Neighbors Helping Neighbors for a Crime Free Community

Manteca’s theory on crime prevention supports that statement by encouraging the police and community to work as a team, in the prevention and the elimination of crime in the community.

Long before "community based policing" became household words the crime prevention unit felt it important to create partnerships with the community to accomplish its prevention goals. In 1990, when the crime prevention unit was created the first goal was to revitalize the Neighborhood Watch Program, which had not been effectively used since the late 1970’s. Today, the NHW program is the foundation utilized to maintain over 100 prevention programs currently being used by the crime prevention unit.

The Office of Public Affairs was created in 2002 to help with the flow of information using the public information process between the community, business and media sources. Over the past decade the crime prevention officer had been responsible for the Public Information Officer duties, and used those contacts to educate the media, other communities and the citizens of Manteca on issues that affect them on a daily basis. The Office of Public Affairs works directly for the Office of the Police Chief and this allows for a direct conduit between those outside the police department to the police chief for issues that would normally be lost in the internal maze of modern law enforcement.

The Public Affairs Officer is also the department’s crime prevention officer and by utilizing other officers and employees within the department is able to accomplish a number of prevention and public information job tasks that many times in other agencies goes unattended.

Crime Prevention and Public Affairs

• Crime Stoppers
• Neighborhood Watch
• Child Safety