The Parsons Police asked, and the citizens delivered. The Parsons Police Community Survey tallied over 750 responses. Parsons' citizens put a lot of time and effort into their responses and the surveys are being boxed up and sent to the Fort Hays State University Docking Institute for professional tabulation and extrapolation. Once the information is returned will be made available to the public for transparency.

                The information will be used for agency strategic planning on large-scale budget items as well as future programs for the police department to engage with. It will identify perceptions the public has and if factual information is getting to all segments of the community. Certainly, knowing service expectations and funding preferences are also important.

                Parsons Police Chief Robert Spinks said, "a large part of our job is community outreach. That is one of the reasons that this survey was so important to us as an agency. Without knowledge of what our stockholders, the Parsons Community, think about our agency and our city, what could we hope to gain. If you don't have any feedback from the people who live in this community, you don't know what they need from an agency and then we are just shooting from the hip on programs we think would be important. This survey helps us get citizen input and more importantly helps us guide our future for the agency."

                "The 750 returned surveys are more than we thought we would get in response," said Deputy Chief Dennis Dodd. "I am excited to see what the results are going to look like. I think that we will have some key areas that citizens want the department to focus on but, mostly I feel that our agency is fairly well liked by the community, just from my interactions with citizens."

                We anticipate being able to share this information with the community in the next couple of months. When it comes back we will share it on our website, Facebook, Twitter and NextDoor.com for everyone to see.

                The survey was created by an Associate Professor at Southern Illinois University as part of a Department of Justice (DOJ) grant administered by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). The Collaborative Reform Initiative Technical Assistance Center (CRI-TAC) at IACP coordinated the grant. The surveys are being tabulated by the Docking Institute at Fort Hays State University.

# # # # #