FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. (Army News Service) -- To improve community policing efforts, representatives from federal, state, county, and city law-enforcement agencies attended a first-of-its-kind "Community Policing Symposium" here, April 17.The symposium was hosted by the Fort Meade Police Department to provide participating agencies an opportunity to discuss best practices when it comes to community outreach and involvement.One visible aspect of community policing involves having police officers permanently working the same patrol area so they become familiar with the citizens they protect, and so that those same citizens come to trust the officers assigned to protect them.In a broader sense, community policing is a philosophy that supports the use of partnerships between police departments and the communities they serve. Community policing, in collaboration with civilian law-enforcement agencies, plays a vital role in crime prevention and deterrence, said Tom Blair of the Army's Provost Marshal General's Office."Army installations have a long history of collaborating with surrounding communities," said Ivan Bolden, chief of Army partnerships at the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Installation Management. "Installations have established many partnership agreements with local, state, and other federal government organizations for mutual benefit."Bolden said that Army-wide, the service is working to "create an institutionalized mindset that relies on partnerships to ensure mission readiness in an era of reduced resources."COMMUNITY POLICING AT FORT MEADEFMPD Capt. Brain T. Kunkel said community policing efforts at Fort Meade have been a vital asset to the department, and believes such efforts would be of benefit across the U.S. military."I truly believe that the [Department of Defense] needs to consider having community policing officers," Kunkel said. "It creates that liaison between the police department and the community. No police department can do without community policing, and that includes the DOD."Officer Melita Jefferson is now responsible for the community policing effort at Fort Meade. It's role she said she had to grow into."When they asked me to be a community police officer, I was extremely happy, but I was nervous because I didn't know what a community police officer entailed," Jefferson said. "There are no guidelines. So I reached out to other agencies and realized that they experience the same things."The idea of the Community Policing Symposium, she said, was to bring together those multiple agencies so that they could discuss their own experiences in implementing community policing programs, and share what they have learned."[Community policing] is something you should be doing in your normal everyday activities," she said. "Rolling the window down and waving at people, getting out of your car and talking to your community and seeing what their issues or concerns are and trying to resolve it at your level. [You have] got to be proactive and figure out what the problem is before it becomes bigger."FMPD Lt. Jeremiah Irvin said his department expects to receive feedback from symposium participants to use in planning future meetings. He said he hopes the symposium will become an annual event.