Bringing a ‘personal touch’ to policing

Before new Orlando Police recruits begin duty as patrol officers, their first order of business is getting to know some of the people they’ll be working for.

Officer Orlando Roman, one of the agency’s 11 recruits sworn in Tuesday, met with Lake Nona’s Laureate Park neighborhood watch coordinator Gene Thatcher on Friday at a Starbucks on Narcoosee Road. Roman will be assigned to District One, which includes Lake Nona, starting Monday, his first official day on duty.

While Thatcher and Roman chatted at a circular table in the coffee shop’s outdoor patio area, the agency’s other recruits were scattered throughout the city, meeting with other community members to discuss concerns in their parts of town.

The meetings are part of newly appointed police Chief Orlando Rolón’s initiative to build relationships between officers and community members, hoping officers will gain a “personal touch” with their community, OPD spokespeople said.

“A lot of the techniques and tactics that we’re taught, specific police work, whether it’s arresting and laws, is very important, but I think the jewel of what we do is engaging our community and this is an example of that right now,” Roman said.

Lake Nona, a once-rural part of town now occupied by a sprawling and affluent residential community, is affected primarily by “crimes of opportunity”— car break-ins or minor thefts, Thatcher said.

In Laureate Park, a large residential neighborhood in Lake Nona, a network of about 50 neighborhood watch “block commanders” help thwart crime by relaying suspicious activity to law enforcement. Their role as the police department’s “eyes and ears” for the community depends on a solid relationship with officers, Thatcher said.

Meeting face-to-face with the cops who serve her neighborhood is the best way to bolster that connection, she said.

“In order to have a successful community relationship... I think it’s so important that we get to know each other,” Thatcher said. “So when they come into our