CCAT
Community Coordinating Activities Team (CCAT)
"Community Policing" describes a partnership between the Police Department and the residents of Redwood City. Together, we work to prevent crime and solve neighborhood problems. Community policing is at the heart of the City's official approach to public safety, going beyond traditional policing to build a cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship between officers and the community they serve.
The Community Coordinating Activities Team (CCAT) serves as the Department's principal office for community engagement, overseeing RCPD's community programs and addressing quality-of-life issues throughout Redwood City. Rather than responding to individual incidents, CCAT focuses on the ongoing relationship between the Department and the neighborhoods it serves, coordinating outreach efforts, sustaining long-term community partnerships, serving as the central point of contact for residents looking to get involved with the Department, and managing the Department's approach towards ongoing quality of life issues.
What CCAT Does
CCAT's responsibilities span a wide range of community-facing functions, including:
- Managing the Department's social media program
- Overseeing and coordinating the Department's Homeless Outreach Program
- Encouraging active citizen involvement in policing efforts
- Coordinating the Volunteers in Police Service (VIPS) Program
- Focusing on issues of ongoing public concern
- Providing continuity of service to the community
- Ensuring active involvement from problem-solving officers and neighborhood services coordinators in the affairs of the community
- Encouraging beat officers, problem-solving officers, and neighborhood services coordinators to develop creative responses to neighborhood problems
- Building residents' capacity to speak and act effectively on their own behalf
- Strengthening groups and organizations so residents can advocate for their own interests
Because so many of RCPD's community programs run through this office, CCAT effectively acts as the connection between the Department's various outreach efforts, from Neighborhood Watch and National Night Out to the Community Police Academy and Coffee with the Cops, ensuring these programs work together rather than in isolation, and that resident feedback from one effort informs the others.
A Two-Way Partnership
Community policing calls on both the community and the Police Department to play an active role. In Redwood City, that means residents working alongside Department staff to identify problems, prioritize concerns, and develop solutions together, rather than policing being something that simply happens to a neighborhood. CCAT exists to make that partnership functional: giving residents a clear channel to raise concerns, and giving the Department a structured way to turn community input into action.
Contact
For more information about CCAT, or to reach a CCAT Officer, please reach out via the Contact Us page.
EVENTS
The CCAT office is responsible for managing many of the department events. You can see the upcoming events on the calendar below.