Berkeley, California (Wednesday, July 16, 2003) – The first of four scheduled Town Hall Meetings focusing on Berkeley’s Community Involved Policing program will occur at the South Berkeley Senior Center, located at 2939 Ellis Street, at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, July 17^th. The gathering will bring together the community, the police, and personnel from various City departments. Thursday’s Town Hall meeting will focus on police beats 4, 5, 10, 11 and 12, which cover central and south Berkeley.

Chief Roy L. Meisner said, "We are just at the beginning of our renewed commitment to Community Involved Policing. We will be developing a strategic plan using input from the community. With the amount of turnover at BPD due to a flurry of retirements, we have a new wave of young officers to train. The community of Berkeley has also seen a huge turnover in recent years. This is an opportune time to have this dialogue."

The BPD Community Services Bureau has encouraged the community to participate by passing out packets of flyers to Neighborhood Watch groups to distribute, posting the information on the BPD website and enlisting other city staff to promote the event. Some of the agenda items for the Town Hall meeting will be greeting the area beat officers, comments from Chief Meisner and an overview of what Community Involved Policing is and how it works. In addition, the meeting will feature an exercise in which groups are given a scenario that will prompt them to develop a problem-solving plan using available resources including key City personnel who will be in attendance.

The Berkeley Police Department has yet to finalize the dates, locations and times for the three upcoming Town Hall Meetings.