Revere Police ready community policing van

The Revere Police Department has big plans for a new community policing truck that will be unveiled soon.

At Monday night’s meeting, the city council approved establishing a gift account for the police department. This account will allow the department to solicit donations for community police projects from the public and have the donations placed in a dedicated account.

Revere Police Captain Thomas Malone explained how the gift account relates to the new community police vehicle at the council meeting.

“The department has recently purchased a vehicle, it’s going to be an all-electric Chevy BrightDrop,” said Malone. “It is going to be a community service vehicle; we’re kind of calling it an ice cream truck on steroids.”

Malone compared it to other police departments that have converted older step vans into community policing ice cream trucks.

“What we are planning on doing is we’re making this a year-round, weekly truck that we are going to have to further our community engagement and outreach to the neighborhoods,” said Malone.

While the van will be used for ice cream, the captain said it will also be used for Coffee with a Cop, clothing drives, and toy drives.

“We’re going to be doing outreach with the homeless with our behavioral health unit,” Malone said. “We want to make this vehicle present in the community at all the different events throughout the city. We are hoping to get more involved with the individual neighborhoods through the ward councillors, which I’ve talked to some of you about, and we are hoping to get that program up and running.

“With any luck, we’re going to have the vehicle this week and we will be rolling it out in the coming weeks through the mayor’s office.”

Malone said the police department will not be selling any products from the vehicle, however, he said the department was looking to put a QR code on the side of it.

“It’s almost like a pay it forward, if you want to donate, you are more than welcome to, and if you don’t want to, that is obviously not what we are in the business for,” said Malone.

After speaking with city finance director Richard Viscay, Malone said the best way to keep track of any of the donations would be through a separate gift account for the police department.

“All the money that is donated to us is going to go right back into the van to provide more products and services to the community,” said Malone.

Malone said the vehicle will be known as the CARE Wagon, standing for Community, Access, Resources,and Engagement.

“I love this idea, and it is about time,” said Ward 6 Councillor Chris Giannino. “I know that over the years, we have been going back to the same people over and over again for donations.”