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COMMUNITY POLICING.
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Essay Subject:
Examines argument that police should live in the communities which they patrol & that citizens should participate more in crime prevention & reporting.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Examines argument that police should live in the communities which they patrol & that citizens should participate more in crime prevention & reporting.
Paper Introduction:
INTRODUCTION
An issue raised more and more in cities across the country is whether or not there should be a requirement for members of the police department to reside in the communities they serve. Indeed, this argument extends beyond the police and often centers on a debate over whether there should be a residency requirement for police, foremen, and city officials. A number of arguments are advanced as to why such rules should be adopted, beginning with giving the police a stake in the community, encouraging greater understanding on the part of each officer of the people he serves, and creating greater accountability. Arguments against include the idea that it really does not matter where the officer resides but how he or she is trained and the belief that sometimes the officer and his or her family may be safer in a
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"If apolice officer (who has been hired to protect and serve) can do more betterthan that, he or she is an animal. Juvenile justice has traditionally been the province of the states.Federalizing juvenile offenses could require the establishment of aredundant federal system and could also impose additional burdens on thestates, if they're required to house juveniles subject to federalprosecution. "Justice: The Explosive Fuhrman Tapes Put the LAPD under New Scrutiny." (June 2, 1997). The police know this is one of theirfunctions, and they also believe, correctly, that it cannot be done to theexclusion of criminal investigation and responding to calls. (The 1964 Civil Rights Actprohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations was based on thecommerce clause of the Constitution.) Arguments about federalization tendto be more political than principled. But there are limits to thattolerance. Just as physicians now recognize the importance offostering health rather than simply treating illness, so the police--andthe rest of us--ought to recognize the importance of maintaining, intact,communities without broken windows.------------------------------------------------------------------------Copyright 1982 by James Q. And they don't want to behandcuffed. POLICE IN THE COMMUNITY One way for the police to learn more about the neighborhood and theresidents is to be residents themselves. Noisy teenagers were told to keep quiet.These rules were defined and enforced in collaboration with the "regulars"on the street. Crime beganto seem less contained in the inner cities as it spilled out onto highways,into shopping centers and suburban schools. Other means must be continued forgetting offices to understand their roles, such as the courses offered inLos Angeles to orient officers to the culture of different parts of thecity. One of the reasons why interest has been so keen recently in changingresidency requirements for police is because of a number of incidents, manyracial, which make critics think that the police officer is toodisconnected from then community. Now he's calling the people he grew upwith trash; he's calling them scum."These caveats about the prospects for community policing in the near futuredo not necessarily mean that the federal promise of new police officers ismisguided. And in the words of Kansas Citycop Walt Mulloy: ``Police work has been forever changed into two phases--before Rodney King and after Rodney King.''What follows are examples of experiments that have shown great promise.They represent the best hope for the future of American police and theircommunities.KANSAS CITYWhere cops are taught how not to be badMonths before Rodney King became a household word, the police department inKansas City, Mo., faced its own Armageddon of police brutality. If Detective Tony Duke had focused only on incidentsin New Briarfield, he would still be investigating burglaries in thathousing project; meanwhile, the community-relations officer would betelling outraged residents that the police were doing all they could andurging people to call in any useful leads. No amount of money is worth acolostomy bag for life. But the price one pays for this is very high.For example, many neighborhoods are being destroyed by drug dealers, whohang out on every street corner. ``It's only part of the solution, butthe key is getting the community involved.''TNT officials are well aware of the program's limitations. 