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A Rant on the Subject by John Butcher
Here, as elsewhere, John speaks for himself, not for the Association
Richmond, along with other jurisdictions, has begun to move toward "Community Policing" and other initiatives designed to respond to four issues:
- the current emphasis on crime fighting has had a limited effect on reducing crime,
- centralized management has often served to isolate police from the communities they serve,
- statistics on unreported crime suggest that in many cases police are not aware of existing problem, and
- police may not have access to pertinent information from citizens that could help solve or deter crime.
Community Policing is a fairly new concept, and different people mean different things by the term. The Justice Department defines it as "a collaboration between the police and the community that identifies and solves community problems." (If you want to read up on the subject, see the Justice Department’s Understanding Community Policing, A Framework for Action (August, 1994). (It's online at http://ncjrs.org/cpdocs.htm).
At this point it might be well to ask what is new about citizens working with the police to recognize and fix problems, and why it is that ancient practice needs a fancy, new name. Indeed, much of what passes for community policing is simply cops moving back from cars to the beat and the brass attempting to repair the department’s relationship with an urban, and increasingly anti-police, constituency.
In any event, the Justice Department tells us that "establishing and maintaining mutual trust" is the central goal of the collaboration between police and community. That makes a measure of sense: Mutual trust is the first requirement for any partnership.
On the problem solving side, the literature recognizes two concepts. First, as we are increasingly learning, changing the physical and social characteristics of an area can affect the crime rate. And, more directly, when the police and the citizens work together to study the problems in a small geographic area, they can make changes, perhaps in the physical and social milieu, that lead in fact to reductions in crime.
The Times-Dispatch interviewed Chief Oliver on the subject of Community Policing in August 1997. It reported on August 30 that the Chief is looking for several changes:
- Police who reflect the area (i.e., more black and female officers, as I read the article)
- Officers who are peace-keepers instead of just law officers
- Up-to-date technology
- Decentralized officers away from "forts"
- More information available to the public
- Officers judged by what problems they have solved in the community
The "technology" part sounds like a Chief who is trying to get his budget increased, but the other items surely are consistent with community policing as I’ve discussed it above. Unfortunately, the Chief left out the threshold issue: mutual trust between the police and the community.
The Richmond Police have a strong record of working with neighborhood watch and neighborhood patrol groups. In the cynical view, those are good ways to quiet the citizenry by giving them something to do, something indeed that reduces the need for police resources in the affected neighborhoods. More reasonably, neighborhood watches and neighborhood patrols are appropriate tools for dealing with neighborhood crime. When incorporated into a general program for targeting the problems identified by the neighborhood, they can be an important tool for community policing. The Patrol is particularly effective at identifying problems. By themselves, however, the Watch and the Patrol exist in a vacuum, without reference to a mutual process for identifying and targeting neighborhood problems.
As this is being rewritten in early 2002 our Chief is leaving Richmond for a really big challenge: Detroit. Perhaps the strongest comment on his tenure here is that he didn't have much to do with the major community policing success in Richmond, CAPS.
The "broken windows" theory of public safety teaches that disorder fosters crime and that untended property fosters disorder. Indeed, many urban problems are tied to property. For example, the drug dealer usually depends on a house or apartment for his base.
Policing is important to maintaining public order but it is not sufficient by itself. The Richmond drug "hot spots" demonstrate this principle: The police have made arrest after arrest at places like Milton & Maryland, but the drug markets there have continued to flourish. The reasons for this are clear: Arresting dealers requires resources in time, money, and people. There is little reward for the expenditure (aside from seeing the wretch in jail), however, because removing one drug dealer merely creates a place for another one.
CAPS approached these issues from the direction of abandoned and unkempt properties. The City quickly noticed that the same techniques that work on ratty property also work on larger problems up to an including drug activity. The principles are simple:
Use citizens to identify and prioritize the problems and give legitimacy to the entire process;
Use all the available tools (including policing, Code enforcement, health department, tax, zoning, licensing, ABC, et al.);
Recognize that making the arrest or writing the Code violation is not success. Success is resolving the problem; and
Keep going until the problem is solved.
None of that is revolutionary. Indeed, Norfolk has been using a similar process for about ten years. However, cooperation with citizens and with other City agencies is revolutionary in Richmond, and this is Good News.
CAPS grew out of the thinking and involvement of Richmond citizens, notably Zoe Anne Green from the Museum District and Meg Lawrence from Ginter Park. Connie Bawcum made it work in the City bureaucracy. And other City people, notably Lt. John Dixon of the 3d Precinct and Mark Bridgman of Code Enforcement, became enthusiastic supporters when they saw how a cooperative approach could solve problems that formerly resisted their best efforts.
As of early 2002 Council has provided a budget for CAPS to go city-wide. The City now has a nice brochure and, more to the point, a functioning process. They just got a nice award from HUD.
Last updated 02/24/02
Please send questions or comments to John Butcher