Meet A Cop

Coffee will be served, but will there be doughnuts?

Tomorrow at 5 pm, city residents can meet with members of the Santa Fe Police Department as a part of a "Coffee with a Cop" program designed to grow the police force's relations with the community. Residents are free to come ready to discuss "community issues, build relationships and further open lines of communication" with the city's cops, according to the announcement.

The initiative, a national program sponsored by the federal Department of Justice, comes at a time when the state's biggest city police department in Albuquerque has been under intense scrutiny from the public and the Department of Justice for its shootings of civilians over the past few years.

Santa Fe's police have been more fortunate in their relationship with the community than the cops just south of here, though some officers haven't been immune to making aggressive actions that led to public relations problems.

SFPD Police Chief Eric Garcia will be present at the community meeting, along with several higher-up city police officers. The city's police force have done well for themselves under Garcia, getting their 10-hour-a-day, four-day workweek reinstated recently. City Council also approved SFPD's request earlier this month to spend $854,000 on new cop cars.

The coffee meeting, which will be located at Starbucks on 4960 Promenade Blvd. on the south side of the city, is designed to "break down barriers" between the cops and the residents they're sworn to protect.

"We hope that community members will feel comfortable to ask questions, bring concerns, or simply get to know our officers," Garcia says in a statement.

The initiative is planned to be held on a regular basis in different parts of the city.

Santa Fe Reporter