3; pages 29-38.May 1994Crime and Communityby Wendy KaminerBeyond the specific provisions of the new federal crime bill is a set ofbroad assumptions--ideas about the strategies the police should employ notjust to arrest criminals but also to prevent crime, and about sentencingand incarceration and how effectively they deter, incapacitate, or punishoffenders. His Operation Pressure Pointput scores of police officers on the streets to break up the drug dealingbazaar. Efforts to prevent corruption have produced theappearance of corruption.Police Commissioner Ben Ward, in New York, decided that the price of thiskind of anti-corruption strategy was too high. In some regions, the police areviewed as an occupying army present not to protect the people but tocontrol them and to keep them in their place. and George L. The controversy might have endedquickly, but it turned out that Falvo was one of the 33 "problem officers"remaining on the force. Foot patrol, in their eyes, had been prettymuch discredited. Colin Ferguson, whoopened fire on a crowded Long Island commuter train last December, killingsix people and wounding nineteen, bought his gun in California, afterundergoing a sixteen-day waiting period (the store owner added a day "forgood measure" to the state's legally mandated fifteen-day period), andthere's no persuasive evidence that waiting periods have decreased violentcrime in states that already mandate them. For example, Mudd reports, such interagencyissues as park safety and refuse-laden vacant lots got handled moreeffectively when the field supervisors met to talk about them than whenmemos went up the chain of command of one agency and then down the chain ofcommand of another.COMMUNITY organizations along the lines of Neighborhood Watch programs mayhelp reduce crime, but we cannot be certain. Another neighborhood might have different rules, but these,everybody understood, were the rules for this neighborhood. As Nathan Glazer haswritten, the proliferation of graffiti, even when not obscene, confrontsthe subway rider with the inescapable knowledge that the environment hemust endure for an hour or more a day is uncontrolled and uncontrollable,and that anyone can invade it to do whatever damage and mischief the mindsuggests."In response to fear people avoid one another, weakening controls. The uncheckedpanhandler is, in effect, the first broken window. Some Chicagoofficers tell of times when they were afraid to enter the Homes. He also meets with theseyoung people and helps them with their problems ("Policeman Next Door" 6). Community leaders say that while the public's perception of the LAPDhas improved, suspicion remains high. The rise in seriousjuvenile crime overshadows a recent modest decline in violent crime overalland accounts for much public outcry over violence. Several young persons who sawthe theft voluntarily passed along to the police information on theidentity and residence of the thief, and they did this publicly, withfriends and neighbors looking on. The relatively bucolic Sandwich,Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, won out over the beleaguered city of Lynn,among other places. Knowing this helps one understand the significance of suchotherwise harmless displays as subway graffiti. If this cop had gone unchecked, whoknows what his next move would be. These images have touched off fresh concerns aboutpolice brutality -- a phenomenon, Newsweek reported, that may be increasingacross the nation. A change to community policing is notnecessarily supposed to result in more arrests, since its focus is onprevention. More than newpolice officers, Michael Smith says, New York needs new drug treatmentprograms."WE KNOW BEST"Underlying the concern about federal funding for cops are larger questionsabout federal funding in general. Moore, and David M. Contends former assistantLAPD chief David Dotson, "There is still a very active, racist mentalityinside the LAPD." Racial tensions are growing among officers themselves. Officers are told that communication is not just about wordsbut about tone, pitch, distance and body language as well. Forcing them to cooperate by knocking heads together at the toprarely works; what department heads promise the mayor they will do may bearlittle relationship to what their rank-and-file employees actually do. After the owners bought into their plan of attack, the officersvisited each store manager and employee. For centuries, the role of the police as watchmen was judgedprimarily not in terms of its compliance with appropriate procedures butrather in terms of its attaining a desired objective. Meetings betweenteenagers who like to hang out on a particular corner and adults who wantto use that corner might well lead to an amicable agreement on a set ofrules about how many people can be allowed to congregate, where, and when.Where no understanding is possible--or if possible, not observed--citizenpatrols may be a sufficient response. Every policeofficer knows that most crimes don't get solved if victims and witnesses donot cooperate. One police captain we interviewed said that hisdepartment was preoccupied with "stacking widgets and counting beans." Heasked his superior for permission to take officers out of radio cars andhave them work on community problems. Theofficers need to be comfortable with the victims and to understand theperpetrators, and living in the community they serve. "Have the Benefits of Community Policing Been Oversold?" CQ Researcher (November 24, 1995), 1 57.Oppenheimer, Todd. "What the LAPD Ought to Try." U.S. In particular, we do