Crime Prevention

Our Motto: "Not on My Watch"

The City of Brookville Police Department's Crime Prevention Unit was established by Chief of Police Douglas Jerome in the spring of 2012. The Crime Prevention Unit or "CPU" was originally established to take a proactive and preventive approach to dealing with criminal activity inside the City of Brookville. Although Chief Jerome's philosophy is that "Crime Prevention is every officers responsibility" a select few officers are appointed by the Police Chief to this unit. A sequence of thefts or suspicious activity in one area would be an example where the CPU would be deployed to survey and or apprehend suspects where regular road patrol might not be as effective.

Chief Jerome appointed Officer Steve Whiteaker to the position of Crime Prevention Officer and tasked him with heading up the unit. Officer Whiteaker soon completed both the Basic and Advanced Crime Prevention Courses offered by the Ohio Crime Prevention Association. Officer Whiteaker has also attended two different training courses on women's self-defense training and was tasked with revamping the current women's self-defense training program.

The Crime Prevention Unit's Responsibilities

Public Relations & Education

The CPU has three main areas of responsibility, first and foremost is crime prevention through public relations and education. You may have noticed that under the direction of Chief Jerome, the Brookville Police Department has taken an aggressive approach to implementing community projects and community policing. The overall strategy behind community projects like Ghostly Night Out, The Veterans Day Luncheon, and the September 11th Memorial Ceremony, just to name a few, are to bring the community together for fun family friendly events or to teach our children to honor those who made our freedom possible. Programs like these install a positive sense of community and draws family oriented people to our community. To quote a Marine Corps Captain who attended one of these events, "If I had known how special Brookville was when I was first stationed at Wright Patterson, my wife and I would have bought a home here." We have found that when people have a strong sense of pride in their community they tend to go to greater lengths to protect their community.

Friendly Reminders

The second responsibility of the CPU is to patrol and search out possible situations that might be enticing or draw the criminal element into town. You may have been woken up in the middle of the night and reminded to please close your garage door, or found a blue Crime Prevention Tag hanging on your door the next morning. Now this is certainly a free country and you have the right to leave your garage door up at night, but we have found that few people intentionally leave their doors up at night and very few lock the door that leads into the residence from the garage. We try to give friendly reminders to secure your loved ones and the things that you have worked so hard to obtain.

Catch Unsuspecting Criminals

The third responsibility of the CPU is special operation patrols designed to be less visible and therefore catch unsuspecting criminals by surprise. You may have seen officers on bicycles and our newly renovated golf cart patrolling businesses or neighborhoods both night and day. This is an effective addition to our regular patrols and allows the officers a valuable opportunity to talk with you about issues you might have in your community. If you see them out do not be afraid to stop and talk with them. It is what we are here for and the information you provide might just prevent a crime from happening.