And welcome back everyone.
We are wrapping up our National
Police Week coverage this morning with
the Eagle Police Department. Yeah,
all week we've been talking to
local police departments about
how they're getting involved with
their local communities during us
this morning from Eagle Police.
Chief Ryan Wilkie.
Yes. Thanks for joining us.
Absolutely. My pleasure.
So we've been talking about community
involvement and just how important
it is to build trust between the
Police Department and the people
who live in your community.
Eagle obviously growing
and booming right now.
You have a lot of people moving on in.
We do. Crime is going up as well,
unfortunately.
Let's talk about how important
it is for you to have your
officers connect with the people.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's Paramounts and we have such
a supportive community that we.
Absolutely. Love to work in,
but it is it's it's our goal is
to connect because we realize that
our relationship is symbiotic.
We need to work with our community
to identify problems and solve them.
So we constantly are reaching out and
doing community events to make that happen.
Coming up next week,
we have a chat with the Chief and
actually Chief Tyler Lewis with
fire and myself will be at Alchemist
coffee on Thursday the 25th,
8:00 in the morning.
We welcome everybody to come
out and talk with us about.
How we can be better in the community.
How we can identify problems.
We we literally are.
We have units dedicated to
to problem solving.
We have a special enforcement
team and some of the pictures
that you'll see coming up here.
Yeah,
there it is.
That guy at the bottom who I don't trust
you, but we we have we try to
develop these these cops and bobbers.
That's what I wanted to talk about.
Detective Marlon Mccowan has been
behind the scenes of this for years.
Maggie, have you been to cops and
bobbers? I need to you fish
with us. We teach you how to fish and
those are the things that we want to
be part of the community and and bring
kids and bring families out and show
that hey we we we're here for you and we
want to work with you to solve problems.
The the things that we were talking about,
the crime uptick, that's volume related
and granted as the valley has grown,
we've seen an uptick all around
the valley with crime and that's
unfortunate but we're trying to work.
With the community to get out in front of
some of that stuff as best we can. But
I think also if you're looking
at the crime rates in many ways
those of stayed flat or or gone.
But you're right.
Yeah, yeah, the the number of crimes
going up just with more people.
So I think you deserve some credit for that.
Absolutely.
Talk a little bit more about creating
those relationships and how that
builds trust in the Police Department
and how that's going to prevent.
Yeah. Anytime we can get out and
and with our community outreach and
and get into the schools and start
early with that trust and build that
that foundation of of public trust.
We want to do that and and it makes
a difference in the long run.
We our school resource officers
are incredible and and Eagle Eagle
Middle and so we're constantly trying
to get into those opportunities
to to get with the youth.
To start early detect our
detectives are like I said,
Marlon Mccowan with Cops and Bobbers
has been working in Eagle for 18 years.
We have a vested interest in the
community and I'll tell you this
that our special enforcement team has
started to touch on this earlier.
They're incredible about putting together
opportunities for us to be at the school.
In fact, we literally,
I won't mention the school,
but we got kind of asked to not be.
So awesome at the schools
because we were, we got a high 5A
thong with the kids and the kids,
the kids, the kids got a little rowdy.
They want to give the the
officers high fives.
And I participated too. So
every officer, yeah,
the kids, the kids loved it.
And the teachers were like,
yeah, you guys can't come back.
They love you too much.
It took too long. It did.
Being so awesome, Steve,
I can ask that all the time.
It's like possible. It's tough.
Can't do it. But those are.
For those those connections with
the community are so valuable for
us to to just have that investment
and that that trust that we're we're
here for you and it's not scary.
We want to work in our communities
with you to solve problems and and it
starts at the at the the little little
guys and gals all the way up to our
retirement communities where we do
we actually have a fraud awareness.
Night coming up,
the Detective Kirkpatrick with our
agency is doing because we have so
many of our our elderly community
that are getting taken advantage of
and there are too many
scams out there right now.
It's just terrible.
And they are so believable.
Absolutely. A lot of our senior
citizens are falling for those as well.
So yeah, it's so important.
Well. Chief Wilkie,
thank you for joining us this morning.
Absolutely my pleasure.
We appreciate you so much.
And as the Eagle grows,
you know the chief's going to be there
to carry everyone through because it
really is booming over there, as we know,
especially now with the Abbamore.
Yes, that's a whole another issue.
You could come on talking with us
another day about how you're going
to need more police officers.
We'll come back for that second.