Community engagement great idea

The latest news out of the Boston Police Department (“BPD reaches out to youth,” Sept. 25) on the creation of a Community Engagement Bureau by Police Commissioner William Gross is great news and the appointment of Supt. Nora Baston is just what the city of Boston needs.

Community policing is such an important tool in keeping our neighborhoods safe and keeping our young people going in the right direction. With this new bureau, efforts across the city neighborhoods will be linked together. There will be one approach bringing neighborhoods together and providing leadership and building a better relationship with the community at large. Tearing down walls of resistance and expanding the understanding that community policing doesn’t work unless the community is in partnership with police. Together making for safety and inspiring young people to be part of community.

As Baston stated, “My number one priority is for officers to be mentors for these kids. So that we are the ones that guide them and create opportunities.”

As a retired police officer for the state Department of Mental Health, I have always been a strong proponent of community policing long before this term became popular. I always understood that the police can not serve and protect in a vacuum; there must be a built relationship of trust with the communities served. I always believed that

good working relationships with communities makes for a safer and more productive society.

Kudos to Police Commissioner Gross on this new community initiative.

— Sal Giarratani, East Boston