TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/040191/0401107.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 11.6 KB | 239 lines

                N    ]                                                            NATION, Page 22

COVER STORIES

Back to the Beat


As an antidote to police abuses and street crime, many cities
are sending cops into communities to protect, serve -- and
often befriend -- local residents

By RICHARD LACAYO -- Reported by Elaine Shannon/Washington and
Richard Woodbury/Tulsa


    While the Los Angeles Police Department has long relied on
SWAT teams and helicopters for high-tech law enforcement,
police departments in many other cities are turning to methods
that are decidedly low tech. Their weapons of choice? A good
pair of walking shoes and a gift for small talk, coupled with
rigorous training in the basics of policing.

    Frustrated by the failure of standard methods to reduce
crime, more than 300 cities and towns nationwide -- including
Boston, Houston and San Francisco -- are adopting the concept
of community policing. Through Community Patrol Officer
Programs, these municipalities work to build rapport between
police officers and the neighborhoods they patrol. "The message
is: the beat cop is back," says New York City police
commissioner Lee Brown, who last month launched one of the
nation's largest CPOP programs to date.

    When police officers and the citizens of a neighborhood know
each other, CPOP theory holds, it is more difficult for both
criminals and cops to break the law. "Community policing is a
deterrent to the improper use of force because it strengthens
officers' relationships with the community," says Herman
Goldstein, professor of criminal law at the University of
Wisconsin. "The neighborhood support gives police a greater
sense of confidence and authority, which reduces their need for
using force. If police officers feel they don't have the
authority, the power, to handle a situation, they're more likely
to resort to brute force." Referring to the L.A.P.D.'s beating
of Rodney King, Goldstein says, "It's incomprehensible that a
police officer imbued with community policing would engage in
that type of behavior."

    One typical CPOP officer is Donald Christy, 36, of Lansing,
Mich. A little over a year ago, he was assigned to cover a
nine-block area of the city. At first disheartened by the sight
of crack houses and blighted streets, Christy took pains to get
on a first-name basis with many of the area's 700 residents and
learn what neighborhood problems concerned them most. Those
conversations led him to recognize, he says, "that the good
people far outnumbered the bad." Meanwhile, he organized a
volunteer community cleanup, which filled 30 Dumpsters with
litter; arranged federal funding for floral plantings; and even
held a contest to choose a name for the neighborhood: Sparrow
Estates.

    His unconventional approach to policing paid big dividends
in terms of crime control. Residents began to give Christy tips
that helped him drive away criminals. Indoor dealers found
themselves evicted by absentee landlords. "You can walk around
the block now without fear of being attacked,'' says Ralph
Casler, a retired mechanic who has lived in the area for 30
years. Says Christy: "I haven't made an arrest in eight
months."

    The history of the beat cop has traveled full circle: once,
he was nearly driven to extinction by a series of well-intended
but ill-conceived reforms. Until the first decades of this
century, police were all-purpose keepers of the peace. They ran
lodging houses for the homeless, tracked down offensive smells,
rounded up stray animals and kept the streetlamps supplied with
oil. They also gained a reputation for taking payoffs and
doling out a rough brand of curbside justice.

    By the 1930s and '40s, reformers had refashioned police
departments along more narrowly focused lines. Officers were
trained to concentrate on apprehending criminals, especially
for the most serious crimes such as murder, assault, robbery
and rape. Other functions were handed off to city health and
welfare departments or similar agencies. After World War II,
patrol cars and two-way radios came into wider use. Police
became a mobile force, cruising anonymously through
neighborhoods they knew mostly as the staging ground for each
night's disturbances.

    The final reform was the all but universal adoption of the
911 system for emergency calls. With that, police were reduced
to chasing from one crime scene to another, all the while
consolidating the bleakest impression of the people they
served. A recent study found that New York City police spend
90% of their time on the job attending to such calls; they once
spent just 50%. That leaves almost no time for anything else.

    Though the reforms were designed to make police better crime
fighters, it was the law of unintended consequences that they
wound up enforcing most effectively. Many academic experts
believe the changes fostered conditions that contributed to the
sharply higher crime rates of the past three decades. A spate
of scholarly studies has demonstrated that the offenses to
quality of life that police now routinely overlook -- such
things as loud radios, graffiti and aggressive panhandling --
create an atmosphere in which more serious crime is likely to
occur. Those petty disturbances are the ones that trouble and
frighten ordinary citizens the most. In turn, their fear acts
like an acid to disintegrate neighborhood ties. It leads
citizens to shun the streets and abdicate responsibility for
conditions outside their doors. That invites a dismal cycle of
deteriorating conditions, more fear -- and more crime.

