Exeter Township Pennsylvania Police Chief: Department Takes Community Policing Mission Seriously

When Exeter Township Police Chief Matthew Harley talks about community policing, his pride is unmistakable.

“I think our community policing is top-notch,” Harley told township supervisors at their July 28 meeting. “I don’t think there’s another department that takes it as seriously as we do.”

For Harley, community policing isn’t just a set of scheduled events — it’s a culture. And, he said, no one embodies that culture better than Lt. Sean Fullerton, who oversees the department’s community engagement efforts.

Fullerton said the department’s approach has evolved in recent years. Instead of assigning a small team to handle outreach, every officer now shares the responsibility.

“Every single person has a duty in our department to fill that mission, to fill that partnership, to fill that service,” Fullerton said. “That’s the mindset we’re putting into the whole police department.”

The list of programs and activities the department participates in each year is long. Signature events include Shop with a Cop, Patrol or Treat, Coffee with a Cop, water balloon fights, fraud-prevention seminars, Biking with Badges, K-9 and drone demonstrations, and Scout troop tours of police headquarters.

The 38-member department hosts quarterly officer spotlights in its newsletter and on Facebook, where more than 20,000 people follow its updates. Officers take part in the annual police hockey game against a Reading police team (“and smash them,” Fullerton joked), and perform car seat safety checks.

Some outreach is less formal, such as stopping at a child’s lemonade stand, buying gas for a motorist stranded by an empty tank, joining a neighborhood basketball game and tracking down a lost dog.

Fullerton said officers also participate in numerous community events hosted by others, such as school career days, Memorial Day services, Easter egg hunts and multiple trunk-or-treat celebrations each fall.

One of the department’s newest outreach efforts is the Community Pop-Up with the Police program, launched this summer. Officers set up a tent in a neighborhood with no agenda other than meeting residents.

“We’re basically just interacting with neighbors as they’re walking down the street,” Fullerton said. “Whether we have one person there or 50, it’s a win because we’re here, in your neighborhood.”

The first pop-up was held in Farming Ridge Park on July 22 from 5 to 7 p.m. and drew more than 100 people who were treated to Rita’s Italian Ice by the Friends of Exeter Police Department.

The latest pop-up was Aug. 11 in the Dunn Farm area, with similar events planned in the township’s other patrol zones this summer. About 80 neighbors stopped by.

Fullerton said it’s not as if the officers need something to do to fill their shifts. The Route 422 corridor that runs the width of the township generates perpetual activity — from crashes to drug seizures and everything in between — making Exeter one of the busiest departments in Berks County.

But the payoff of spending some time in the community is in building relationships that go beyond police calls and traffic stops.

“We’re absolutely hammering these community policing details all year long,” Fullerton said, “and it’s some of the most fun that we can do.”

_____________________

Visit readingeagle.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.