwest corner of Grand Rapids Michigan and is recognized as the largest retail area in West Michigan. The Kentwood Police Department has 70 sworn officers with a population of nearly 60,000 residents. Kentwood is 21 square miles, has a growing economy, named one of the best places to live for new families (2018 Realtor.com) , and has 12 beautiful parks.


Chief of Police Thomas Hillen
Deputy Chief Richard Roberts
Captain Michael Bockheim
Captain Bryan Litwin
Captain Stephany Morningstar


                     

  Our Mission: To reduce serious crime, increase traffic safety, and serve our community with excellence.




RESTRUCTURING OF BUREAUS:
 In 2018 the Kentwood Police Department bureaus were divided up amongst the three Captains. The Patrol Officers and Traffic Unit fell under the control of the Patrol Captain, the Detective Bureau and Records Bureau under the Detective Bureau Captain and the Professional Standards Captain has responsibility for the Community Services, Training and Professional Standards Bureaus. This division enabled each Captain to concentrate on a smaller number of bureaus and help ensure a quicker response to the needs of the community.

PATROL DIVISION:
The patrol division is comprised of 36 sworn Officers which includes 7 Sergeants.
The main goal of the Patrol Division is to provide excellent and professional service in a timely manner. Our officers are highly trained professionals who, on a 24 hour basis, strive to meet the needs of the community no matter the task. Patrol officers have various duties which include conducting initial and follow-up criminal investigations, enforcing traffic laws, investigating traffic crashes, arresting persons who have committed criminal acts, and investigate suspicious persons and situations, just to name a few.

Officers in the Patrol Division are also Field training Officers (FTO's), firearm instructors, use of force instructors, recruitment team officers, health and wellness instructors, defensive tactic instructors and Special Response Team (SRT) members.

Patrol officers spend additional time building positive relationships within the community through goals that are established by each shift. Most of these goals are community orientated where an officer will visit a business, a public event or give extra patrol attention to the neighborhoods. The feedback from these shift goals has been very positive and the proactive approach is appreciated.

The traffic bureau is also a part of the the patrol division. The traffic bureau consists of 3 patrol officers and 1 sergeant with specialized training who reconstruct critical accident scenes, enforce traffic laws at high crash intersections and roadways, and conduct traffic surveys.

DDACT's, Data Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety, and the P.R.I.C.E. Initiative puts our officers in the areas of our city that need the most attention according to our crime statistics.

DDACT's is a spatial map that shows where most crimes are occurring, the times these crimes are taking place, and the day of the week. We analyze this date and schedule our patrol units to be in these zoned areas based on the above criteria.

The P.R.I.C.E initiative (Preventing Retail Theft through Initiative, Collaboration, and Enforcement)is another way to put our officers in areas where, based on data, crimes will likely occur. P.R.I.C.E begins the day before Thanksgiving and ends on December 27th. The dedicated P.R.I.C.E. patrol cars only patrol the retail districts in the City of Kentwood. Retail crimes usually peek during Thanksgiving and the Christmas Holiday so scheduling officers to concentrate in these areas in essential.















The graph above shows the total calls per year for the last 6 years. As you can see the calls for service have been trending downward since 2017. We attribute that to our patrol concentration in the DDACT zones and holiday P.R.I.C.E initiative.




This above graph shows the distribution of calls over a one year period. As you can see the busiest days are Monday, Thursday and Friday. In order to address these high call volume days our department went to a squad schedule in 2015. The squad schedule has double up days on Monday, Thursday and Friday where all officers on the squad will be working. For instance, on Monday's all 12 officers on 1st shift are working, on Friday's all 10 to 12 officers are working 2nd shift and on Thursday all officers are working 3rd shift.

The graph below shows how many officers are working at any given time in a 24 hour period. The yellow bars are the number of officers on duty during each hour and the blue bars signify the amount of calls we receive during those hours. Our 2nd and 3rd shift schedules overlap so 11 officers will be working from 9pm to 1am.