Police Chief White Invites Public to first National Night Out

The National Night Out program has been in existence for many years, giving the public an opportunity to meet and get to know law enforcement personnel in their communities, however, it has never been implemented in Missoula, until now.

KGVO met with Missoula City Police Chief Jaeson White to introduce the program to Missoula on Tuesday, August 3.

“It was born out of an opportunity for folks to get out of their homes and into their neighborhoods and meet one another, and to meet with their law enforcement partners and officials as a as a crime prevention opportunity,” said Chief White. “That's how it started. But it's morphed into more than that. It has morphed into some Community Oriented Policing and relationship building with police departments, but we've just never done it here in Missoula.”

Chief White said he wanted it to be one of the first new ideas he implemented at Missoula’s Police Chief when he first arrived a little over a year ago.

“I wanted to do it last year, but we couldn't with all of the pandemic restrictions, so we took the opportunity this year to host a National Night Out,” he said. “We're doing it here at our Ryman Street facility at City Hall, and we're going to be out in the parking lot on Tuesday, August 3 from 5pm to 8pm.”

White described some of the activities that will occur on Tuesday evening.

“We invite everyone to come out,” he said. “We're going to have some crime prevention information. The Mobile Crisis Support team is going to be here. The Crisis Intervention Team is going to be here. We're going to have some of our Special Teams equipment here, we'll have one of our canines here, and we're also going to have an ice cream truck here.”

White said there will also be assistance for new parents to help them safely install their child safety seats.

“If you have young ones and you have child safety seats we're working on having one of our child safety seat coordinators here to maybe do some car seat checks for you,” he said. “We will get that information out as soon as I have some confirmation that we have that dialed in, so that people can come up make sure your car seat safe for your little one riding around in the car with you.”

Get more information about the National Night Out program here.