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Today though, in an effort rebuild confidence. The Public Relations Unit for Police invited the media to see it in action at an open day. 7News attended.

Daniel Ortiz reporting
All 4 police precincts had information booths set up today, designed to be eye-catching. They're trying to attract the public's attention.

Eastern Division invited, organizations like Family Life Association, National Fire Service, Department of Youth Services, and quite a number of non-governmental entities. It's an "Awareness Open Day", and they want the community to stop in and learn about how the different services work.

Douglas Hyde - PR, Community Policing Relations
"Eastern Police Division through its police community policing initiative have decided that all the precincts we want to do an awareness open day in the communities and specifically because the precincts are in the communities, we try to look at innovative way of approaching and sharing information about the work of the police officers likewise inviting other agencies whether they do non-governmental or governmental agencies to speak about their services that the community can also enjoy and at least hear from them what's going on. We have CYDP along with CRD and also we have the Youth Department which basically look on the youth service itself. We also invited the fire service and then also we had the credit unions, we have also the banks to talk and show and also about their services and also in terms of the community to share with them how they can take advantage the services they have."

ASP Marcia Moody - Deputy OC, Precinct 2
"We have the Ministry of Health, we have the environmental section from also the Ministry of Health, we have the Human Services Department, we have Nova Scotia Bank and today we also have the Civil Credit Union League providing booth display and information as is necessary to the public."

Douglas Hyde - PR, Community Policing Relations
"We are also looking on community participation. We are trying to get the community more involved and taking some of these agencies that are more office bound to get in more of the communities. We are also looking for more a collaboration with these agencies. We have been doing it a lot and so this is part of showing that we work together in many of the services that we provide through community policing and the police department and so those are like the two key areas and we also look at continuance of doing programs like this which is very much important for the community. Its like bringing these to the community is totally better than the community going to these offices and agencies."

We dropped in at the Open Day a bit early, and so, the turnout wasn't representative of what it looked like later in the day.

Eastern Division is hoping to see a few hundred visitors at each of the booths:

Douglas Hyde - PR, Community Policing Relations
"We are in precincts one now and so what happened last year the average amount that came out was almost 700 people which include the students from schools and always the community members. That is the expectations we are looking at all the precincts to have that amount within 500-700 people which includes students and the community members to take advantage of it and we hope that the sharing of information and also the services that these agencies provide that these community members and also the students from schools can appreciate the information that they received."

ASP Marcia Moody - Deputy OC, Precinct 2
"We have information for them to work with in the future and we are also bridging the gap between the community and the police because with the community we can definitely get information and further more we can assist with our work in solving the crime."