hi I'm Chief John Mesa with the Mesa Arizona police department I've been with the department 29 years went up the ranks from patrol officer all the way to chief and really seeing this department in the city growth Mesa Arizona is a great place I'm very lucky to be the mayor it's my hometown I'm very proud of it Mesa is a big city we coexist pretty well in mesa it's a nice atmosphere very caring community the community engagement Bureau and employee wellness bureau was something that I created when I first took over as chief and it really was to elevate the importance of what community engagement was to the department and to the community and the other half of that is the employee wellness portion it's very important that we ensure that our officers are well and you know dealing with stress the community outreach and community policing has always been a strong tradition in mesa community that exists pretty well with each other and I think that's that's not an accident that's due in large part to the great efforts of the Mesa police department if you look at what's going across the country there is a true disengagement with many communities and the police departments so when I took over I realized that that was something that I had to elevate to a executive importance so i created the bureau so I had a assistant chief that would be over that Bureau the community engagement employee source of euro is important because it reaches out to the community and make sure that we're talking to the community assessing the needs how are we performing there's something that we can do to improve that relationship building needs to happen from the top down from off patrol officers all the way up to the executive staff we try to lead by example in the city and do an extra a good job of reaching out to the various constituencies that that we feel we need to build bridges to for the most impactful programs have been our community forums which we have 11 of them that includes Hispanic forum African American forum disabilities forum and so on really what it was is focused to ensure that those are vibrant thriving and participation with all our community forums with the police deferment part of the macy school district involved in several community organizations have a strong interest in social justice and making sure that lives are lived as they should live here in the city of Mesa part of my role in our community is working with Mesa public school district as well as our local community college and I can always count on our officers to be active engaged partners the Mesa police department has done a tremendous amount of work to not only establish but maintain a positive working relationship with our Hispanic community they have engaged the Hispanic community as a true stakeholder in community partnerships and I think that goes a long way toward maintaining a strong working relationship via the African American forum Mesa police department has given an opportunity to the residents to voice their concerns about the policing that they see going on in Mesa and also having an opportunity to work with the Mesa police department and not just preventing crimes but also in finding solutions to problems that arise from time to time that affect the african-american community either directly or indirectly through the efforts of the police department we've been able to build the bridges to the various constituencies and an ethnic and other groups religious groups in our community and I think that's that's one of our strong points as a community we once had a dropout prevention program specifically for at-risk Latino youth in one of our local high schools and there were many volunteers with good intentions but not necessarily able to follow through the entire time during the program and the only partners that maintained their mentorship relationship with these at-risk youth were our police officers so again and again they are the go-to group for our youth activities as being a member of the Human Relations advisory board we feel that it's important that not only Mesa police department but other agencies within Mesa recognize and acknowledge that change in diversity my best advice to other law enforcement organizations would be not to wait for a crisis to establish a working relationship your community it's much more difficult to establish a positive working relationship with tensions are already high you don't already have that built-in sense of trust or report so I would definitely say be proactive and establishing a working relationship with your community and put the public back in public service the difference between this beer and what other police departments are doing is that this this really elevates the importance of themI engagement that it is something that is important and all the rank of file will see that all the rank and file understand that and the community understands that that is that important so you know it's not just a unit that we have this doing community policing it is an entire Bureau and it's all part of our mission here at Mesa play superb