Iowa City residents have coffee with new top cop

By KCRG
Original article HERE

It’s always a busy first week for a new police chief, but Iowa City’s new top cop took some time Friday morning to meet with people at the Coffee with a Cop event. People were generally impressed with Chief Matherly after seeing him in public for the first time.

“He’s a great guy. He seems very grounded and was interested in how he can help us” said Roger Reilly.

“It’s amazing that he’s taking the time out to get to know people from the community and get a first hand report of what they think are their most urgent needs” said college student Shreya Chandrasekar.

Chief Matherly was impressed with the turnout at the monthly event.

“Some of them just made the trip in the cold weather today to come talk with the police officers and to meet me” he said.

“It just shows what Iowa City’s about in my opinion. They want to get ton know their leaders in the community and the leaders want to get to know the people” said Reilly.

Chief Matherly said one of his top priorities as chief will be interacting with the community.

“The people want to give some input into some of the things we do and that’s what we do best. We’re going to get that input and this is a great venue to do that in” he said.

Other police officers said they love participating in activities like Coffee with a Cop.

“They can ask us any question whether it’s police related or not. It just gets everyone together and it’s a community related event” said Officer Ashten Hayes.

Others are curious to see what the new chief will bring to the table.

“We’re really eager to see what ideas he comes in with, fresh ideas of how we can tweak things or new things we can start doing to take our department to the next level” said Officer David Schwindt.

Some people said they would like to see more police officers out on the streets interacting with the public. Chief Matherly said that is one of his main focuses.

“We want to make sure that everybody in the community knows that we’re here for them. We’re here to protect them and to keep building and fostering trust with them” said Matherly.