not knowwhat kinds of communities are most likely to benefit from such programs. But theyhear other views as well. KellingThe police and neighborhood safetyIn the mid-l97 s The State of New Jersey announced a "Safe and CleanNeighborhoods Program," designed to improve the quality of community lifein twenty-eight cities. "Good Neighbors in Blue." Scholastic Update (September 4, 1992), 2 -21.McNamara, Joseph D. Like it or not, the police are about the only cityagency that makes house calls around the clock. Dennis Hattermann, ``the perception is the police can't doanything. Surveys of citizens suggest that the elderly are much less likelyto be the victims of crime than younger persons, and some have inferredfrom this that the well-known fear of crime voiced by the elderly is anexaggeration: perhaps we ought not to design special programs to protectolder persons; perhaps we should even try to talk them out of theirmistaken fears. A recent studyfrom Northeastern University shows that students are more likely to view anarrest as involving brutality if the person arrested is black and all thepolice are white: "You can have all the civilian review boards in the world, and you can train every officer to the hilt, and you'll still have cases of brutality," says Jack Levin, the study's author. What is needed is a category of police who have a lower salaryand are just beat cops. At least Congress could offer localities a menu of lawenforcement options, allowing them to choose one from column A and one fromcolumn B or C--more cops or computers or security guards for schools.Attorney General Janet Reno has been obliquely advocating suchdecentralization for some time. So it's not surprisingthat the Senate voted to federalize a great deal of juvenile crime.Amendments passed hastily by the Senate, without hearings, required thatjuveniles over the age of thirteen be federally prosecuted as adults forcertain crimes involving firearms, federalized the possession of handgunsand ammunition by juveniles, and federalized gang activity, looselydefined.In voting for significant expansions of federal jurisdiction overjuveniles, the Senate was undeterred by the absence of a federal system forprosecuting juveniles or federal correctional facilities for incarceratingthem. Childrenbegan to use the car as a playground. In New York they may not. But the reality of police-citizen encounters ispowerfully altered by the automobile. Hampton says that it couldtake up to ten years to implement community policing in a typicalmetropolitan police department, a task complicated by the fact that theaverage tenure for a police chief today is only about three years.Mayors come and go as well, which can bring changes in policing priorities.Shortly after taking office this past January, New York City's new mayor,Rudolph Giuliani, called for a reform of the community-policing programsadopted by his predecessor, David Dinkins. That limit, roughly, is this--the police exist to help regulatebehavior, not to maintain the racial or ethnic purity of a neighborhood.Consider the case of the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago, one of the largestpublic-housing projects in the country. One way of enhancing the effectiveness of the community is throughcommunity policing, which is intended to extend the reach of the policedepartment into the community by creating a stronger connection between thepolice and the community: Community policing calls for a partnership of the police and local residents, and expands the focus of the police from arrests to intervention and preventive "problem solving." In its most reductive form, this approach is viewed as a shift from deploying police officers in patrol cars that randomly cruise the streets and answer calls for assistance to deploying them on the street and encouraging them to establish ongoing relationships with residents. And itis true that liberals and conservatives seem to be staking out some commonground on crime control, at least rhetorically--although the neat divisionsbetween liberal and conservative approaches to crime have always been alittle facile. And by 1987, about 14 percent of big-citypolice--fully twice the share in 1975--were African-Americans.These new-breed cops don't resist academic research on policing; theyembrace it. Evenif the police have no direct effect on crime, many people feel safer intheir presence, assuming they don't harbor suspicions of police brutality,and when people feel safer, they are more likely to venture out of theirhomes to make their neighborhoods safer.The 1 , new officers are specifically intended to help revitalizeneighborhood life; they're supposed to be trained in community policing, aprogressive model of police work embraced, at least rhetorically, bypractically everyone. Gary Majors, one of the courseinstructors. The KCPD'sanswer is two pronged: The department developed an early-warning systemthat flags the force's ``bad boys,'' as they came to be called, and itcreated an intensive training course to enhance cops' communicationsskills.The reform was launched a little over a year ago, when 3 of thedepartment' s top complaint getters were put through a course developed