How well do you know your neighborhood? While you may know the people along your street, police officers have a different view as they work to keep the public safe.
Longmont Police Officers patrol eight beats within four districts throughout Longmont.
In police terms, a beat area is defined as a territory that a particular group of officers are responsible for patrolling.
Police officers in the city of Longmont are assigned to a particular beat area based on a bidding process which occurs annually, according to Master Police Officer Dillon Cromley. The next round of the bidding process will take place in January which may result in officers being assigned to different beats than ones they currently work in.
District 1: Northwest
Beat 1: Garden Acres
According to Master Police Officer Alan Baldivia, the Garden Acres beat area is primarily residential. However, there is a small business district located on Hover Street which begins north of 17th Avenue and extends about to 20th Avenue which consists of a gas station, a couple of liquor stores and a couple of restaurants, he said.
“The goal (for Garden Acres beat officers) is to meet the owners and staff of the business,” Baldividia said. “I get into the businesses and say, ‘hey, you guys are in my beat and I’m the police officer responsible for this area. If you have any issues, call me.’”
Baldividia makes a similar introduction at every business in the Garden Acres beat annually, he said. Baldivia and his fellow beat officers in Garden Acres are there to help citizens solve problems, and citizens should contact Baldivia with “issues they need help trying to figure out,” Baldivia said.
Apart from the residents and small business district in Garden Acres, the area includes a couple of parks and elementary schools, Baldivia said.
According to Baldivia, the primary park in the area is Garden Acres Park, a baseball field, where Baldivia and other Garden Acres beat officers often respond to calls.
In addition to communicating with park staff to help with any issues they may be experiencing, beat officers often attend sporting events there, which Baldivia considers a good way to make people feel comfortable. “That way, there are police in the area if anything happens,” he said.
Another park, located at 21st Avenue and Gay Street, is across the street from one of the beat area’s elementary schools. In this area, “we’ve been seeing a lot of homeless issues lately,” Baldivia said. To counteract such issues, Baldivia drives by the area at least once a day, but oftentimes more than once a day, he said.
“If I see (a homeless person) hanging out in the area, I make contact with them and move them along,” Baldivia said – a practice to ensure the safety of the kids and families who go to the park, as well as the students and staff of the elementary school.
Beat 2: Twin Peaks
According to Cromley, a master police officer assigned to Twin Peaks, the area is a mix of new-to-Longmont and multi-generational Longmont residents, he said, with the long term residents generally located more westward towards Twin Peaks Golf Course.
While most of the area is residential, Twin Peaks consists of a 7-11, some doctors’ offices and a dental office located in the area of Mountain View Avenue and Hover Street, as well as Longmont United Hospital. There is a large community of retired people on Charles Dr. which gives the area’s beat officers an opportunity to “hear their stories and gain a lot of wisdom from (the retired people),” Cromley said.
Nevertheless, “most of the time, our contacts come from patrolling the neighborhoods and doing our best to have conversations with residents outside,” Cromley said. “We get to know people the most when we go on calls for service.”
District 2: Northeast
Beat 3: Lanyon
Master Police Officer David Bonday likes working as a beat officer in Lanyon because of a unique challenge the area poses for policing, which is based on the nearly 50/50 mix of residential and commercial environments within the area. The challenge here is getting to know the two different kinds of environments and learning efficient policing methods, Bonday said.
“A business district is different from policing a neighborhood simply because you deal with two different types of problems,” Bonday said. “The challenges of learning, knowing and being able to adjust our policing styles for the different areas is one of the things I enjoy.”
Lanyon comprises the areas from Ninth Avenue on Main Street northward to the Longmont city limits. The area extends in an odd shape eastbound and the southeast border is located at Ninth Avenue and Pace Street, according to Bonday.
Beat officers assigned to Lanyon respond to calls mostly from members of the business community, and spend a lot of time meeting with business managers to talk about some of the issues they’re dealing with, Bonday said.
One issue Lanyon’s beat officers are currently working on is mitigating a very large growth in the transient population located near the main north corridor in the past couple of years, Bonday reported.
“From the short term perspective, we want everyone to know that the Longmont Police Department is doing our best to provide the services we can for (the transients) and, all the while, provide services for the community,” he said.
Beat 4: Ute
According to Master Police Officer Craig Mansanares, the Ute area is made up of mainly residential subdivisions with only one retail area near 17th Avenue and Pace Street. There are several high-density upper level apartment complexes, two elementary schools, one middle school, one high school and two day care centers, he said, and a large area of the beat consists of Ute Creek Golf Course and Jim Hamm Nature Area.
