New Alliance police chief sworn in
ALLIANCE, Neb. (KNEP) - Philip Lukens is the new Police Chief of Alliance as he got sworn in. Originally he is from Sterling, NE and has been in law enforcement since 1997. Lukens is ready to take on his new role and be part of the community.
“I am big event community organizer we can host a lot of different things,” says Lukens. “I am a big fan of training our officers, and I want our officers to be able to help other agencies and be trainers for other agencies as well. I believe that a lot of the things the training I endured have made a huge difference and what I have done in law enforcement, and I believe we can bring that into our community.”
Lukens says he just a regular guy just like everyone else when off duty and wants to encourage residents of Alliance to volunteer in police activities.
“I would like to see the community get some volunteers for the police department,” says Lukens. “We call them VIPS people that would be willing to volunteer sometime with the police department helping different facets. There is always a lot of things that would be great to have a volunteer help with and that will also increase our dialog with the community.”
Lukens says he has some plans he wants to implement into the community such as educating residents about police life. He wants to have an open dialogue between law enforcement and residents.
“I also want to get a citizens academy going hopefully maybe this spring get the community involved in that,” says Lukens. “So people can get more of an everyday feel of what the police officers are going through. On their job we have seen a lot of their disputes with what law enforcement is doing and so forth, and I think it’s important that the community sees what we’re doing and we also get a community perspective.”
“Sometimes they don’t understand why a taser may be deployed,” says Lukens. “Why does the canine not do this? Why do officers act a certain way on a traffic stop? These are great opportunities for us to have a dialogue and explain why we are doing what we are doing and also hear feedback maybe there are things that we can change.”
