Last week I mentioned that Realty World Selzer Realty had just wrapped up a contest asking people to submit ideas to make Ukiah a safer place to live and work. A story about the contest and its winner appeared on the front page of the Ukiah Daily Journal on Sunday, December 20.
The winning submission provided detailed recommendations on developing a “community network” of local citizens working together with our police department using proven neighborhood-watch type techniques along with new forms of technology to improve communication, reduce crime, and make Ukiah safer.
As the Ukiah Police Department (UPD) begins to explore how we can implement this community network, it’s clear that good communication will be key, so I thought I’d reintroduce some of the current ways citizens can access information about their neighborhoods and learn about police activities.
One of the best places to find information about the police department and crime in your neighborhood is the UPD website: ukiahpolice.com, where you can view several different reports, activity logs, and up-to-date information about crime and police activity.
If you scroll down to the Crime Reports section on the homepage, you can use the crime-mapping tool. This tool allows you to see the most recent criminal activity in your neighborhood. If you click on the link next to the map, you’ll be guided to the Crime Reports webpage where you can create a report organized by type of crime or date range. You can also sign up for notifications of activity that occurs near your home or business.
Another notification service is called Nixle, and you can sign up for this service by completing the form in the left sidebar of the UPD homepage. Nixle notifications cover crime, Amber alerts, traffic conditions and weather. Nixle allows you to receive text messages and email alerts for information occurring in the Ukiah area. (You can also sign up for Nixle notifications by texting UKIAHPOLICE to 888777.)
At the very top of our homepage, you can navigate through several tabs to find important information. Under the News tab, we publish our daily activity log, our weekly reports and current press releases. If you are looking for a specific incident, you can find details in the daily log. If you’d like a summary of activity, the weekly report provides information about how many arrests and citations were made for the week, along with response time information, types of crimes occurring in Ukiah and a review of significant events.
Under the About Us tab, a drop down menu guides you to information about our department’s volunteer program, recent reports, statistics, strategic plan measures, and copies of Grand Jury reports about UPD. If you’d like to file a police report or share a crime tip, you can do so by clicking on “File a Police Report” in the red bar to the right of the main photo slideshow.
Information about UPD and local crime activity are also available via social media; we’re active on Facebook and Twitter. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/ukiahpolice and on Twitter at @UkiahPolice. When you visit our Facebook page, please “Like” us so more of our content is displayed in your news feed. We post our weekly reports, plus current crime and wanted person information. During our most recent flooding, we posted up-to-the-minute information about school and road closures.
Our goal with these web and social media resources is to provide you with as much information as possible about crime trends, crime prevention tips and safety information you can use and share with your family and friends. We also hope these sites will provide you with the information and communication tools you need to help us do our jobs as well as we possibly can.
As always, our mission at UPD is simple: to make Ukiah as safe as possible. If you have suggestions on how we can improve please feel free to call me. If you would like to know more about crime in your neighborhood, you can sign up for telephone, cell phone and email notifications by clicking the Nixle button on our website: www.ukiahpolice.com.
