By Jeremy Weldon

Batesville Police Chief Jimmy McCloud has asked the City Board to consider adopting a Ride Along program for the standard policies and procedures manual local police operate under.

“One of our goals is to get to know the community better and maybe for young people who are interested in starting a career in law enforcement and want to see what their local policemen do on a day-to-day basis,” McCloud said.

Alderman Bill Duggar said the city once had a police academy program that lasted six or eight weeks that let civilians participate and interact with policemen, noting that community relations were much better when those efforts were made.

McCloud agreed that a general openness and transparency of officers’ duties are often necessary to produce better relationships with the citizenry of a city, but also assured board members any type of Ride Along program would need to be closely monitored and all participants vetted by officers before being allowed inside a patrol car.

“I want to be very careful with this and move slowly, but I really do think it’s something that we need to put into practice here,” he said.

The chief also told aldermen he has been reviewing policies in his department after several recent incidents of citizens telling police after the fact that they observed suspicious activity and did not make a report.

“For whatever reason lately we have had several instances of people not wanting to call the police when they see something,” McCloud said. “I’m working to correct that now because we always want the public to be comfortable picking up the phone and letting us know when they see something out of the ordinary in their neighborhood.”

“We can’t be everywhere at once and we need to have the relationships that people will pick up the phone and let us know when they see something. The public needs to recognize these officers are there for them, but we have to know when something comes up.”