Glendale officers will soon offer satisfaction surveys to people they come in contact in an effort to strengthen ties with the community.

This and other items are being rolled out by the department as it comes into compliance with recommendations by the Task Force on 21st Century Policing. President Barack Obama in 2014 established the task force through executive order to enhance community policing and trust among law enforcement officers and the communities they serve, especially in light of police-involved incidents around the country.

"In Glendale we enjoy a very good relationship with our community," Chief Rick St. John said at last week’s council workshop. "The ultimate goal for Glendale Police is 100 percent compliance on everything put on the table by the task force."

The task force created six pillars with recommendations and action items for each. The pillars are policy and oversight, technology and social media, community policing and crime reduction, training and education and officer wellness and safety.

The chief said the community needs to be involved in policing and there needs to be department transparency in how things are done.

The department will shortly provide the public with statistics on response to resistance or use of force out in the field.

The chief recommended the statistics be overlayed on a crime map of the city that is currently available for public view online.

He said the public may be surprised to see the number of times a Taser is used out but when that information is tied to the crime that occurred there would be less surprise.

"We want to make sure while we are putting information out there we put enough relevant information with it so the public is not alarmed but rather informed," the chief said.

Officers also will soon offer surveys through an app on tablets they carry.

"When an officer make contact in the field for various reasons they can offer the opportunity for people they are dealing with a survey on their general satisfactiion with Glendale police,"Chief St. John said, adding this would not include crime victims.

The surveys will be offered citywide at traffic stops, consensual contacts and other field contacts.

"Over time, it will tell us the areas of the city that are experiencing lower levels of trust," the chief said. "It will help determine where we need some targeted activity to build trust."

The survey data will be tied to the source of contact.

Councilwoman Joyce Clark was dubious, saying offering someone stopped for a possible violation a chance to comment about the department will likely yield a negative response and skew the community survey.

She also asked if the results of the surveys will be used to judge the performance of an individual officer, to which the chief said no. The purpose of the surveys is to find areas in the city where the department needs to build engagement and trust, he said.

The chief also said regardless of the nature of the contact and the outcome, it is still relevant how an officer interacted with someone in the community. He told the councilwoman that she would be surprised at how many positive calls he has received from drivers who just got a citation.

"They get a citation and the first action after leaving the contact is to call my office and say what a great job the officer did," he said.

The survey will be quick, take five to 10 seconds to respond to two to four questions using a rating scale of 1 to 8, he said.

Councilwoman Lauren Tolmachoff noted there are certain populations in the community that are distrustful of police and do not have a good impression of them.

In those situations, the chief said the department will focus on more activities to build that trust.

The department also is putting into policies how to de-escalate an incident and gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer people search and seizure procedures.

"Past policies covered how we handled these things but they were not spelled out as the task force want," the chief said.

When it comes to technology and social media, the department accomplished all of the task force’s recommendations and action items.

The chief said every time the department looks at using new technology, it balances it out with the impact to the budget.

"If the balance doesn’t work for the benefit of the community, we seriously thing about not using that technology," he said.

The chief recommended the department use a third factor, culture. Today, people, including officers put their faces into computers and carry smart phones.

"We need to get out of that," he said.

Now in looking at new technology, staff will see if it enhances communication with the community face-to-face or diminishes it, he added.

Councilwoman Clark asked if the department developed any strategy to allow more time for officers to cruise neighborhoods.

The chief said he encourages officers on patrol or responding to calls that are not urgent to get off arterial streets and drive through neighborhoods, roll down their windows and say hi.

He said he is working on filling vacancies and once that is done, he wants to break the current 16 beats into 32 smaller beats or some other number so that each patrol officer has responsibility of knowing their area.

"The small-beat mentality simply gives officers something they can control," he said. "It’s part of their DNA. We like to have control."

Mayor Jerry Weiers said an officer who knows the people and circumstances in his beat is better able to defuse a situation quicker.

"If you stay in the same area for a length of time, you get to know people and they know you," the chief said. "And if you are firm and fair, you get the respect of the community."

The department also is meeting another goal of the task force, evolving to meet the needs of the community.

The department has partnered with Peoria Police in offering training to West Valley law enforcement agencies on how to deal with the mentally ill.