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If you live or work in the region covered by the Lycoming Regional Police Department, they want you -- not for doing anything wrong, but for your input to help improve the work they do, by participating in a Rapid Community Survey.
The more people who sign up to be a part of the survey, the more accurate the results will be.
"We need 200 participants for it to be scientifically based. We want to open it up, obviously, to the people that live in our communities," said Chief of Police Christopher Kriner.
Right now the Regional Police department covers six communities - Old Lycoming Township, Lycoming Township, Hepburn Township, Jersey Shore Borough, Porter Township, and Cummings Township. Last year they had nine, which included Piatt, McHenry and Nippenose.
"We want to hear from those people as well because they've had prior experience with our department, and they still do," Kriner said.
"Even the person that works maybe at West Pharmaceuticals in Jersey Shore, we're absolutely agreeable to them to sign up and answer questions and provide insights," he added.
He cautioned people not to mistake his department for police who cover other areas of the county, such as the state police or city or borough police departments.
"But honestly, the more people that participate, the stronger the survey is, the better for us," he said.
When someone signs up to participate in the survey they will be sent one question a week by text message. Kriner had first read about the survey, which is run by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) in their magazine and he said he felt it was a "simple way to get the voice of the people."
"It seemed very simple to get the information that we needed. Policing changes dramatically, and I think the police commission...really supports hearing from our residents, the people that work in the community that come in contact with the police. So it was just a simple way to gather important information that we need," Kriner said.
The questions that participants receive can be very general, but they can also be very specific to Lycoming Regional's service area.
"They can be specific, but I think they're going to be kind of general questions, like how do you feel about Lycoming Regional's response to traffic enforcement in your area? And then the IACP will be able to give us results that break it down into the communities we serve. They may say, Jersey Shore believes we're doing an excellent job with traffic enforcement, and Hepburn Township thinks that they want to see police out there doing traffic enforcement more often to get the voice from the different communities too," Kriner said.
The IACP collects the data and then gives it back to the police department. There is no identification of who said what so there is anonymity for respondents.
"They're just giving us the data, and what I envision is it's going to be real time where they send it out, and this week we get results that 65 percent of our participants believe you're doing a good job with this or with that. Also at the end of the year, they have scientific researchers on staff that use that information and can put it together for us. And what I envision is us publishing, on our website here the results of what the survey participants said," Kriner said.
The results can also be a tool for the police department to gauge what kind of job the officers are doing as seen through the lens of the survey.
"The officers need that feedback too. Of course, positive feedback is always great for officers, but not everything is positive, right? They need to hear that too. That the residents want to see this, or they really appreciated the job they did with that," he said.
"So that'll be a real time thing. I envision that the IACP will be giving us the data back from those questions as they receive them on a weekly basis, so it's real time that we can bob and weave and change things up as quickly as possible," he added.
One of Kriner's fellow officers, Captain Cody Smith, agreed.
"It's important-especially the negative-for us to tailor our police responses and what we do to our region's needs. You know that's the point of it is to make sure we're providing the services our region deserves," Smith said.
Robert Smith, who retired from the Old Lycoming Police Department and now serves on the Community Outreach Public Safety Committee, sees the survey's results as useful during contract negotiations with some of the entities in the regional police department.
"Our committee thought that this would be a good idea to get feedback, since our committee also negotiates the contracts with Hepburn Lycoming and Cummings townships," Burns said.
"That kind of information we can provide them. Here's some of the stuff that we're hearing from your residents," Burns said.
Burns shared that he remembered when residents would attend township meetings to air their complaints about the police department.
"The chief would come back and say, "Hey, we need to fix this or do this or do that. Now, when you go to meetings, there's hardly anybody there. We have commission meetings that very few, if anybody shows up, so it's hard to get feedback, other than maybe a commissioner hears something from one of the people they know. So it'll provide us a lot of good information, Burns said.
Kriner agreed that the survey will encompass a broader swath of opinions than those from the few people that attend meetings.
"I think it really makes us more responsive and responsive in a more timely manner because we're not just hitting...the people that come to the meetings (who) usually are the same people,," Kriner said.
"It's not like it used to be. There's other ways of collecting their thoughts, their ideas, and this rapid community survey, I think, capitalizes on that. Again, in real time, we know not just from the one person that attends the monthly township meeting or the monthly commission meeting. We're hearing from a broader spectrum of not just residents from one community, but the six communities we serve, and the communities that we served before," he said.
"I just think it brings that attention quicker, and we get more feedback from more people. And when we negotiate contracts with other municipalities, we have what policing calls evidence-based data to bring and put on the table and say, "Hey, here's what your community feels. It's not just the one person that shows up and chants the loudest at the meeting. This is an overall scientifically based research, evidence-based that says the community likes this about their police department or wants to see this about public safety," he added.
To sign up to participate in the survey, go to the regional police department's website where there is a QR code which will take you to the registration site.
All personal information that is required is kept personal, the police department is not told who has registered or who will be responding. The only thing they see are the responses to the weekly questions. Even if they do not reside in one of the municipalities served by the Lycoming Regional Police Department, anyone who interacts with the police department, such as someone who works or shops at one of the local businesses, can sign up, Kriner explained.