BERKLEY, Mich. (WXYZ) — If you call 911 in the city of Berkley, all 31 of their sworn officers are ready for anything. And they’re more than just police officers.
7 Action News checked in with Berkley Department of Public Safety Director Matt Koehn, who worked in Farmington Hills for 31 years and in Berkley for six years.
He shared his department's novel approach to public safety.
“All of our officers are certified firefighters, licensed police officers and licensed emergency medical first responders,” Koehn said. “It’s a lot of training, a lot of equipment. All of our cars have medical equipment, police equipment, fire equipment, so we do it all. If you call 911 or a non-emergency number here in Berkley, we come. It’s not a separate police or fire department.”
Koehn said that also makes for a close community.
“The department I came from, we had a good relationship between the police and fire departments but here, we are them. So, I am both the police chief and the fire chief,” Koehn said.
Koehn said Berkley is 2.6 square miles and has more the 15,000 residents. Crime is fairly low in the city. One of the biggest issues in the city is parking — both in residential areas and at businesses.
“It’s just a very, very dense community, so that’s a good problem to have,” Koehn said. “We have our larceny from autos, we have some breaking and enterings, we have some armed robberies but really, it is a safe community.”
The chief says he’s proud of how professional the department is. They recently received an accreditation.
“Breaking news here: we were accredited on Wednesday. We had an accreditation hearing that we haven’t even formally announced yet,” Koehn said. “We’re the 62nd department in the state of Michigan to be accredited out of almost 600 departments.
In addition to upgrading department technology and all of the responsibilities that he has, Koehn is also a father of 10 who was born and raised in the city of Berkley.
