Community-Oriented Policing
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Transcript Community-Oriented Policing
“Watchman” style of the 19th. and early 20th. centuries
Officers on foot beats
Emphasis on order maintenance
Problems with corruption and nonfeasance
Professional model developed during the mid-20th. century
Motorized patrol & advances in communications
Emphasis on quick response to calls for service
Use statistics to track crime and evaluate response
Fight crime and violence by making arrests
Community model developed in the late 1970’s
Riots brought on concerns about community-police relations
Blamed police isolation from public
Emphasis on preventing rather than just reacting to crime and disorder
Partner with citizens and community institutions to identify problems and
develop solutions
Landmark article by James Q. Wilson and
George Kelling in March 1982 Atlantic Monthly
magazine
Proposed that taking care of neighborhood deterioration -- rowdiness, disrepair,
drunkeness -- can prevent an area’s lapse into serious crime
Skepticism of policing innovations
Motorized patrol distance from citizens
Uniform Crime Reports policing becomes a numbers game
Decriminalizing minor transgressions may not be such a good idea
Laws provide police with leverage
Protecting communities just as important as protecting individuals
Gave impetus to community policing movement
Supposedly more than crime-fighting
Community defines problems
Community participates in solutions
Success measured by citizen satisfaction
To do community policing need:
Decentralized authority
Changes in recruitment and training
Move away from incident-driven (response) policing
Different measures of output (results)
Major Federal funding
COPS office in Department of Justice funds community policing initiatives
throughout the U.S.
2009 Federal Recovery Act gives COPS $1 billion in grants to preserve
police jobs and aid community policing efforts
Is it rhetoric or reality?
“Cacophony” of purpose -- absorbing every
crime-fighting strategy (e.g., Broken Windows,
POP) that comes along blurs what community policing supposedly is
Are areas impacted by crime and violence really “communities”?
Are citizens well informed about crime?
Is there a consensus about what’s needed? Can one even be formed?
How much can citizens really help?
▪ Witness intimidation – Police Issues “See no Evil”
Is “community policing” potentially more intrusive?
Are there enough officers to do it?
Officer coverage (2011 data)
▪ L.A.: 9860 officers (2.6/1,000 pop.)
▪ Chicago: 12,092 officers (4.5/1,000)
▪ New York: 34,542 officers (4.2/1000)
Crime incidents may only be symptoms
To extinguish need to deal with the
“real”, underlying problems
This is supposedly different from “community-oriented policing”
Acceptance that traditional crime-fighting methods may be ineffective
BUT -- no value judgments as to police role (fact-based rather than
ideological)
To respond to problems police must be flexible and willing to experiment
Emphasis on crime prevention, not responding “after the fact”
Like in community policing, external relationships are important
Collaborate with other agencies, politicians, community groups, private
service providers, local businesses
Environmental design important (“target hardening”)
Not necessarily a “kinder and gentler” approach
May call for more intrusion, not less
Scan to identify problems
Personal observations
Citizens and businesses
Other officers
Available data
Analyze problems
Collect information from various sources
Break down problem into constituent parts
Look for patterns among incidents
Crime analysis & mapping
Detailed analysis of incidents and calls for service
Modus operandi, location, persons, times, events
Response -- develop and implement solutions
Example: street drug sales
▪ Soft responses: No incoming pay phone calls;
cleaning up junk and graffiti; urging landlords to
screen and evict drug-dealing tenants
▪ Hard responses: Gang injunctions; concentrated enforcement;
surveillance and undercover work
Assessment -- evaluate effectiveness of response with traditional and nontraditional measures
Crime trends, clearance rates
Citizen complaints
Truancy
Fear
Business profits
Property values
Many studies have found improvements after POP was implemented
Scholars often attribute these improvements to innovative strategies
Example : “Pulling Levers” approach of Boston Ceasefire
But every POP project involves the traditional “hard” strategies (coercive police
presence) of the professional model
POP brings increased attention from police and other agencies to problem areas
It may be impossible to apportion success to a specific tactic
It’s now assumed that “community policing”
incorporates problem-oriented policing
How to implement
Provide leadership: convince the troops that
prevention is better than after-the-fact response
Train officers in addressing problems
Provide incentives to get on board
Broader role for street cop: think about problems and develop solutions
Supposedly more job satisfaction
Evaluation criteria must change -- not just making arrests
Need commitment from managers and executives
Reduce barriers to implementation
Allocate necessary time, resources, manpower
Overcome resistance
Give officers leeway in innovation
Emphasize centrality of patrol
Ten-year evaluation of largest project of its kind in the U.S.
Split-force concept for entire city
Officer teams in each police beat spend their time on
community projects and problem-solving efforts
“Rapid response” units respond to calls for service
Compstat used to plan police deployment
“Final grades”
Public involvement: B
Agency partnerships: A
Reorganization: A
Problem-solving: C
Police Issues post: “RIP Community Policing?”
It’s not the bad, old professional model
A “new accountability” -- don’t just talk about integrity, actively track
officer behavior and warn of emerging problems
A “new public legitimacy” -- integrates professional model’s law-centered
response with community policing emphasis on citizen participation and
consent
Foster organizations that “transcend parochialism” and can learn, adapt
and innovate as circumstances change
A “national coherence” that creates common ground among police
Concerns
Might under-engage with citizens and over-rely on technology
Compstat-like bean-counting can distort what police do
Do we know the environment of policing well enough to prescribe
paradigms?
