As Maryland’s second largest City continues to grow and diversify, the Frederick Police Department (FPD) strives to welcome that growth and diversity by ensuring our education and service keeps pace and grows as well.
As Maryland’s second largest City continues to grow and diversify, the Frederick Police Department (FPD) strives to welcome that growth and diversity by ensuring our education and service keeps pace and grows as well. Continuing to build relationships and bonds with our diverse community across the City has been a core part of our community policing efforts and is also highlighted in our strategic plan. It is critical that all residents of Frederick feel safe and secure in calling the police and they know they are being served by an engaged, transparent, credible, committed agency with passion and enthusiasm for serving all of our constituents. Over the past ten years, our training has included:
• Hosting our first Deaf intern with the FPD who was a student at Maryland School for the Deaf (MSD); we then partnered with MSD in joint training for our officers
• In addition to our long training curriculum, our recruit training includes education and lectures from:
o Frederick County Chapter of the NAACP,
o representative from our Muslim Community-most recently from Imam Yahya Hendi,
o the American Civil Liberties Union
o the Frederick County Human Relations Commission
o a field trip to the National Holocaust Museum to participate in specially designed training for law enforcement
The Frederick Police Department’s most recent training initiative includes reaching out to the Frederick’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Community, again with the purpose of educating our officers and ensuring that all of our residents are appropriately served by our agency. Earlier this fall the Frederick Police Academy hosted sensitivity and awareness training for recruit officers that focused on improving police understanding and interactions with Frederick’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) community. Members of The Frederick Center volunteered as panel members for this training session, which was a first in the history of the Frederick Police Academy curriculum. The effort was an outcome from discussions earlier in the year between Chief Kim C. Dine and The Frederick Center members.
“This type of collaboration fosters an enhanced police awareness about the interaction with the LGBTQ community that makes the city safer for all its citizens,” noted The Frederick Center Board Chair Brian Walker. He added, "It is refreshing – and a reflection on Chief Kim Dine’s leadership – to have the police reach out to our community, as well as an honor to provide educational resources to them, and a comfort to see the Frederick community ready to focus on the inclusion of every citizen.” Walker also confirmed that The Frederick Center welcomes future efforts to support recruit officers and other public service training with this type of program.
Chief Dine stated, “We are extremely proud of our partnership with the Center and know that this training helps ensure inclusiveness and builds trust with our residents. It is essential that all of our residents have trust and faith in their police agency and this training certainly helps ensure that our LGBTQ Community feels that way.”
The Frederick Center is dedicated to being the leading organization for LGBTQ resources and advocacy in central Maryland. Its mission is to support, educate, link, organize and provide outreach to the LGBTQ community and its allies. It offers a weekly support group for youths, a monthly support group for adults, organizes the annual June Frederick Pride, and supports educational and social events for its members and the community at large. The six-month old organization already has hundreds of members and is growing quickly and expanding services. Contact the group for more information at www.thefrederickcenter.org and thefrederickcenter@gmail.com.