Community Outreach

M McKinney 2 Sgt Rosales Scatena Sgt Seay Off Lisa Woods

The Community Outreach Division is commanded by Captain Mitchell McKinney, Sergeants Sofia Rosales-Scatena & James Seay, and Officer Lisa Woods.

The mission of the Community Relations Division is to bring the police department and the community together to facilitate a better understanding of what the department does through the organizing of events in collaboration with other specialty teams and their equipment.The FWPD supports community-oriented policing strategies . The main idea behind this strategy is to allow police to feel like the public can trust them.The Community Relations Division is comprised of (11) officers to include the division commander and (2) sergeants plus (6) SROs, a safety village officer and the multicultural liaison officer. All of the personnel are important in relating a positive message to the community in areas of enforcement, safety and community involvement.The Community Relations Division can be reached at: 260-427-2242.

Please visit the Department's Facebook page to see the latest community relations updates.

Crime Prevention

Multicultural Liaison Office

The Multicultural Cultural Officer acts as a liaison between the department and individuals/groups from different cultural backgrounds. The office works to educate and assist the Latino, Burmese, homeless, and LBGTQ communities. This is done through formal meetings with the Multi-Cultural Committee, Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement program, and the Allen County Mental & Behavioral Health Coalition. This office is instrumental in bringing cultures together with our basic recruit classes.

Public Information Office

Sergeant Sofia Rosales-Scatena oversees the Public Information office and is the 'face of the department”.

Sgt. Rosales-Scatena has been with the Fort Wayne Police Department since 1994.The main duty of the PIO is to respond to major incidents to manage the release of information to the media and the community. Sergeant Rosales-Scatena maintains close relationships with both local and national media and keeps busy disseminating information. As one of two supervisors in the Community Relations Division, Sergeant Rosales-Scatena is very active and attends community events to include but not limited to block parties, presentations to school groups and various group functions. She also conducts community talks on such topics including Scams, Vaping and Teens, Social Media Safety to name a few. Sergeant Rosales-Scatena has also been instrumental in increasing the Department’s Facebook page ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ with her inventive and creative posts.The Public Information Office can be reached at: 260-427-1343.

Safety Education Bureau- Safety Village

Officer Jessica Ingram oversees the Safety Education Bureau. She has been with the Fort Wayne Police Department since 2002.The Department’s goal is to continue to make Safety Village complex a highly functional environment for teaching, learning and practicing safety. To learn more about Safety Village and how to schedule a visit, please CLICK HERE.

School Resource Officer Program

The FWPD School Resource Officer (SRO) Program is supervised by Sergeant Jim Seay.

Sgt. Seay has been with the Fort Wayne Police Department since 1995. The SRO program is a partnership with Fort Wayne Community Schools in which officers are assigned to work in area middle schools during the school year to interact with our community’s youth. Each of these officers does an outstanding job and provides much more than security for the schools. The SROs develop relationships by mentoring and building bridges between the students and the Fort Wayne Police Department. The SROs attend after school activities including parent/teacher conferences and teach the Project ALERT curriculum in conjunction with the Drug and Alcohol Consortium of Allen County (DAC) to their seventh grade students alerting them to the dangers of alcohol and drugs and discussing alternatives to these substances. The SROs also assist with Remedy Live, a suicide prevention program, where their experience and training as Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) officers is very useful. Teaching students on Heather’s Law and Erin’s Law regarding child abuse and child sexual abuse prevention is an important element in this programming. On a daily basis the SRO's assist the school administration, teachers and parents with conflict meditations, making classroom visits and by addressing attendance and discipline issues. The SRO’s are also responsible for all the elementary schools that feed into their middle schools and occasionally speak at the high schools affiliated with their middle schools. When school is not in session the officers participate in community activities and help patrol the areas around their schools. They monitor dispatched runs that involves a juvenile and respond to investigate or assist. There are (6) SRO’s who are assigned at various middle schools:

Ben Young—Northwood Middle School
Alisha Smith—Kekionga Middle School
Chris McAfee—Jefferson Middle School
Greg Addison—Portage Middle School
James Payne—Lakeside Middle School
Sherronda Freeman—Memorial Park Middle School

Boys and Girls Club of Fort Wayne

Coffee with a Cop

Officer Appreciation Day

Hazardous Devices Unit Community Event

Blue Bucket Brigade

Community Connection

Blue Bucket Brigade

Myanmar & State Department delegation visit

K9 Education

Charity Goalball Game

Junior Police Camp

Coffee with a Cop & Cookie with a Cop

Shop with a Cop

Summer Police Camp

Thank you notes to Public Safety staff

Painting with a Cop

Halloween at Safety Village

Procedural Justice Class

N.E.W. Workshop

Officer Appreciation Day

Lending a helping hand

Habitat for Humanity Community Build

Habitat for Humanity Panel Build