A “Safe Community Coalition of Fort Dodge and Webster County” has been formed.
The group hosted a town hall meeting in Fort Dodge yesterday after three shooting deaths in the Fort Dodge last month. The meeting site was just four blocks from where an 18 year old was shot to death in early May. Fort Dodge Police Chief Dennis Quinn says communication and the public’s help can go a long way in helping to solve crime.
“I want to bring the community together as much as we can, inform people as much as we can, try to make people feel they’re involved. I know there’s sometimes frustrated when we have certain event,” he says. “People would be surprised by the hundreds, sometimes thousands of hours we put into these things to try to get these terrible things resolved.”
Webster County Sheriff Luke Fleener joined the police chief in speaking to a crowd gathered in a Fort Dodge church. “If we can work together closely as a community, then the crimes that we see now may be deterred,” he says. “…We’re willing to work with all the community partners you see here tonight to get people to step up and do things to solve crimes in our community.”
Randy Kuhlman with the Fort Dodge Community Foundation which joined the local United Way in forming the new coalition. “It’s not just a law enforcement issue, it’s a whole community process,” Kuhlman says, “and if we can get the community engaged, we are confident that we can see some real progress made in making Fort Dodge a safer place to live.”
Kuhlman’s group and the Webster County Sheriff’s Office has received a $200,000 federal grant from the Rural Crime and Violence Reduction to support the effort.
(By Brooke Bickford, KVFD, Fort Dodge)