The City of Peoria is growing by leaps and bounds, and the future of our fair city is looking great. In the North Precinct, you can see the new housing developments and businesses filling in vacant lots as well as expanding to the north in Vistancia. However, with rapid growth come new challenges for our city in the areas of infrastructure, resources, and city services like our police department.

To meet the challenges of our growth, the Peoria Police Department is adjusting to meet the needs of our residents. We realigned our police beat assignments to more efficiently distribute workload. We adjusted shift times to increase the number of officers on duty when calls for service are elevated.

We also evaluated our calls for service to determine more efficient methods of addressing the needs of our residents by employing resources appropriate to the call. For example, using police service officers to handle non-injury accidents rather than assigning a sworn officer frees up officers to address crime issues. All these strategies will work toward having police officers available to address crime and work on crime prevention.

As our city continues to grow, the demand for government services also grows. To meet this demand, your police department needs to make sure we use our resources efficiently and effectively. Rest assured, we at the Peoria Police Department will always do our best to serve you and provide the customer service you have come to expect from your police department.

The Peoria Police Department introduced a new program last year that helps first responders and Peoria residents in an emergency.

Smart911 is a free website that allows you to create a safety profile for your household at smart911.com and include any information they want responding officer and emergency personnel to have in the event of an emergency. This program has had an excellent response from city residents who have signed up and made our ability to help them in an emergency even better. Since this program is such a tremendous and successful tool in improving our ability to help, we want to make sure all our citizens are aware of the program to take advantage of the benefit it offers.

Here’s how it works:

When you place an emergency call, your safety profile le is automatically displayed to the 911 operator, allowing them to send the proper information and resources to your location and provide the emergency assistance you need. Additional information including pets in the home, vehicle details in the event of an accident, and even emergency contacts can all be included in a Smart911 safety profile.

All information is optional, and you can choose what details to include. With Smart911, you can even link both home and work addresses to mobile phones, which can be passed on to responders in the field for a more detailed, rapid response.

Smart911 is currently available in 40 states and more than 1,500 municipalities across the country and has been credited with positively impacting emergency outcomes including a missing child where the girl’s photo and physical description were immediately available to first responders.

We encourage you to create your safety profile with Smart911 today to have your information available in the event of an emergency. Smart911 is private and secure, is only used for emergency responses, and only made available to the 911 system in the event of an emergency call.

The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety awarded the Peoria Police Department a $13,117 grant to help promote motorcycle safety in and around the City of Peoria.

This funding will allow Peoria police motorcycle officers to provide instruction to intermediate riders and further promote safe riding habits. Two motorcycle safety courses will be offered free of charge to the riding public this year. Officers will continue to address motorcycle safety through education and enforcement.