Lieutenant Joe Carter of the Falls Church Police Department told the monthly luncheon of the Falls Church Chamber of Commerce Tuesday that community policing efforts, traffic and parking enforcement, are among the important challenges facing the local F.C. Police Department as the completion of new development projects brings new people, and vehicles, into the City. This is in addition to a growing focus on regional and local response training to “active shooter incidents” in the wake of the Paris attacks.

When the recent shooting at the State Theatre occurred, he noted 10 units from Arlington were on the scene in four minutes to help. He said he could not characterize crime reports of robberies and car vandalism as a “growing trend.” The local department is now one officer below its quota, while two are coming to join the department from Arlington and another is at a training academy. Overall, he said, the F.C. department had three officers deployed to street patrols in 1985, when the City’s population was 9,300, and it has the same number now, when the population is 13,300.