The Charlottesville Police Department began a citizens' survey Friday in hopes of obtaining more community input, said Timothy Longo, chief of Charlottesville police.
The Charlottesville Police Department distributed the survey as part of a city-wide initiative to increase customer service dialogue between citizens of Charlottesville and the city government, said Ric Barrick, director of communications for the City of Charlottesville.
"All the departments are evaluating what types of services they give to citizens," Barrick said. "This is all an effort to benefit the citizens and to serve them. We want to be the best city government in the nation in terms of customer service."
The eight-question police survey was created in conjunction with the International City County Management Association, Barrick said.
"The ICMA is the association for local governments," he said. "We looked to them for a lot of guidance with how to better govern."
The survey is meant to gauge citizens' interactions with the police, Barrick said.
Barrick said the two primary goals of the police survey are to get a sense how Charlottesville citizens feel about their interactions with police and to measure how safe citizens feel in the city.
According to Longo, continued input from University students is an integral part of police-University relations.
"The greater portion of the U.Va. student body lives off-Grounds in communities that are part of the city," Longo said. "They might attend school on Grounds, but they're living in our neighborhoods and frequenting our businesses."
Longo said that he does not expect the survey to yield a large amount of feedback from the city or University community, but he is hopeful that the information he does receive will be beneficial.
"Typically, you don't get a tremendous amount of feedback from surveys like this," he said. "If you send out 400 surveys you might get a hundred or a little less back."
Second-year college student and Jefferson Park Ave. resident Walker Heflin said he does not expect much input from University students "out of laziness and apathy," but he is pleased with his interactions with the Charlottesville police.
"They do a good job being around, they keep their presence known," Heflin said. "They're always hanging around the Corner so they're easy to flag down if something bad happens."
The city set a tentative deadline of Feb. 20 for the surveys to be returned so as to compile the information by early March, Barrick said.
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