Hayward PD is
“SMASHing”
Public Nuisance
By Mark Koller, Captain, Hayward PD
Addressing chronic issues in our communities remains a
challenge to all law enforcement agencies. Every community
struggles with a location or condition that remains the bane
of a neighborhood’s existence where traditional responses,
such as criminal investigations, saturated patrols and arrests,
prove to be ineffective at dissolving the problem long term.
In the early 1990’s, like many
other law enforcement agencies, the Hayward Police
Department (HPD) began its
transformation from traditional policing to policies and practice that embrace a community oriented policing philosophy.
A unique program was born as a result of this transformation,
which has helped the HPD to more effectively target chronic
issues in our community.
Synchronized Multi-Agency Safe Housing (SMASH) was
created to relieve the HPD of the sole burden of resolving chronic
issues and public nuisances. The program aims to partner with
fellow city and county agencies in an effort to develop a collaborative solution and carry out a simultaneous response. The theory
is simple, each of the participating agencies regulate, in one form
or another, various physical or behavioral conditions that are the
cause of these chronic nuisances. In fact, most have regulatory
fines and consequences that far exceed the impact of arrest or
criminal investigations. Therefore, the HPD combines criminal
investigations with regulatory enforcement with the help of Code
Enforcement, Probation, Housing, Fire, Building, Child/Adult
Protective Services, City Attorney and other regulatory agencies.
FALL 2014 | California Police Chief
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