The Fort Dodge Community Foundation and United Way is looking for ways to engage the Fort Dodge community in increasing public safety in the area. The organization recently launched the Fort Dodge — Webster County Safe Communities Coalition with that mission.

“This is a concern that’s at the top of the mind of a lot of people in our community,” said Randy Kuhlman, CEO of the Fort Dodge Community Foundation and United Way.

The foundation first introduced the coalition at last month’s Webster County Crime Stoppers meeting, and later held another meeting to bring various community leaders together to discuss the initiative.

“We really want to focus on prevention,” Kuhlman said. “Educating the public, parents, grandparents, as well as youth, on a wide variety of public safety issues and to make people more aware of how to keep them, their families and their neighborhoods safe.”

The program also aims to support local law enforcement public safety initiatives as well.

The foundation brought in Jeanette Potter to coordinate the coalition, Kuhlman said. As the safety coalition gets off the ground, one of Potter’s first tasks will be to launch a Neighborhood Watch program.

“I really feel like Neighborhood Watches could be a great educational tool to get information out there to citizens on all different subjects,” Potter said.

According to a 2008 U.S. Justice Department meta-analysis citizen policing programs like Neighborhood Watch show a “significant reduction in crime.”

“Neighborhood Watches are designed to keep the neighborhood that you live in well-informed,” Kuhlman said. “The safety of our community is not just on the backs of our local law enforcement.”

He said the coalition will also talk to the public about their options for home security systems and how citizens can help law enforcement investigations by providing some of that security footage when something happens near their homes.

“That’s a real tool for [law enforcement] because many times, it’s hard to get witnesses to come forward,” Kuhlman said.

Law enforcement agencies can be short-staffed and stretched thin these days and the safety coalition will aim to be a partner to those agencies, Kuhlman said.

“What we want to do is get more citizens engaged in this process,” he said.

The Fort Dodge — Webster County Safe Communities Coalition welcomes any community business, organization or group to be a “piece of this public safety puzzle,” he added. By collaborating with different groups, the coalition can leverage its resources to have an impact on making Fort Dodge a safer place.

Kuhlman said that though the city and county have “rallied around improving quality of life amenities,” those amenities like the trails and parks don’t mean much if people don’t feel safe to use them. Public safety shortfalls and crime reports also make it difficult for businesses to recruit employees and families to the area, negatively impacting economic development, he said.

Another focus for the coalition is educating parents and caregivers on dangers kids can be exposed to through technology like social media, the internet and cell phones. Kuhlman said some of these dangers are “quite alarming” because it can expose children to drugs, alcohol and other illicit activities.

The Fort Dodge — Webster County Safe Communities Coalition will host a town hall from 6-7 p.m. on Sept. 22 at First Presbyterian Church, 1111 Fifth Ave. N., Kuhlman said.

“Detectives from both the sheriff’s department and the police department are going to be talking about these kinds of dangers and also they’ll talk about the value of establishing Neighborhood Watches and how that works,” he said.