byofficers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. That, at least, is the emerging wisdomabout crime.Talk about community is beginning to dominate criminal-justice debates.Community policing, community defender services, community courts, andcommunity "empowerment" efforts are praised for their "holistic" approachto crime. But then we follow them down the block tomake sure they're really going to see Mrs. Jones."Though citizens can do a great deal, the police are plainly the key toorder maintenance. As long as there is the 'usvs. ``Police are notorious for beingone of the hardest groups to initiate change in. But the citizens living in their ownvillages were much more likely than those living in the Chicagoneighborhoods to say that they do not stay at home for fear of crime, toagree that the local police have "the right to take any action necessary"to deal with problems, and to agree that the police "look out for the needsof the average citizen." It is possible that the residents and the policeof the small towns saw themselves as engaged in a collaborative effort tomaintain a certain standard of communal life, whereas those of the big cityfelt themselves to be simply requesting and supplying particular serviceson an individual basis.If this is true, how should a wise police chief deploy his meager forces?The first answer is that nobody knows for certain, and the most prudentcourse of action would be to try further variations on the Newarkexperiment, to see more precisely what works in what kinds ofneighborhoods. Making the police more a part of the community is a worthy goal.Police who live in a community clearly have a better understanding of thecommunity. Kelling. Sometimes what Kelly did could be described as"enforcing the law," but just as often it involved taking informal orextralegal steps to help protect what the neighborhood had decided was theappropriate level of public order. He states that the people were glad to see him arrive. Then random destructionbegan--windows were smashed, parts torn off, upholstery ripped. Some of the things he did probably wouldnot withstand a legal challenge.A determined skeptic might acknowledge that a skilled foot-patrol officercan maintain order but still insist that this sort of "order" has little todo with the real sources of community fear--that is, with violent crime. Studies of police behaviorceased, by and large, to be accounts of the order-maintenance function andbecame, instead, efforts to propose and test ways whereby the police couldsolve more crimes, make more arrests, and gather better evidence. All theofficers say they're innocent, but doctors who examined Louima say hisinjuries are consistent with the sadistic story. RogerDunham, who studied the program: ``Police are able to go into theseneighborhoods, do intensive enforcement and keep the people on theirside.''CALIFORNIA COLLEGEWhere cops learn how to be leadersAs a commander in the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department's Safe Streetsbureau, Capt. Michael E. One temptation is to try to sell the public on the need for morepolicemen and decide later how to use them. While most residentsfeel safer, allegations of excessive force shot up 62 percent during thefirst two years of the crackdown. The captain worried, however,that he would not be given enough time to achieve this and that the beancounters would cut off his program.A better way to justify getting resources from the city is to stimulatepopular demand for resources devoted to problem-solving. In 1967, the average education level for policewas 12.4 years, a bit more than a high- school diploma; now, the averagelaw enforcement officer has 13.6 years of schooling, well into thesophomore year of college. They don't say 'No more aid topoor countries unless we learn to do that efficiently' either." Brattonbelieves that some police departments do need additional officers, althoughtheir needs will vary. While few people are claimingwidespread police brutality, complaint hot lines are flooded with calls,typically minorities claiming they were stopped or hassled for trumped-upreasons. Window-breaking doesnot necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited bydetermined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers;rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and sobreaking more windows costs nothing. Ina sense, the police have always been community-oriented. Soon the buildingwill have no windows. Psychologists have done manystudies on why people fail to go to the aid of persons being attacked orseeking help, and they have learned that the cause is not "apathy" or"selfishness" but the absence of some plausible grounds for feeling thatone must personally accept responsibility. Since the projectbegan four months ago, there hasn't been a robbery at any of the stores.These and other episodes suggest that San Diego's approach to communitypolicing may work. ``Nowpolice are eager to get involved in the dialogue,'' says longtimeresearcher George Kelling of Northeastern University.Of all the catalysts for change, however, the single most powerful was thedrug-and-crime crisis that has shaken America since the mid- '8 s. No way of wresting control