The Durham Police Department has launched a new violent crime reduction initiative called Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), which is modeled after the national program by the same name. The components of PSN are: Partnerships, Strategic Planning, Training, Community Outreach/Public Awareness and Accountability. The Durham Police Department is already engaged in all of these activities toward reducing crime and improving the quality of life in our city. We want to continue to strengthen and focus all of our activities in these key PSN areas. To that end the agency is focusing its operational as well as administrative resources on PSN. Now PSN will allow us to pull all of these diverse strategies under one umbrella.

A PSN advisory group, with representatives from each of the PACs, religious and faith communities, government, police, Weed Seed, probation, DA and juvenile has been formed to help steer the overall PSN activities. This group will meet monthly to steer the Durham PSN initiative as well as review violent crime cases from 2002 and current cases as they occur.

As we continue to build our partnerships we will also keep the community and our partners involved as to the status of violent crime in Durham and apprised of the progress and success of PSN in our community.

To aid in the information exchange the PSN group has created this listserv for officers and civilians to discuss violent crime issues and develop solutions. The vision of the Durham Police Department is to connect every community, every block and every resident (with email) in the City of Durham so that together we may constructively discuss violent crimes and seek solutions.

This listserv should only be used for comments and discussions related to violent crimes, causes and solutions. While other issues are certainly important, conversation or comments on unrelated issues will make this forum less productive and meaningful to our community.