During the June 2 Genoa Township trustees meeting, Police Chief Steve Gammill presented the results of the 2016 Genoa Township police department community survey. Gammill said the survey’s 389 respondents showed a high level of satisfaction with the township’s police department.

“It was also good to see that the respondents overwhelmingly feel safe in the township and their neighborhoods,” Gammill said. “The primary concerns of the majority of respondents are traffic-related, with speeding in neighborhoods being the number one complaint. This does not come as a surprise and has been, and will continue to be, a major focus of our enforcement efforts.”

Gammill said the survey results would be used to develop the police department’s 2017-2020 strategic plan.

Trustee chair Rick Carfagna said the township’s existing police strategic plan would be used as a base document for developing a new strategic plan. Trustees should individually email Gammill with their input, he said, and the new strategic plan would be addressed publicly during a future trustees meeting.

“This (survey) is positive feedback,” Carfagna said. “Our police department is something we don’t take for granted.”

Gammill also requested permission to spend $27,500 for 10 Fujitsu hybrid laptops for cruisers, with mounting gear.

Many police departments are converting to hybrid laptops that can easily be removed from mounting hardware, the keyboard detached, and used as tablet computers, useful for taking photographs at accident and crime scenes.

Gammill said seven of the old Panasonic laptops run Windows XP and are unable to be upgraded to Windows 7. Microsoft no longer supports XP with security updates, and the remaining three laptops with Windows 7 are older and unreliable.

“There was no money for laptops in the budget last year,” Gammill said. “We were going to replace two cruisers this year, but we decided to replace only one cruiser that was budgeted and use the money for laptops.”

Gammill said Fujitsu is the same brand used by most law enforcement agencies in central Ohio.

Trustee Frank Dantonio said he would like to have a discussion about alternative computers for cruisers.

“There’s nothing unique about a police computer other than security,” Dantonio said.

Carfagna asked Gammill to assemble more information about the need for the Fujitsu hybrids and present that information at the July 7 trustees meeting.

In other business, trustees accepted a $10,000 donation from the Brighter Days Foundation for the police department’s K-9 fund.