First, a compliment!
The downtown police Captain Mary Schauf and the person assigned to the Tenney Lapham Neighborhood Tim Radke have been WONDERFUL to work with. We get quick responses, proactive helpful information, tips about how to deal with issues, etc. etc. We really appreciate the small things that they have done to keep us connected to our police department. It’s a good start on true community policing.
Now, a problem.
One of my issues, and many other alders, for years have been that the police department can send out press releases about incidents that make the news, but somehow, they can’t just send the info to the alder when it occurs in their district. All I want is an email when the press release gets sent out. It shouldn’t be that hard. Even worse, one of the most absurd things about this was that when I was Council President, they would FAX the press releases TO THE COUNCIL OFFICE. This meant only the Council President got it, likely the next day but it just got placed in our mail box to be seen whenever we checked our mail – which could be days or sometimes even weeks.
We’ve had meetings with the police department to address this issue, they established a list of crimes that were serious enough to notify the alders and told the police captains to pass the information along. Again, a flawed strategy because the police captains don’t work 24/7 and often we still get the information late. However, I’m getting alot more information from my current captain than I ever have before and again, it is so much appreciated.
More recently, I renewed my request with the public information officer Joel Despain. I asked if when he sent out press releases if we could get an email from him. He apparently couldn’t make this decision himself and had to ask the higher ups. In typical “higher up” fashion, still waiting for a response. More helpful, but not what I’m looking for, the IT folks said that they could set me up with the RSS feeds that are easily available on the city’s website for anyone who knows how to use them – which I had already done. My guess is that about half the alders don’t know what an RSS feed is and don’t get that info.
Anyways, I don’t get it. We have a full time public information officer that has time to write sometimes silly press releases, but we can’t get an email. Why? And why has it been 13 days since this was brought to the attention of “higher ups” and I haven’t gotten a response?
Finally, another compliment!
(How’s that for a compliment sandwich!)
Thanks to Joel Despain, the Public Information Officer and Sarah Edgerton in IT for being so responsive and problem solving. Much appreciated and it didn’t go unnoticed!
