A Message From Police Chief Mike Styner

To the Citizens of Ocean Shores

Welcome to the Ocean Shores Police Department's web site. We appreciate your interest, and encourage you to visit us here often. This web site was designed to provide you with a variety of information on how our Department works, its outstanding personnel, and a number of our community based programs. We hope that you'll find this information useful in getting to know us better.

A society free from crime, violence, and accidental injury remains an unachieved ideal. It is therefore the mission of the Ocean Shores Police Department to seek and find ways to affirmatively promote, preserve and deliver a feeling of security, safety, and productive quality services for all citizens in our community. As an agency committed to community quality, "A Community Partner", all department members are trained to a high level and are dedicated to helping citizens and families improve the neighborhood environment as a means to a safer, more enjoyable community. Preventing crime is our first operational priority as we work from a community-based philosophy of policing. Working together we are most apt to make lasting improvements in our quality of life. I encourage citizens to offer suggestions on how we might provide better police services in the future.

Community Policing is a philosophy and an organizational strategy that promotes a new partnership between people and their police. It is based on the premise that both police and the citizens must work together to identify, prioritize, and solve community concerns. We must be creative and innovative as we work with neighborhoods to reduce and prevent crime, disorder and fear. We will be relentless in our efforts to identify and arrest criminals, and we must also be actively involved in helping our citizens develop long-term solutions to their community problems.

The Ocean Shores Police Department continuously reviews the way we deploy our staffing resources in an effort to increase our ability to respond to community needs and maximize our resources. The department is continuously advancing the use of technology in order to provide the most up-to-date information to our staff to enable us to be efficient and effective. Technology, however, can never replace the value of you, the citizens, sharing information with your local law enforcement officers.

We understand that building, cultivating and maintaining the community's trust is the key element in crime reduction in our City. We are committed to reducing crime in our neighborhoods by targeting all areas of crime and community concerns. Our ultimate goal at the Ocean Shores Police Department is to improve the quality of life for all our citizens as well as others we serve. By maintaining close partnerships in our public and private sectors, we will attain this goal.

Strong connections between our Department and the citizens we serve have always been very important to us. We encourage and enjoy interactions with the community through volunteer programs, Citizens Police Academy, Neighborhood Watch and other community outreach programs. We encourage you to determine which program is best suited for your particular need and join us as we strive to make our City one of the safest in Washington State.

There is no time like the present for all of us to conduct our own disaster preparedness drills with our families, and also review some of the basic principles of disaster preparedness:

• Be alert to suspicious persons or things that are out of place and report them. Protection from a terrorist act or even a basic crime begins with recognition of the event itself.
• Develop a family response plan on what to do or where to go should an event occur and your family is separated. Quiz each other on it periodically.
• Have an out of state contact you can call in case local communications are down.
• Prepare your family disaster supplies to make sure they include at a minimum, water, food, a way to cook, a way to stay warm, radio, and medical supplies.
• Know where the exits are, and have an escape plan for any building you are in.
• Follow in-shelter procedures for staying inside until a clear signal is given, in case of natural disaster, chemical, or biological event occurring in the region.
• Have evacuation plans in place on where you and your family might go if your community had to leave the area for a period of time.
• Stock your vehicle with emergency supplies as well as your home.
• Get to know your neighbors or co-workers. They will be your greatest resource during a natural or man-made disaster.
• How we fare as a community during any disaster or terrorist event is directly related to how we’ve prepared individually and collectively.

Again, thank you for visiting our site,

Mike Styner
Chief of Police
mstyner@osgov.com