$213K Weed & Seed Initiative boosts safety for southeast side neighborhoods

By Deborah Johnson Wood

Officer Adam Baylis has been a community police officer in the Madison Square neighborhood for the past seven years. He has attended block club meetings, talked to school groups, worked with the neighborhood crime prevention organizer, strategized new tactics for dealing with crime, and patrolled his beat on foot, on bicycle, and by car.

Most of this is paid for by the Grand Rapids Police Department. But due to budgetary constraints, some police training and services wouldn’t be possible without funding from the Department of Justice’s Weed & Seed Initiative.

“The police are doing the ‘weeding,’ so half our funding goes to them,” said Lou-Ann Brown, site coordinator for the southeast side W&S program. “The ‘seeding’ is the startup money to get things going in the community.”

In the last two years, the initiative gave nearly $213,000 to community police for foot patrols, stepped up drug enforcement, and other undercover work. Out of that, $25,000 was earmarked by the DOJ for gang-related programs like last fall’s four-day Gang Resistance Education And Training (GREAT) conference attended by Officer Baylis and five other officers.

“At the conference we networked with others, experts talked to us about interrogation of suspects and the psychology involved, and we also took some defensive tactics courses,” Officer Baylis said.

The officers learned how to track and identify gangs, and how to work with young kids to prevent gang involvement. They also learned the history of gangs, which Officer Baylis said gave him a different perspective on the mindset of the individuals.

The CP have put their knowledge to work in an anti-gang taskforce to track and identify gangs and gang members.

Another function of CP officers is to be visible in problem areas at times when crimes are likely to occur. That means working at night, and the Weed & Seed funding has helped pay for the resulting overtime.

While Officer Baylis and others have seen positive returns on their efforts, the stats may not bear that out.

“I don’t have the stats in front of me,” Officer Baylis said, “but these programs may actually show a rise in crime stats because as we’re doing the programs we’re uncovering crime that we may not have been aware of before, and that crime is getting reported.”

Source: Lou-Ann Brown, Weed & Seed Initiative; Office Adam Baylis, Grand Rapids Police Department