{"id":13344,"date":"2026-01-04T15:41:49","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T15:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/phenomenal-people-helping-people-va-police-chief-shares-2026-outlook\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T15:41:49","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T15:41:49","slug":"phenomenal-people-helping-people-va-police-chief-shares-2026-outlook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/phenomenal-people-helping-people-va-police-chief-shares-2026-outlook\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Phenomenal people \u2026 helping people\u2019: VA police chief shares 2026 outlook"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Having seen a 11% decrease in overall crime and an almost 20% reduction in violent crime during his five years in office, Prince William County Police Chief Peter Newsham spoke with WTOP about his department&rsquo;s focus for 2026 and the many factors that contribute to a safe community.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We pay very close attention to crime and we&rsquo;ve had a lot of success,&rdquo; said Newsham. &ldquo;If you look at our homicide rate, you have 100% closure on our cases this year. It&rsquo;ll be five years since I&rsquo;ve been here, where we&rsquo;ve only had one homicide that has remained open.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<div class=\"Widget WidgetList WidgetRelatedStories alignright\">\n<h3 class=\"Widget-title widget-title-related-stories\">\n\t\t\tRelated stories\t\t<\/h3>\n<ul class=\"Widget-list\">\n<li class=\"Widget-item\">\n<p>\t\t\t\t<strong class=\"Widget-itemTitle\">VCU athletics director arrested for drunken driving in Prince William after crashing Escalade into ditch<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"Widget-item\">\n<p>\t\t\t\t<strong class=\"Widget-itemTitle\">Police arrest Prince William Co. man, seize evidence in online child exploitation case<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"Widget-item\">\n<p>\t\t\t\t<strong class=\"Widget-itemTitle\">Prince William Co. Supervisors chair breaks down 2025 successes<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h4>Hiring affects crime rate<\/h4>\n<p>While the crime numbers are coming down, having officers in the community is a huge crime prevention tool. Newsham notes that there has been a slight decrease in the number of applicants looking to become police officers.<\/p>\n<div class=\"internal-linking-related-contents\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/12-weeks-jail-for-school-it-support-technician-who-took-upskirt-videos-of-teachers\/\" class=\"template-1\"><span class=\"cta\">News :<\/span><span class=\"postTitle\">&lt;div&gt;12 weeks' jail for school IT support technician who took upskirt videos of teachers&lt;\/div&gt;<\/span><\/a><\/div><p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a shrinking pool of folks that are available to work in law enforcement,&rdquo; said Newsham. &ldquo;We are competing with federal agencies are offering these pretty significant signing bonuses, and they&rsquo;re hiring lots of law enforcement on the federal side, so I think that&rsquo;s impacting our pool of applicants.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Prince William County is in pretty good shape with vacancies less than 12%, but with over 500,000 residents, you&rsquo;ve got make sure you have enough police officers to provide an adequate police service,&rdquo; said Newsham.<\/p>\n<h4>Community shapes the plan<\/h4>\n<p>Every two years, the Prince William County Police Department is required to do a satisfaction survey with the community to maintain its national accreditation.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a random survey, and it touches all of the different diverse groups that we have in the county and our satisfaction rating, our department satisfaction rate about 96% which is something we&rsquo;re very, very proud of,&rdquo; said Newsham. &ldquo;People are not afraid to talk to us at this department.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;People who do this work are really, really phenomenal people. They operate under some very, very difficult circumstances, and they go out there every single day and they&rsquo;re out there helping people,&rdquo; said Newsham.<\/p>\n<p>Source<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"internal-linking-related-contents\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/migrant-acquitted-in-first-trial-over-us-border-military-zones\/\" class=\"template-1\"><span class=\"cta\">News :<\/span><span class=\"postTitle\">Migrant acquitted in first trial over US border military zones<\/span><\/a><\/div><p><sub>&lsquo;Phenomenal people &hellip; helping people&rsquo;: VA police chief shares 2026 outlook<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Having seen a 11% decrease in overall crime and an almost 20% reduction in violent crime during his five years in office, Prince William County Police Chief Peter Newsham spoke with WTOP about his department&rsquo;s focus for 2026 and the many factors that contribute to a safe community. &ldquo;We pay very close attention to crime&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/phenomenal-people-helping-people-va-police-chief-shares-2026-outlook\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;\u2018Phenomenal people \u2026 helping people\u2019: VA police chief shares 2026 outlook&rdquo;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}