North Bay Police Chief Paul Cook addresses the Police Board on Wednesday morning. PHOTO BY CHRIS DAWSON.
The North Bay Police service is looking at the idea of allowing non-criminal record checks to be filled out online instead of having to make a personal visit to the lobby of North Bay Police Headquarters.
The idea was among a number of topics the Service is looking at after a Front Lobby Survey that Youth in Policing students conducted in the lobby during the summer months.
“Almost 50% of the people that came in were there to deal with criminal record checks,” stated Chief Paul Cook.
“One of the things we asked is if we were able to make that service available online and would people like to see that and about half of them responded that they would so again all of this information will be provided to our strategic planning committee, we will be setting our policing priorities and our goals and objectives and the strategic plan for the next five years and anything we can do by a way of community outreach is important to us.”
Earlier this summer the police released statistics relating to a Police Service Phone Survey that was conducted by Oracle from June 18th to 23rd.
See that story from July here: http://www.baytoday.ca/content/news/details.asp?c=80898
Cook says the face-to-face survey was different than that early summer Oracle Poll.
“This survey was mainly geared for customer satisfaction and whether or not people are satisfied with the services we provided at the front of police headquarters and approximately 90 per cent of the people that attended were satisfied with the service so
again these are valuable to us as an organization,” said Cook.
“It could (the survey) identify training issues, it could identify ways that we can better serve the public and be more efficient and more effective in our customer service so again all this information is going to be forwarded to our strategic planning committee and they will use that information to help us write the plan that’s in the development stages right now.”
The Police Service will also hold three Town Hall meetings - one in Callander and two in North Bay - in late September which will also allow the public to ask questions are share ideas with the Police Service.
“We are inviting the community to come out and talk to us about policing and where they would like to see us spending our budget as it relates to police initiatives and programs,” said Cook.
