The decision to get involved in the community policing philosophy has been the popular trend in American policing during the past few years. With the inception of the New Jersey Regional Community Policing Institute in 1997, the Maywood Police Department "tested the waters" by sending a few seasoned officers to various training modules being offered. Immediately upon returning from the training, the feedback was positive and the often-time cynical "old salts" seemed to be enthused about the training modules they had attended. The training modules being presented by the Institute offered new concepts and creative approaches to the age-old problems that we had been encountering.

As the Chief of Police, the decision to jump into the community policing mode was an easy one. Our officers were cooperative and flexible in their scheduling. We set a goal of having each of our twenty-four officers attend all ten modules offered by the Institute. Over the course of the past three years we were able to have all of our members attend the Institute's training modules and then follow-up on their training by participating in a capstone project. Collectively our officers attended in excess of 2000 hours of Institute training. Our Agency accomplished this without overtime. The capstone projects allowed our officers to apply contemporary community policing theories to every-day situations within our community. The end result was twelve creative capstone projects that were implemented by our officers. Feedback revealed that each capstone project had a positive impact on police community relations within the Borough of Maywood. Each capstone project served in one fashion or another to solve a problem or helped to close the gap between police and the community we serve.