Technology has made Poulsbo’s Community Police Advisory Board obsolete, leading to the City Council disbanding it.
The board was established in 1991 to “ensure quality citizen input and information exchange concerning police services and programs,” Police Chief Al Townsend told the City Council Wednesday night.
Before Twitter, Facebook or even easy access to the internet, the board members were the connection between the community and police department.
It was not an investigative, watchdog or review board, Townsend said.
Townsend and the Poulsbo Police communicate directly with citizens these days using an email newsletter and Townsend’s Twitter feed, which has nearly 700 followers.
“These new methods of communication reach a considerably wider audience and supply immediate feedback from both supporters and critics of the police department,” Townsend said.
The department doesn’t have a Facebook. It’s too trendy for that right now.
“The high schoolers tell me that is old school,” Townsend replied in a tweet.
The Twitter account is where the department reaches its younger and “more mobile audience,” he said.
Beyond emails and Twitter, the department has neighborhood meetings, survey audits for those that contact the police and individual meetings with citizens.
“I still have meetings with people in our community routinely. I had one this morning at 8, another one at 1:30,” Townsend said Wednesday. “We are still reaching out. We’re still doing the one-on-one conversations with people, but now we have new methods to reach a much wider audience.”
While online communication grows, the department was struggling to fill the nine board seats and had only seven members.
“People’s schedules have changed over the years,” Townsend said before noting evening meetings are difficult for residents to routinely make, pointing to the small audience of four at the council meeting.
Mayor Becky Erickson also noted that when the board first formed there were no City Council committees, which now include a public safety committee chaired by Councilwoman Connie Lord.
“We’ve really multiplied ways we do outreach to our community,” Erickson said.
Lord said that with current technology and outreach programs the Community Police Advisory Board’s time has “come and gone.”
