To supplement its staff, the Villa Rica Police Department is looking for a few good men and women to volunteer their time helping with administrative tasks.

Interested volunteers will have to fill out a civilian application and submit to a criminal background check.

“We’ll use them to begin with mainly in one main area and that’s to help us with our general records,” Capt. Scott Parker said. “At some point, we’ll want to branch out to help with records in investigations and things like that. We’re talking to some of the other divisions to find out where they can use a volunteer.”

Volunteers could also be used to call those who are scheduled to appear in court to remind them so they don’t have a bench warrant sworn out on them, something that has been handled in the past by officers assigned light duty due to an injury. Volunteers may also have the opportunity to ride along with officers on occasion, but that wouldn’t be part of their job description.

“The volunteer program will allow us to use our personnel more efficiently,” Police Chief Michael Mansour said. “Some of these volunteers will be able to do some of the busy work to relieve some of our employees to get some projects done that may have been sitting on the back burner and begin new projects.”

Those interested would have to go through a week-long training program and they’ll have to sign several confidentiality agreements because in many cases they will be exposed to sensitive information.

Volunteers need not have any type of law enforcement background. The only requirement is that they be at least 19 years old and have no criminal history. Volunteers must also commit to work at least 24 hours per three-month quarter, or roughly 100 hours per year, but there has been no set work schedule set up for volunteers and it may be done by a week-by-week basis, according to the individual.

“We just want anybody who wants to get involved to come in here and help us out,” Parker said. “It won’t involve anything dangerous. It’s going to help us in a lot of ways around the office, and like the Citizens Police Academy it will bring people in from the community so they can understand what we do and take that understanding to everyone else.”

Mansour worked with a similar volunteer program when he was at the Carrollton Police Department and he said it was very successful.

“We steal a lot of our ideas from other departments and other cities, but when they work you adopt them,” he said. “I saw this program work very efficiently and effectively at Carrollton, so we definitely believe it’s something that’s going to help our department.”

It is likely that the volunteer program will not kick off for a couple of months. However, those interested can go ahead and contact the police department at 770-459-0510 because there will be a cap on the number of volunteers who will be taken.