Winston-Salem Police Department is creating a fourth police district. District 4 will include mainly the downtown, West Salem, Happy Hill, and Washington Park areas.Winston-Salem police said they’re doing what they can to increase response time, build community relationships, increase presence to deter violent crime and increase population and visitation.Police aid the primary driver of the new district is due to the growth of Winston-Salem. There’s been a 44% increase in the downtown population in just the last ten years.The captain of the new District 4, Jason Gates, said additional officers won’t be hired, but they’ll instead use the officers from the current districts to spread out coverage.“The amount of officers it takes to answer those calls in district three or one is the same amount it's going to take to answer them here, right? So it's just it's just a more efficient way to use our resources," Captain Gates said.Captain Gates said, “We want our downtown, downtown Winston-Salem and surrounding neighborhoods to be safe for people to come and live, work and play.”Owner of Royality antique store on Trade Street, Tariq Bligen, said he's looking forward to this district. “I think with the presence of the new police district, and just more police presence in general, it'll lighten the city's mood to come downtown in general," Bligen said. Organizations that help the homeless population in Winston-Salem will also be included in the 4th district. Captain Gates said this will help their officers to form connections with people and help them get services they may need. Melissa Burgess, Director of The Salvation Army of Winston-Salem's Center of Hope said, “We are very glad that this is happening and taking place because we are the only shelter here in Forsyth County that serves families, and we need to ensure that our families are being safe and secure as they're walking to and from our shelter, because sometimes that's their only means of transportation is by foot.” By creating the 4th district, it means that the West End will no longer be split into two police districts. It'll now be all in District 3. That's something Councilman Jeff Macintosh said he's been wanting for a while now.“This really does make sense to push them all into one group. That way, when reporting happens, you get all the all the incidents that happened in the neighborhood, not just in one portion of the neighborhood and have to correlate that with with another district," Macintosh said. Winston-Salem police said they hope to have the new district up and running by sometime in the summer.