of a neighborhood from a streetgang has yet been proved effective.And even if these questions are answered, a police department may stillhave difficulty accommodating two very different working cultures: thepatrol officers and detectives who handle major crimes (murders, rapes, androbberies) and the cops who work on community problems and the seeminglyminor incidents they generate. The mayor said he does not feel as strongly about a residencyrequirement for other city workers, nor did those who answered the poll.About 48 percent said city public school teachers should be required tolive in the city, while 5 percent thought firefighters, sanitation workersand other newly hired public employees should. Works CitedBeals, Gregory and Matt Bai. An officer on foot cannot separatehimself from the street people; if he is approached, only his uniform andhis personality can help him manage whatever is about to happen. Wilson and George L. Just 29 officers were responsible for 3 3of the 756 citizen complaints filed in the previous two years. In such an atmosphere it is easy to accept the notionthat tough cops prevent crime.Giuliani and the two police commissioners of his administration, WilliamBratton and Howard Safir, have argued strongly that vigorous police actionagainst so-called quality-of-lifeviolations has cut murders in half and greatly reduced other violentcrimes. Their lawyer states, If women, minority, gay and lesbian officers are subject to discrimination, harassment and assaults by their fellow officers, how could anyone expect those officers to treat the general public any better? Barriers tocommunication are discussed at length. In their sparetime, and in order to get money to buy drugs, they steal from theirneighbors. Often, members of the public keep their distancefrom police officers out of concern that they will be investigated orsomehow drawn into police activity or because of a general distrust of thepolice: "American studies show high social isolation of police officers incomparison with people in other occupations (Guyot 279). While crime has been reduced,complaints against the police have increased, with many citizens seeingtheir neighborhoods today as occupation zones: Polls show that most New Yorkers approve of the NYPD's crime strategy. We are not so sure. COPE officers worked withmembers of other agencies to upgrade street lighting in the area, trimshrubbery, install door locks, repair the roads and alleys, and get moneyto build a playground. What is indisputable is that a domesticfight--like many other events to which the police respond--is less an"incident" than a problem likely to have serious, long-term consequences.Another such problem, familiar to New Yorkers, is graffiti on subway cars.What to some aesthetes is folk art is to most people a sign that animportant public place is no longer under public control. The message of politicians to police that they are soldiers in a warmay be driving these angry and violent expressions of contempt. Under the reforms, police were rigorously trained, organized into acentralized, paramilitary structure and removed from the worst of localpolitical interference. The "ship of policing"will turn slowly, Commissioner Bratton cautions, because "we have to changeeverything we do"--recruitment, training and supervision, and militaristicmanagement policies. It envisions the demilitarization of policedepartments, a shifting of authority down through management to the ranks,so that cops on the street will have more discretion and can go beyondmaking arrests to analyzing underlying problems and responding to them withcommunity cooperation. The average policeofficer in America is never going to draw his gun in his entire career."The image of policing is still shaped by the entertainment industry, RonaldHampton observes. Joe Domanick, author of an LAPD history called "To Protectand to Serve," puts it this way: "The Mark Fuhrmans are a dying breed. One, done inPortland, Oregon, indicated that three fourths of the adults interviewedcross to the other side of a street when they see a gang of teenagers;another survey, in Baltimore, discovered that nearly half would cross thestreet to avoid even a single strange youth. Maybe the next time, you will get stopped by a cop whojust had a fight with his wife, got into an argument with someone from the'wrong' part of town, and in his anger at something you said or didn't say,and will club you. They did so, by and large, without taking thelaw into their own hands--without, that is, punishing persons or usingforce. Thepowers that be took the report at face value, but Wilson and kelling didnot: But in our view, and in the view of the authors of the Police Foundation study (of whom Kelling was one), the citizens of Newark were not fooled at all. The Transit Police haveplayed their part by arresting those who paint the cars, but they have beenmore successful at keeping cars from being defaced in the first place thanthey were at chasing people who were spraying already defaced ones.WHILE the phrase "community-oriented policing" comes easily to the lips ofpolice administrators, redefining the police mission is more difficult. 