Police chief looks for ideas on new mission statement

White Lake Township Police Chief Ed Harris has a special request to make of White Lake residents: Share your ideas on what you feel the mission statement of the police department should be.

While making annual updates to policies and procedures, Harris decided to put together a mission statement to help define “what our mission to the community should be.”

“We’ve never had a mission statement in play,” Harris explained. “So we’re putting together a mission statement, and we would like the community to give us some input to give us an idea of what the community thinks we should be doing with our resources and our time.”

In November, White Lake voters passed a millage increase that gave the police department the necessary resources to maintain the police services as they are now at 25 officers until 2014. Both the police and fire departments were facing drastic budget cuts in 2011 and 2012 due to dramatic decreases in property values that drove down the revenue collected through property taxes when voters decided to authorize both millage increases.

“If any citizen has any thoughts on what our mission should be, they should put their thoughts in an e-mail to me,” Harris stated.

Harris can be reached at eharris@whitelakepolice.com.

While he hasn’t put a closing date on how long he will be accepting input for the new mission statement, Harris said he’s hoping to elicit some feedback within the next few weeks.

“I appreciate any input that people feel is important or that our residents feel would be important (to our mission),” he said.