    Accordingly, CPOP cops try to discourage crimes before they
happen by maintaining -- or creating -- stable neighborhoods.
That requires them to learn which local problems are of
greatest concern to residents, and help them find solutions.
"Police lost the most valuable thing we had, which is contact
with people," says Washington police chief Isaac Fulwood. "We
really got away from basic common-sense approaches." In a city
where the murder rate soared 10% last year, partly owing to
drugs, Fulwood has established community-policing pilot programs
in two crime-ridden districts. In addition to a lawbook,
patrol officers now have access to a fat directory of
government services.

    "We deal with broken playground equipment and potholes just
as we do with crime," says David Couper, chief of police in
Madison, Wis., which has committed its entire force of 310
officers to the community-policing concept. Officer Joe Balles,
who patrols the city's low-income Broadway-Simpson
neighborhood, hands out a business card with the phone number
of the answering machine in his office. At the end of every day
he has a tape full of pleas for assistance, messages from
tipsters and calls from people who just wanted to chat with
their cop.

    "The police here are more on top of things then they've ever
been," he boasts. Balles may act as point man with the
bureaucracy to get streetlights for a dark alley, or arrange
marital counseling for a household that accounts for repeated
911 calls when the couple starts fighting. Defusing situations
like that can be highly cost effective. In many cities, more
than 60% of emergency calls are generated by just 10% of the
households.

    Community police may also use unconventional means to combat
more serious crimes. When drug dealers in Houston turned a bank
of pay phones outside a convenience store into their personal
business office, a patrolman got the phones removed. In the
same city, a deserted apartment complex where dealers
flourished was finally boarded up after a community cop tracked
down and harangued the property's bankruptcy trustee.

    Whether CPOP can actually drive down the crime rate is still
unproven. The most thorough study of its effectiveness, a 1981
examination of an experimental foot-patrol program in Newark,
found that it did not decrease crime. It did pay off, however,
in psychological well-being. The visible presence of so many
patrolmen made people feel safer and better disposed toward the
police.

    More recently, though, other cities have reported lower
crime rates in specific neighborhoods where the CPOP approach
has been given a try. On Madison's south side, property crime
was reduced 14% between 1987 and 1989. A west Houston
neighborhood recorded a 38% drop in serious crime over a
six-month period in 1988. But the neighboring Houston area
reported increases in crime, which suggests that community
policing simply relocated the problem.

    One big difficulty for police departments is finding the
time and resources to make community policing work. Though some
CPOP cops are assigned full time to the job, many cities are
trying to rely largely on patrol-car officers' doubling as
community police. But the frequency of 911 calls means that
their time for closeup patrolling is limited. Houston's
Neighborhood Oriented Policing program, known as NOP, is
sometimes referred to derisively by police themselves as Nobody
on Patrol.

    Because the 911 system can never be abandoned -- woe to the
mayor of any city in which the police cannot be summoned
quickly during a break-in -- many departments are looking at
ways to cut down on the number of calls. In the Denver suburb
of Aurora, where only about a fourth of an estimated 190,000
calls each year are for real emergencies, police operators
perform "911 triage." Where appropriate, they direct
nonemergency callers to other city agencies. Police officers
take the less urgent crime reports over the phone.

    "We've ingrained the mentality that a stolen bike will bring
an officer to your doorstep quickly," says Aurora division
chief Ronald Sloan. "That has to change."

    Community policing is reshaping police forces themselves.
Some police academies are revamping their curriculums to train
cadets in social-service skills. To dispel the impression in
minority neighborhoods that police are a white army of
occupation, many CPOP plans require increased hiring of
minority officers.

    In a system in which the number of arrests made is no longer
the mark of success, new yardsticks will be needed to measure
individual performance for promotions. "It's hard to measure
what doesn't happen in an area," says Aurora's Sloan. One
proposal is to look at achieved reductions in the crime rate.
Police unions are sure to resist that idea, which would make
officers answerable for the countless variables beyond their
control -- everything from a local recession to a summer heat
wave -- that can lead to increased crime.

    Among the people who don't want to see cops back on the beat
are many of the cops themselves. Middle-level department brass
are suspicious of plans that make patrol officers more
independent. Many of the rank-and-file personnel also scoff at
anything that smacks of social work. "There's an unfounded fear
that it detracts from the macho image and takes the fun out of
putting the bad guys in jail," says Carolyn Robison, a Tulsa
police major. A lot of officers just don't like walking. For
years, being assigned to the beat was a standard way to punish
officers.

    The most daunting aspect of CPOP may be that it so
dramatically expands the idea of what it means to be a police
officer. "This is a radical notion for police," says University
of Wisconsin's Goldstein, "that they have 30 or 40 tools at
their disposal to bring to bear upon complex problems." But
after so many years of getting mixed results from just a few
tools -- handcuffs, a billy club and a gun -- many police are
ready for a change. And so are most of the citizens they serve.