5;pages 111-12 .Justice: The explosive Fuhrman tapes put the LAPD under new scrutinySo just how rotten is the Los Angeles Police Department? The citizens felt that the police were insensitive or brutal; thepolice, in turn, complained of unprovoked attacks on them. Muggers and robbers,whether opportunistic or professional, believe they reduce their chances ofbeing caught or even identified if they operate on streets where potentialvictims are already intimidated by prevailing conditions. Haunted by the brutal video images of Rodney King and theflickering flames of south-central Los Angeles, by frightening violent-crime rates and an intractable drug crisis, cops are under tremendouspressure to accelerate reforms that have been gathering steam since the mid-'8 s. Norhave conservatives ignored root causes; they've just defined themdifferently. Joseph Mancini, a spokesman for the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association,said the PBA has never objected to incentives like extra points for cityresidents on civil service tests for new hires but has pushed against anyrequirements that would be retroactive. ``I've learned how to implement ideas withoutstepping on toes, so it covers all the stakeholders, '' he says.Would Daryl Gates have said that?Copyright _ 1996, by U.S. Increasing local control of federal grant money would be effectiveto the extent that local officials are smart, innovative, and reasonablyhonest. "Usually, police who live in the city become police officers, make amiddle-class income and decide to move out," Mancini said. "How did this happen?" people ask, surveying the wreckage.------------------------------------------------------------------------Copyright 1982 by Wendy Kaminer. So far the explosion of gun violence may haveincreased the desire for gun control more than the desire to own guns.(Reported ownership of firearms has remained fairly stable during the pastten years, according to Gallup, while support for gun control hasincreased.) But the balance could shift if the violence continues; ifpeople lose all faith in the government's ability to protect them, theywill take drastic steps to protect themselves, with public approval. Inboth cases, the ratio of respectable to disreputable people is ordinarilyso high as to make informal social control effective.Even in areas that are in jeopardy from disorderly elements, citizen actionwithout substantial police involvement may be sufficient. I was a choirboyonce, too, all willing to give the 'bad boys' a break in hopes they mightsee the light. They must not arise from a rigid concept ofpublic order formulated within the police culture.Many of the current brutality cases show officers in an almost maniacalrage. Police-citizen relations have improved--apparently, both sides learned something from the earlier experience.Recently, a boy stole a purse and ran off. For instance, cops need to know thatparts of their traditional garb, like leather gloves or mirroredsunglasses, may send an unintended menacing message. It's a lesson other citiesmight heed: if the top brass can't rein in their own, they may find thatthe voters will do it for them. His lawyer, Darryl Mounger, hassuggested Fuhrman may invoke his Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination. The stony mug-shots of four N.Y. It seeks to increase community participation incrime control. He suggested that social service is at best an"add on" to police work and at worst a distraction from crime control.Giuliani's remarks typified the response of law-enforcement traditionaliststo new models of policing and missed the point made by advocates ofcommunity policing: that crime control includes crime prevention, whichrequires an understanding of a community's character and its social-serviceneeds.TURNING THE "SHIP OF POLICING"Community policing may be a particularly hard sell at a time when afrightened and angry public is demanding a more punitive justice system,not a more understanding one. ``We know we don't mean anything by it, but people think we'retrying to be intimidating, and that could start something.'' Supportivelistening--sustained eye contact and frequent nodding--is also emphasized.In addition, instructors offer a variety of simple but specificcommunication tools that may help smooth out potential confrontations. While the number of female officers hasrisen to 17 percent from 13 percent in 1991, sexist attitudes seemcommonplace in the department. TheSenate also passed a ban on the sale of guns to minors (which is alreadyillegal in many states) and on the manufacture of certain assault weapons.6 MILLION HANDGUNSThese were not exactly controversial measures, although they were quitedifficult to pass. This argument misses the point. First, in the period before, say, World War II, city dwellers-because of money costs, transportation difficulties, familial and churchconnections--could rarely move away from neighborhood problems. Their presence deterred disorder or alerted the community todisorder that could not be deterred. But problems persist, chief among themthe presence of youth gangs that terrorize residents and recruit members inthe project. Although most major race riots in the last 35 years--from Detroit toLos Angeles--have