The First Assembly of God Church on East Northwest Highway was indeed a sanctuary the evening of August 5th.

Over 100 local citizens and several dozen police officers were in attendance at the Northeast Operations Division Quarterly Crime Summit.

These summits have been taking place for the past several years.

The purpose is simple, yet important: to create a shared vision and unified approach to fighting crime in our community.

Keep in mind, the Northeast Division is an area that covers 86 square miles. The summit helps officers gain a better understanding of the specific concerns of the estimated 262,000 residents living in the area they serve, and to build stronger working relationships with them.

A particularly popular portion of the summit's program is known as the "Break Out."

Upon arriving, residents are identified by their neighborhood's crime beat, enabling them to meet informally and visit with the DPD officers who are assigned to their particular beats.

Neighborhood Policing Officer Mitch Gatson was pleasantly surprised with the good turnout.

"Considering the heat and summer vacations, I’m really pleased so many folks attended. These quarterly summits are an important way for us to work with our neighborhood residents in determining what specific problems they may be having."

Acting Division Commander Lt. Gloria Perez opened the meeting by welcoming neighbors, along with a number of her watch commanders and Councilman Jerry Allen.

While it was evident she was pleased to helm the meeting, she was quick to give accolades to departing Chief Tom Lawrence when she said, "I should have been more specific when I said I always wanted to be somebody important. I didn’t mean to try to fill Chief Lawrence’s shoes!"

If you missed our recent interview with Chief Lawrence, following his promotion to Assistant Chief, you can read it here.

Perez followed with an overview of quarterly statistics, citing that property crime is down slightly, while violent crime has risen slightly.

She noted that from May to June, however, there was an overall decrease in crime, arguably attributed to a number of initiatives at Northeast, including "Operation Triangle," the 2010 Summer Crime Plan.

As the name suggests, Operation Triangle is a plan that takes three specific areas of crime and assigns specialized officers accordingly. Violent crimes involve deploying SWAT, the mounted, gang, and canine units to areas that warrant the most attention. Public disorders include officers from Narcotics, Vice, Prostitution, Code Enforcement, and Panhandling. Property crimes are handled by patrol officers.

Perez pointed out the good working relationship with the crime watch citizens of the Northeast Division saying, "We’re responding to the intel you’re giving us."

She also encouraged citizens to register on Nixle, a website designed to share trusted public safety alerts directly from the police department and other local agencies via text messaging.

Citizens receive pertinent, timely public safety information with a keystroke

As Perez pointed out, intel from citizens is growing, and much of that is thanks to the DPD’s social networking services encouraging communication via email and text.

Cpl. Kevin Janse is one of a number of officers in the DPD’s Media Relations Department that utilize technology to communicate with the public, strengthening partnerships and combating crime in Dallas.

Janse elaborated on Nixle, along with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, citing that followers to these sites have grown since the inception of the DPD Social Networking Services a short year ago.

"We have over 4,100 friends on Facebook, and only last month it was about 3,800," he says.