Beat officers in Ute don’t receive very many service calls, Mansanares said, however, most of the calls for service consist of the occasional burglary to residences, stolen vehicles and traffic complaints.
Due to the Ute’s low service call volume and the fact that Longmont Police Department is experiencing staffing shortages, sometimes, Ute’s beat officers get pulled into neighboring beat areas to assist with high numbers of calls for service, according to Mansanares. “Unfortunately, this does not allow much time, despite the effort, for officer visibility and pro-active traffic enforcement in (Ute),” however, “school resource officers try to assist by educating and contacting the number of high school drivers and parents in the area,” he said.
Fortunately for Mansanares, 18 years of working as a high school school resource officer before his current position means that he has gotten to know “literally thousands of families living in the area,” he said, with whom he interacts daily while patrolling the area.
Due to his close ties to the community, Mansanares enjoys the interaction in the residential areas, restaurants and businesses of Ute, he said. “Those relationships have continued to remind me to police my beat as I would in a smaller community where everyone knows everybody else. It engages me to do my best in solving community problems in that beat.”
Other beat officers get to know the Ute community by attending neighborhood HOA meetings, block get-togethers and apartment festivities, for example, according to Mansanares.
District 3: Southeast
Beat 5: Sandstone
The Sandstone beat area is unique in that, unlike any of the other beats, it consists of both Boulder and Weld counties. Additionally, it’s one of the older areas in Longmont, according to Master Police Officer Melinda Burnett.
When someone gets arrested in Sandstone, where they may be taken to jail depends on whether the arrest occurred in the Weld County or Boulder County portion of Sandstone, Burnett said. If they’re arrested on a charge of a crime in Weld County, Sandstone officers will take them to Greeley. If they’re arrested in Boulder County, they will go to Boulder County Jail.
Although the Sandstone area is primarily residential, Sandstone Ranch acts as a destination which brings a lot of people from outside of Longmont into the community, Burnett stated. Such occasions include soccer, baseball and other sporting events and tournaments.
Another landmark for Sandstone’s beat officers is the Walmart located on E. Ken Pratt Blvd. and Zlaten Dr. – a place which generates a lot of the calls that come in, according to Burnett.
Other than these two locations, “there’s not too much going on now in the neighborhoods,” Burnett said, “nor too many long-term problems.”
Due to Sandstone being one of the older regions of Longmont, there are a lot of established residents within the area. “When we make connections with people in the area, there are people who have lived here for 40-50 years and can tell you about the neighborhood,” Burnett said, and, “if something is going on, they can kind of tell you where to start looking.”
Beat 6: Kensington
According to Master Police Officer Don Goldware, the beat officers in the Kensington area strive to generate a high quality of life for everyone, he said. “When everyone has a high quality of life, the criminal issues are much less,” he said.
The Kensington beat consists of Longmont’s downtown area which stretches eastward from Lashley Street. Kensington is bordered on the north by Ninth Avenue and bordered on the south by Ken Pratt Blvd. The demographics diversify between these areas, according to Goldware, ranging from residential to commercial to industrial spaces, he said.
For Kensington’s diverse environments, beat officers in the area are responsible for mitigating traffic challenges as well as the downtown activities, however, “it’s all part of the life and excitement of the beat,” Goldware said.
Kensington’s team of beat officers operate on various shifts – day shift, graveyard shift, swing shifts, to name a few – to ensure there’s someone on duty around the clock.
According to Goldware, Kensington’s beat officers get to know the community and make themselves “visible and available to the public” by doing general patrol work in cars or on foot, as well as engaging with local businesses.
Part of Goldware’s professional responsibilities includes acting as the liaison between the Longmont Police Department and the Longmont Downtown Development Authority.
When business owners have a non-emergency situation going on, whether they’ve observed a crime or have a problem they’re concerned about, they communicate with Goldware and he looks into it, he said. Additionally, Goldware attends the group’s monthly meetings, where he answers questions that local business owners may have, gives advice on security issues and provides them an opportunity to voice their concerns about whatever it may be that they’re concerned about in the downtown area, he said.
“A lot of the concerns involve people who are challenged with homelesssness,” Goldware sated, “and then there’s concerns about shoplifting, so I give some pointers (to business owners) of how to minimize some of the effects of those issues on their business.”
Police officers assigned to district 4, Southwest, which consists of beat 7, Sunset, and beat 8, Blue Sky, were not available to respond to the Longmont Leader’s inquiries in time for publication of this article.
To access a full list of the officers assigned to each of Longmont’s beat areas, visit https://www.longmontcolorado.gov/departments.