started with a police altercation, no national data oncomplaints has ever been kept. Itwas a campaign promise."Ronald Hampton, the executive director of the National Black PoliceAssociation, agrees that on the whole we have enough police officers; hecontends that we simply don't educate or use them properly. A few months ago Pittsburgh residents voted to create a newcivilian watchdog panel, despite the federal settlement and the strongobjections of the mayor and the local paper. Polls show that most New Yorkers approve ofthe NYPD's crime strategy. ``For the first time, I am hanging out on my street. But it could be. Last summer, they formed a neighborhoodassociation and staged a job fair and family carnival at the intersection.Kathy Ramsey, a nursing recruiter who owns a nearby home, says the officersinspired residents. Even old-line chiefs find the trends disturbing--and concede that the old forms ofpolice work seem to have no effect. But vandalism can occuranywhere once communal barriers--the sense of mutual regard and theobligations of civility--are lowered by actions that seem to signal that"no one cares."We suggest that "untended" behavior also leads to the breakdown ofcommunity controls. It reduced the mobility of the police, who thus haddifficulty responding to citizen calls for service, and it weakenedheadquarters control over patrol officers.Many police officers also disliked foot patrol, but for different reasons:it was hard work, it kept them outside on cold, rainy nights, and itreduced their chances for making a "good pinch." In some departments,assigning officers to foot patrol had been used as a form of punishment.And academic experts on policing doubted that foot patrol would have anyimpact on crime rates; it was, in the opinion of most, little more than asop to public opinion. Landmark work in the 197 s and early198 s, for instance, showed that random vehicle patrol had little impact oncrime and that rapid response to calls had almost no effect on thelikelihood of catching criminals. Wilson and George L. The real impetus for change, though, came not from therevelations of the research but from a new generation of better-educatedpolice leaders more willing to challenge the conventional wisdom. Often it went unnoted.Today there is frequently an element of police gangsterism. The merchantasks them to move; they refuse. However, this places more onus onthe public than on the police, and the police have to make an effort toreach out to the community in a variety of ways. Small groups ofpolice officers share a fermenting contempt for the people they encounter.Rogue cops band together and cover one another's crimes. They recommended steps todiscourage robberies, including removing window signs that might block theview from passing squad cars, playing loud opera music outside to drive offloiterers and employing two clerks at peak robbery times. Within ninemonths, local residents had cleaned up a vacant lot at the corner, helpedpolice pinpoint drug activity and pressured a local market to stop sellinggang and drug paraphernalia. But it is an acknowledgment that effective near-total prohibitions on guns are as unrealistic as prohibitions on drugs andalcohol. The governor and other state officials wereenthusiastic about using foot patrol as a way of cutting crime, but manypolice chiefs were skeptical. Young men are more frequently attacked than older women, notbecause they are easier or more lucrative targets but because they are onthe streets more.Nor is the connection between disorderliness and fear made only by theelderly. The idea is that police departments will become moreeffective not by increasing their numbers but by extending their reach intocommunities. Kelling. Whenmovement did occur, it tended to be along public-transit routes. . cops accused oftorturing the man. In a speech to the American Bar Associationlast August she explained the problem of categorized funding like this: "Wehave created a giant federal government with many agencies designed to helppeople, and they come up with wonderful programs and come to the communityand tell the community, 'We've got this wonderful program but, I'm sorry,you're not eligible for it. But the perception of brutality seems to beon the rise. That kid wouldn't have said that beforehe went into the police academy. Within amonth in mid-199 , one officer struck a Baptist minister with the butt of ashotgun and another fiercely beat a priest with a nightstick. In Bostonpublic housing projects, the greatest fear was expressed by persons livingin the buildings where disorderliness and incivility, not crime, were thegreatest. He criticizes departments that encourage cops to demand IDs fromresidents or conduct neighborhood drug sweeps, indiscriminately stoppingand frisking people--too often involving excessive force. Overthe past two decades, the shift of police from order-maintenance to lawenforcement has brought them increasingly under the influence of legalrestrictions, provoked by media complaints and enforced by court decisionsand departmental orders. More than a few officers think it is justthe latest ``flavor of the month'' experiment that detracts from the nutsand bolts of crime