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2023 Police Week

Police Lt. Mike Villegas, speaking at our Annual General Membership Meeting on April 22, suggested anyone in Palm Springs with a residential or business security camera register it with the Police Department. This link will take you to a Public Camera Registry page, from which you can easily partner with Palm Springs police when they are trying to determine whether crimes have been captured on video.
“Participation in this program will help strengthen our investigative abilities and give us an easier way to communicate more effectively with potential witnesses,” the Police Department says.
The Police Department has invited us to attend its fall Community Police Academy. Its mission is to strengthen community partnerships by offering the opportunity to interact with PSPD professional staff, increase their understanding of police operations and become ambassadors to the community.
The free, interactive course is designed to acquaint adults who live or work in the Greater Palm Springs community who are not sworn police officers with the activities of the Police Department.
The Community Police Academy will run twice annually for 12 sessions in the winter and fall of each year. The classes starting September 20, 2022, will meet on select Tuesday nights from 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Along with the classroom sessions, participants will have the opportunity to attend one ride-along session.
Classes fill up quickly and applicants are accepted on a first come, first served basis. For more information, visit:
UPDATE from PSPD: “We will now move forward with analyzing the data we collected over 5 days, meet with all PSPD staff members and our business community, and identify our next steps as we move forward. We will come back to the community in the near future with a report on what we have found, and what the strategies will be for the mission that has been defined for the Palm Springs Police Department.”
The Palm Springs Police Department announced the dates and locations of community public meetings with residents and businesses to help shape the department’s future. Meetings will be held in each of the five City Council districts and Council members will be present. The sessions will take place in a structured town hall environment where everyone will have equal input. Community input will help to establish PSPD’s mission and chart their path forward.
The second part of each meeting is to establish crime-fighting priorities by city area. Chief Andrew Mills is emphasizing a community policing approach of going after the underlying conditions that cause crimes instead of being more reactive.
Meeting times:
The PSPD crime analyst will provide attendees with crime maps, data on crime trends, and calls for service. If you can’t make the meeting in our Council district, you are encouraged to attend another session on a date that works for you.
We advised participants in our October 2021 neighborhood-wide yard sale to take these precautions, repeated here for anyone who may be having a yard sale or selling goods online:
After a home was burglarized in Canyon Palms on Dec. 17, we asked our neighborhood police liaison officer, Lt. Gustavo M. Araiza, for information we could share. He offered general advice that may help everyone avoid falling prey to a burglary:
You can reach gustavo.araiza@palmspringsca.gov at (760) 323-8119, but non-emergency issues should instead be reported by calling the police non-emergency telephone number (760) 327-1441, or visiting the City of Palm Springs (palmspringsca.gov) web application. There you can click Connect and the appropriate link under Submit/Report.