New Glenpool Police Chief's, Deputy Chief's Plans For Community Relations

The Glenpool Police Department has a new Chief and Deputy Chief.

Chief Jeremy Plane and Deputy Chief Matthew Graves said they want to focus on community relations with their new roles.

They said they want to model a neighborhood watch similar to Tulsa's Crime Stoppers with open forums for a more personal interaction.

With more than 20 years in law enforcement, Chief of Police Jeremy Plane said he recognizes the pressing challenges police face and in order to overcome them, it's his goal to focus on the positives.

"We have a very good relationship, I think, with the majority of the citizens here in town. I'd like to start some outreach programs where we do guest speakers and sponsor things where people come in on an open forum, get more comfortable with us, the officers, the department,” Plane said.

Plane said the department, which currently has 23 officers, is also working on recruiting more.

“Everybody around here is suffering in that area. We're currently three positions short. We were six up until recently,” Plane said.

With the change in leadership, Deputy Chief Matthew Graves said transparency and accountability are some of his main focuses.

"Chief Martin, our previous administration had started down that path a couple of years ago when we started moving to a more professional department. We want to keep that standard using policy and procedure,” Graves said.

Graves said training will be a priority for the smaller department's officers.

“I would say that our training has probably succeeded a lot at some of the bigger agencies, mainly because we're able to focus on certain things at certain times. We've done as best as we can with the manpower that we have at this time,” Graves said.

Chief Plane said the first public forum for citizens to meet him and Deputy Chief Graves will be next month.