The Durham Police Department decided to treat its constituents as partners and customers and, like any good business, it had to find out what customers wanted. Unsure of how to launch a strategic planning initiative, the police department reviewed the literature and found strategic planning was a time-consuming process. The police department embraced some of the basic principles of the business world, such as soliciting and valuing client comments, monitoring performance, promoting continuous improvement, and inviting worker participation. After evaluating survey results and conducting the 1-day planning session, the police department drafted its strategic plan. Intended to be an evolving document, the strategic plan contains the following objectives for the 5-year period between 2000 and 2005: maintain accredited status, reduce the incidence of crime, increase service quality and customer satisfaction, identify and obtain additional funding from grants and other sources, maintain acceptable workloads for police officers, and provide high quality training for all personnel.