ALLIANCE -- Every town has strengths and weaknesses.

The Alliance Police Department is working to make safety its community strength.

Alliance Police Chief Philip Lukens focuses on encouraging safety more within the community.

"We've implemented a lot of programs to take an active community approach," said Chief Lukens. "We're seeing a 30 percent crime reduction this year, and we had somewhere near 20 percent reduction last year."

Lukens came to the Alliance Police Department in 2020.

He said the Department encourages the community to tell it how officers can do better at encouraging safety. He said the community knows what the needs are, and the department is able to put the right resources to the needs.

The real key, Lukens says, is officer interaction with the community. He sees police work in three stages: the front end, middle and back end.

"We also utilize stuff on the back end. My real focus is, we want human interaction on the front end. It matters when someone scratches your car. It matters when someone takes a bicycle out of your front yard. We want to make sure we are giving people the attention, on the front end, as far as when there's a call and there's a concern, and that they're heard, and that we're going to do something about it," Lukens said.

He said often police officers are busy with the back end work -- reports, interviews, investigations -- and people feel left out.

He said they use a "predictive policing model to help put officers in the right place at the right time.

Alliance struggles with staffing like many departments, Lukens said. They improve service by using AI (artificial intelligence) as much as possible on the back end, and working with the public.