More About Us

OUR MISSION

The members of the Streetsboro Police Department are committed to protecting life and property, ensuring safety, and engaging with our community to promote positive community relations and solve problems.

PATROL DIVISION

Patrol is the largest Division of the Streetsboro Police Department and is the backbone of our agency. Its primary responsibilities are responding to calls for service from the community, keeping our roadways safe and locating and arresting violators of the law. Each year, officers responded to a wide variety of calls ranging from vehicle lockouts to violent felonies. As the first responder to criminal complaints, patrol officers are responsible for seeing to the medical needs of anyone involved, interviewing witnesses, recognizing and preserving evidence, determining whether, in fact, a crime has been committed, and identifying and ultimately arresting those responsible. Officers of the Patrol Division are also expected to provide proactive services such as traffic enforcement, conducting business and property checks, and initiating contacts within our community to further enhance the department’s interaction and partnership with the community. Officers assigned to the Patrol Division are assigned to one of four (4) platoons, two (2) on nights and two (2) on days while working twelve (12) hour shifts. With these shifts, the police department provides our residents with round the clock coverage all year.

Communications and Records

The Communications Center is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by Communications Operators, better known as Dispatchers. They are the initial point of contact for a majority of the public requiring police and fire services. They are an extremely vital component in delivering effective services to our community and their dedication and importance cannot be overlooked. Often times they are required to maintain a reassuring and calming demeanor in the face of extraordinary circumstances in order to assist the caller and the police officer or firefighter responding to an emergency. Since we do not employ any person that would be primarily responsible for records functions, our Communications personnel are trained to maintain our records as well. This entails pulling reports for release to the public, filing documents and reports, processing paperwork, and compiling statistics. The Streetsboro Police Department employs seven (7) full-time Communication Operators and our goal would be to add one (2) full-time position and some part-time positions in the near future.

Field Training Officers (FTO) / Communication Training Officers (CTO):

All police officers hired by the Streetsboro Police Department must have attended and successfully completed a State of Ohio certified peace officer training academy. Officers hired by our department must have a current peace officer certificate in hand at the time of hire in order to be eligible for employment. The FTO program is an additional eight (8) weeks of intensive training and evaluation where the probationary officer is paired up with an experienced officer. The FTO officer has been carefully selected and trained/certified as a Field Training Officer (FTO) through certification training provided by the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy. The goal of the FTO program is to prepare and develop probationary officers to act efficiently, effectively and safely in a solo patrol capacity. We also provide an eight (8) week training program for all new dispatchers. As with the officers, we have selected experienced dispatchers to get certified as Communication Training Officers (CTOs). The program is designed to develop the dispatcher to act efficiently and effectively as an emergency police and fire dispatcher.

Pursuits

Vehicle pursuits expose innocent citizens, law enforcement officers and fleeing violators to the risk of serious injury or death. Vehicle pursuits require officers to exhibit a high degree of common sense and sound judgment. Officers must not forget that the immediate apprehension of a suspect is generally not more important than the safety of the public and pursuing officers. Due to the high risk involved, all pursuits are reviewed for compliance to policy and training needs.

TRAINING

Training is an integral part of establishing high professional standards within all organizations, and the community expects its police department to provide quality training in carrying out its service. The Streetsboro Police Department strives to provide quality training within financial constraints for all components of the organization. This is accomplished through internal (in-service) and external training resources to provide advanced training and career development opportunities, as well as specialized training.

In-Service Training

In-service training is provided to members of the department throughout the year. Much of this consists of informal training at the shift/roll call level. Areas of review include: Review of department policies, procedure, changes in state law, court rulings, community policing, officer survival & tactics, and other job-related subjects. In-service training included Active Threat training and Tactical Medical training through FLETC (Federal Law Enforcement Training Center), new Medical Dispatch training through APCO, firearms training, TASER training and many shift-level trainings coordinated by the shift supervisors. In-service training also includes online training through sites such as EOPOTA.

External Training

Outside training needs are met by sending personnel to specialized training workshops through many different training providers. Training needs are reviewed and determined for all components of the organization. As technology, law enforcement best practices, tactics and case law continually evolve, providing current training to staff is critical. We send officers all across the state of Ohio and occasionally to other states to receive training. 2019 was no exception as officers attended training programs for CIT, Firearms, Active Threat, Records Management, Traffic Crash Investigation, and many, many more.

Technology

We continue to provide our officers and dispatchers with the best possible equipment in order to do their jobs as efficiently and safely as possible. We continue to replace aging body cameras due to battery failure and in-car Mobile Data Terminals (MDT.) The large upgrade we made was in 2019 was to replace all of our aging in-car video systems with new systems provided by Getac. The Getac systems are cloud based and integrate our current body cameras while providing many features such as web access, live video feeds, redaction and the ability to send links to videos. The systems provide our officers with a much more efficient way of gathering and maintaining evidentiary video. In 2020, we installed Getac video systems in our booking and interview rooms as well so that all of our evidentiary video is maintained in the same system. The cameras were also required through the Ohio Collaborative. We also started using Equature and Insight as our new system for recording our phone lines and radio channels. Equature came with a multitude of additional features not available with our previous system including word or name search features. Insight is an incredible feature that makes live 911 audio and video feed available to the dispatchers and responding officers. 911 callers can be given the option of accepting a link to open their cameras to dispatch, while not a common necessity, in a critical incident it can provide life-saving information.