Community Action Team

The Community Action Team (CAT) is comprised of one sergeant and five officers. CAT serves as one of the Oro Valley Police Department’s (OVPD) most proactive and successful community policing initiatives. The primary premise of CAT is to focus on the “root-causes” of problems and identify which crimes lead to secondary crimes and how they are associated. CAT members spend a great deal of time gathering information on specific issues through various connections with other law enforcement organizations and the public. Our CAT members work closely with schools, businesses and citizen groups to coactively solve problems. By targeting the core or “root cause” of a problem, CAT members are able to impact the problem before it spreads. Moreover, CAT members are educators who give presentations and counseling to local businesses, hotels, schools and in our citizens’ homes. The “partnerships” formed by our CAT members foster trust between the community and our organization; it has been paramount in our ability to combat crime.  Another outstanding benefit of CAT includes its ability to followup on DNA and latent fingerprint evidence recovered from crime scenes by our Property and ID Unit.