It's back to the beat system for the Cary Police Department, but they're calling it "GeoPolicing."

The advantage over the current system is that officers can now be more focused on a certain area so they can get to know the people in that community.

The town started working towards this new system in 2008, and spent $38,500 to research and implement it.

The theory is that different parts of Cary have different issues that police have to deal with.

"They're becoming the experts on what's going on in their assigned area," said Chief Pat Bazemore.

The goal is to have residents and business owners get comfortable with the same officers patrolling the same areas day in and day out.

Chief Bazemore and her staff have divided Cary into three districts, with several beats within each district.

West Cary -- or District 2 -- is more residential than southeast Cary -- or District 3 -- which is mainly business and commercial.

"We have a large population that come in to go to work and then leave," said Capt. Scott Davis, Commander of District 3. "Not transient, but our population during the day is a lot higher than it is during the evening."

Cary designed its own version of GeoPolicing after a lot of talk with cities like Irvine, California and Mesa, Arizona about similar systems.

"For the past year, we've been looking at how we can police better in the town of Cary," said Bazemore. "We have a community that's very involved. And by having a community that's involved, partnering with them we're going to be able address things in a different way."

Two other North Carolina communities use GeoPolicing: Wilson and Gastonia.

The new system went into effect over the weekend.

Even with the changes, there should be at least five officers on patrol in each district almost all the time.

Parts of the department like Criminal Investigation or Animal Control are still townwide operations.

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