New WPD initiative brings officers outside

The Waltham Police Department launched a new initiative this summer, putting police officers on trail systems in the city.

WPD purchased a UTV in 2026 and trained officers to use it. On Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., officers use the vehicle to access areas police cruisers can’t typically access. According to an email from Detective Sergeant Bill Champion, these areas may include the Rail Trail, the River Walk, Metropolitan Parkway, the Common or parks and playgrounds.

While on the trails, officers interact with citizens they encounter. According to a post on the WPD Instagram page, the program’s goal is “getting out into the community, building relationships, addressing quality-of-life concerns, and helping make Waltham’s trails welcoming and safe for everyone.”

Champion described a time when a colleague “was able to fix a child’s bicycle chain at Lowell Field while we were talking about the upcoming school year.” He said many people stopped to say how much they appreciated the police presence.

“Members of the WPD that have participated in the program have had extremely positive experiences interacting with the public, and we look forward to finding new ways to utilize the UTV to provide better, more personal access [for residents] to officers,” Champion said.

One resident reached out over social media to the Waltham Times to share that they had encountered a police officer on the Rail Trail this summer and that the police presence made them feel safer. “It really struck me at the time with all the Flock stuff going on that here was community policing that was everything Flock wasn’t: cheap, human, trust-building and effective,” the resident wrote.

Another resident had a different perspective. While a police presence on the trail is fine, they preferred to see officers on foot or on bicycles. The resident recounted telling the officer that using motor vehicles on the bike path created a power imbalance. “I asked if he thought this would be better done by bicycle police and he acknowledged that he did, but that there was not a budget to have enough resources to have bike cops available all the time,” the resident wrote.

While the Happy Trails program has no end date, Champion noted that the UTV is not covered and has no heat, which might make winter challenging.