Deployment strategies
Flood problem areas with cops
Uniformed officers look for gangsters
and armed persons in high-crime areas
Heavy use of stop-and-frisk to find guns and contraband
Police presence as a deterrent
Lessen response time to violent incidents
Police Issues: “What Can Cops Really Do?” “Of Hot Spots and Band-Aids”
No free lunch
Diverting patrol officers to these techniques means less patrol and increased
response time in non-selected neighborhoods
Citizens may feel harassed in selected areas
Aggressive enforcement can create legal issues
Police Issues: “Too Much of a Good Thing?”
Police Issues -- Slapping Lipstick I
Ceasefire -- a mixed approach
Law enforcement campaign to curb gun
trafficking, plus a softer “pulling levers”
approach to reduce the demand for guns
Hard: Feds and police arrested gun sellers and
possessors
Soft: Gang members called in and warned
SACSI implemented Ceasefire in ten cities
Project Exile -- a hard approach
Federal laws used to imprison armed felons
PSN -- Project Safe Neighborhoods -- a blend
U.S. Attorneys worked with police chiefs, probation and parole
Participants urged to incorporate Ceasefire’s “pulling levers” approach
Difficulty in getting non-police agencies to participate
At the end, level of Federal prosecution seemed most important
Police Issues:
Slapping Lipstick II
Article in Criminology &
Public Policy evaluated
Ceasefire in Boston,
Project Exile in Richmond
and Compstat in NYC
Ceasefire
Youth homicide
dropped 30 percent compared to 16 percent in non-Ceasefire cities
But actual numerical gains were very small, thus statistically non-significant
(pre-Ceasefire mean 3.5 deaths/month, post-Ceasefire mean 1.3/month)
Can’t tell if improvement was due to more policing or “pulling levers”
Project Exile in Richmond, Virginia
Twenty-two percent yearly decline in gun homicide, considered a success
Compstat in New York City had no demonstrable effect
Peak (Policing America), Walker
(“Broken Windows and Fractured History”)
and many others feel that its crime control value is greatly exaggerated
Citizens expect prompt police response
Best opportunity to catch a criminal, identify witnesses and preserve evidence
is when or shortly after a crime occurs
Community policing, broken windows and other innovations displace officers
from patrol
Issues
Does routine patrol allow a more effective response to crime?
Does routine patrol deter crime?
Does routine patrol make citizens feel safer?
How much of a police force should be allocated to patrol?
Current trends: when budgets tight, police departments are stripping
specialized units to support patrol
Police Issues: Forty Years After Kansas City
Does routine patrol deter crime?
Area randomly divided into 15 beats
Five Control - same as before
Five Reactive - no random patrol
Five Proactive - more patrol
Conclusions: NO CHANGE IN...
Crime
Fear of crime
Citizen attitudes about police
Police call-response capability
Issues
General v. specific deterrence
Experiment kept secret from citizens and crooks
Officers did not respect boundaries when answering calls
Differences between patrol levels was slight
Response time
Findings: Faster police response does not help
(reducing delay in crime reporting does help)
Issue: Was response time significantly decreased?
One versus two-officer cars
Finding: One-officer patrol cars just as safe
Issues
▪ Are “solo” officers equally proactive? Can they be?
▪ Is it really “solo” when multiple cars respond to a hot call?
On-view arrests during routine patrol
Finding: Officers seldom “stumble across” felonies in progress
But what about . . .
On Feb. 28, 2005 the husband and mother of
Federal judge were found shot to death in the
Lefkow’s Chicago home
Suspicion was immediately placed on right-wing
militants against whom Lefkow had ruled on a civil
lawsuit. A huge investigation got under way.
Three days later a West Allis, Wisconsin patrol officer pulled
over Bart Ross for suspicious activities.
Ross, an unemployed electrician and cancer victim, shot himself as the officer
walked up. The officer almost got hit.
Inside the car was a note in which Ross confessed to the shootings. He was angry at
the judge for dismissing his suit against his doctors.
Ross’s DNA was matched against DNA left on a cigarette butt left behind in the
Lefkow residence.
On the morning of April 19, 1995, Timothy
McVeigh parked a rented truck full of
explosives in front of the Federal Building,
got in a car and escaped.
At 9:02 a.m. a massive explosion occurred,
killing 168 persons.
Two hours later McVeigh was stopped by an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer
because his vehicle lacked a license plate. The officer noticed a bulge in McVeigh’s
jacket and arrested him for carrying a loaded .45.
At the station suspicions about his resemblance to sketches of the person who rented
the truck led police to call the Feds.
About 12:45 am, 12/1/09 a Seattle police
officer on routine patrol spotted a parked car
with the hood open and the engine running. He ran the plate and determined
the vehicle was stolen.
While in his car doing paperwork he noticed a man approaching the driver’s
side of the police car. The officer exited the car and ordered the man to stop
and show his hands. The man walked away and reached into his waistband.
The officer fired, striking the man twice. He died at the scene.
The man was identified as Maurice Clemmons, the suspect in the killing of four
Lakewood (Wash.) officers two days earlier. He was armed with one of the
dead officer’s handguns.
Police Issues: “An Illusion of Control”