The Dalton Police Department officially welcomed a new officer this afternoon as Officer Ashley Payne received her badge during a ceremony at the Police Services Center. Officer Payne was hired after graduating from the Dalton Regional Police Academy in September as a pre-service candidate. Four other members of her graduating class at the academy joined the Dalton Police Department in September.
A native of Rome, Georgia, Officer Payne graduated in 2004 from Pepperell High School. She’s also completed some of her coursework towards a degree in Criminal Justice from Northwestern Technical College.
Below: Officer Ashley Payne (click image for a larger version)
Click "Play" in the window below to watch video from Friday's ceremony (video may take a moment to load)
Monday night's 2nd Annual Police and Firefighters' Benefit Dinner at the Dalton Depot Restaurant was a success, and the men and women of the Dalton Police Department and Dalton Fire Department extend thanks and gratitude to everyone who volunteered or came out in support of the event. Special thanks go to Dalton Depot Restaurant owner T.J. Kaikobad for providing his restaurant and the food for the benefit.
Proceeds from Monday night's dinner will go to benefit the City of Dalton Public Safety Scholarship fund at Dalton State College, which is being endowed to provide a scholarship to Dalton State for the child of an employee of the Dalton Police Department or Dalton Fire Department each year. Final figures for how much money was raised Monday night have not yet been tallied.
Guests to Monday night's dinner dined in at the Dalton Depot or drove through the curbside take-away line, and were served eggplant parmesan, baked ziti, and chicken parmesan.
Another fundraising event is coming up in September. Golfers, make plans now to join us on September 9th at Nob North for a Golf Tournament to benefit the City of Dalton Public Safety Scholarship! The entry fee is $65 per golfer, and the format is a select shot tournament with teams of four players. For more information, including an online sign-up form, click here.
Below (from top left): Dalton Police Officer Steve Zahn cooks eggplant parmesan, Dalton Firefighters work in the kitchen, and guests enjoy dinner at the Depot
Click "Play" in the window below for video from the event (video may take a few moments to load, click the "HQ" icon to watch in higher quality)
Click "Play" in the window below to see video from the National Night Out Public Safety Fair in Dalton. Click the "HQ" icon to watch in higher quality (video may take a moment to load).
To read more about the 2009 National Night Out in Dalton, click here.
Nobody wants to be pulled over by the police, but what happens if you find yourself in that situation? The Dalton Police Department produced the video below to walk drivers through a routine traffic stop so drivers can know what to expect and also a few things you should not to do when the blue lights flash in your rear view mirror.
Click "Play" in the window below to watch video (video may take a few moments to load, click the "HQ" icon to watch in higher quality).
In a move that will cut costs and also protect against system failures, the City of Dalton is completing work on consolidating computer services for all city departments onto a pair of centralized IBM Blade Center servers.
The Blade Center servers, hosted at City Hall and the Dalton Police Services Center, will last between 8 to 10 years without needing to be replaced, and requiring only minor upgrades. Previously, each city department had its own computer server which needed to be replaced every three years. The city had to replace 24 servers every three years at a cost of nearly $6,000 per server. Over a ten-year period, that amounts to nearly $647,000 to maintain computer servers. Over the same period, the Blade Center solution will cost less than $340,000. The new IBM Blade Centers require less power than the older servers, and they also generate less heat which reduces cooling costs.
“Over a 10-year period,” says Dalton Police Lt. Mike Key, who has helped to oversee the project, “we estimate… it’s going to save us at least 50 percent of what we would have spent on servers during that time.”
“Expenditures will actually go down, as far as what we have to spend to maintain everything,” says Dalton City Councilman George Sadosuk. “There are very real money savings with this system… usually you’re looking at how much more do we need to spend next year to upgrade our systems. We are putting in state of the art stuff, and it won’t need to be upgraded.”
The biggest benefit of the new Blade Center servers is gaining new protections against system failure. If either Blade Center experiences a failure, the other Blade Center can take over all city computer functions with only a brief interruption. For example, the servers at the Police Department fail, service could be taken over at City Hall and computers in patrol cars and at the Police Services Center would be able to operate again in as little as 20 minutes.
Click "Play" in the window below to watch a video on Dalton's new technology upgrade (Video may take a few moments to load, click the "HQ" icon to watch in higher quality).
Officers from the Dalton Police Department joined representatives from other area agencies on Tuesday morning for the Law Enforcement Torch Run, benefiting Special Olympics Georgia. 16 officers from the Dalton Police Department joined deputies from the Whitfield County Sheriff's Office and a firefighter from the Dalton Fire Department and others for the nine mile run through Dalton and Whitfield County.
The run started at the Municipal Court building at 501 West Waugh Street, and moved along Thornton Avenue to Bryman's Plaza. From there, the runners traveled by bus to the 41 Bypass at Lakeland Road and ran to Valley Point Elementary School where they were cheered on by the students. Then the runners wrapped up with a five mile run down Highway 41 to the Gordon County Line.
This year, the Dalton Police Department raised nearly $3,600 in support of Special Olympics Georgia. We sincerely thank everyone who donated money or time to help in this effort.
Click "Play" in the window below to watch video from the Torch Run (video may take a moment to load, click the "HQ" icon to watch in higher quality).
The Dalton Police Department has launched a new website hosted by “ePolicing” designed to give citizens more access to information about crime in the community and improve communication between citizens and the police department. The site, dpdonline.org, is now online. It can be accessed directly, or through the "DPD Online ePolicing" link at the left side of this page.
The site features an interactive map of Dalton which displays the locations and types of crimes reported in the city. Users can center the map on any address and search for crime reports in radiuses of up to 2.5 miles from the location. Users can also sort the crime reports by date, in spans of as many as 28 days from any date in the last two years. Users can also specify the specific types of crime they are interested in searching for from a menu on the screen. When clicked, each “push-pin” signifying a crime report displays the type of event, when it occurred, a report number, and the name and email address of the officer who took the report.
The website is part of the Dalton Police Department’s Neighborhood Policing effort, which was announced earlier this year. Each officer in the department has been assigned a neighborhood beat approximately six city blocks in size. Officers are spending part of their daily shifts patrolling in these areas, and also conducting foot patrol in the area and making contact with citizens to exchange contact information. The idea is to establish communication with residents outside of emergency situations. Citizens will be encouraged to share information about anything out of the ordinary in their neighborhood, even if it’s not a crime in progress or an emergency. The officer assigned to a neighborhood beat will be the contact person within the department for any questions or concerns. As part of this effort, citizens can sign up for e-mail alerts at the new website, dpdonline.org. The information on the site can be used to send emails to residents of specific neighborhood beats if needed.
Currently, the crime information at dpdonline.org is updated approximately twice a week. Later this summer, it will be updated daily.
To watch a video about the new website, click "Play" in the window below (Video may take a few moments to load. To watch in higher quality, click on the "HQ" icon).
The Dalton Police Department's 17th Citizens' Police Academy class wrapped up on Tuesday night with a graduation banquet at Ryman Hall catered by the Filling Station Restaurant. Members of the class received their diplomas on stage from Chief Jason Parker, who also addressed the class and thanked them for their commitment to the ten week course.
Dalton Public Safety Commission members Dr. Bill Weaver and Carlos Calderin attended the event, along with Dalton City Councilman George Sadosuk.
To watch video from Tuesday night's graduation ceremony, click "Play" in the window below (video may take a few moments to load, click the "HQ" icon to watch in higher quality).
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