fighting. It means backing them up with departmentsupport and resources.The reason these are not easy things for police chiefs to do is not simplythat chiefs are slaves to tradition, though some impatient advocates ofcommunity-oriented policing like to say so. For example:- When a gunfight occurred at Garden Village, a low-income housing projectnear Baltimore, the Baltimore County police responded by investigating boththe shooting and the housing project. Not long after it opened,in 1962, relations between project residents and the police deterioratedbadly. Some cities, like Seattle and Chicago, have managed to step upenforcement and maintain, if not improve, police-community relations. For another, no citizen in aneighborhood, even an organized one, is likely to feel the sense ofresponsibility that wearing a badge confers. Obviously,when a crime occurs, the victim is entitled to a rapid, effective policeresponse. There is strong majority support for gun control.Seventy percent of Americans want stricter gun laws, according to Gallup;nearly 9 percent of the public favors the Brady bill.But even supporters of the Brady bill are likely to concede that it willprobably have little effect overall on gun violence. For one thing, many communities, such as the RobertTaylor Homes, cannot do the job by themselves. Requiring officers to live in thecommunity is seen as a way of enhancing the community policing effort in avariety of ways and of adding to the comfort level on both sides. Some officers take advantage ofthis barrier, perhaps unconsciously, by acting differently if in the carthan they would on foot. ``If the guy swallows thedrugs, will the officer shoot him in the head?'' It is a scene, says Flynn,that inner-city Miami residents will never see. Theprofessionalizing did not really take root nationally until the 195 s and196 s. Says the ACLU's CarolSobel, a lawyer who represents the 55 women suing: "If women, minority, gayand lesbian officers are subject to discrimination, harassment and assaultsby their fellow officers, how could anyone expect those officers to treatthe general public any better?" This week's court action may be almost anticlimactic for L.A. Put another way, it's whose son is being hassled. In theprocess, "Crime may be under control," Gregory Beals and Matt Bai wrote inlast week's issue, "but what about the cops?" A number of responses supported police who dare to be tough, even atthe cost of brutality. When the citizens in these citiessee police cars drive past scenes of open drug dealing, they assume thepolice have been paid off. It's also possible that in the rush to saturate the streets with cops,cities have hired officers who might not have made the cut otherwise. She talks about pro bono legal work. Then Zimbardo smashed part of it with a sledgehammer.Soon, passersby were joining in. "The best way for us to deal with this is not to require people to livehere, but to make New York City a desirable place to live," Giuliani saidyesterday, adding that he supports a series of incentives that would makeit more attractive for police to live in the city. OrrinHatch thinks that the federal government should allow each of the fiftystates to develop a values curriculum for public schools, without worryingso much about strict separations of Church and State; some religiousvalues, he says, are "generic values that help people realize there is abetter way." Janet Reno talks about providing families with social servicesthat will help ensure that every child is raised with a conscience. Fromhis experiences in New York City government Mudd discovered that if youwant agencies to cooperate in solving neighborhood problems, you have toget the neighborhood-level supervisors from each agency together in a"district cabinet" that meets regularly and addresses common concerns. They knew what the foot-patrol officers were doing,they knew it was different from what motorized officers do, and they knewthat having officers walk beats did in fact make their neighborhoods safer.But how can a neighborhood be "safer" when the crime rate has not gone down--in fact, may have gone up? Similar projects are under way in cities all over America.This pattern constitutes the beginnings of the most significantredefinition of police work in the past half century. The Justice Department recently awarded a small number of community-policing grants, in some cases favoring suburbs and towns with low crimerates over more crime-ridden cities. Federal districtcourts are already swamped by drug cases that should probably be tried instate courts. . Indeed, even George Kelling, a RutgersUniversity criminal-justice professor who coauthored the broken-windowstheory--and helped Bratton implement it--now worries that his ideas aregetting twisted on the ground. The FBI is investigating the shooting for possiblecivil- rights violations. Social psychologists andpolice officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken andis left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. ``We worked closely with the police department,'' shesays. But in factliberals have never advocated disbanding police departments, tearing downprisons, and ignoring the effects of crime while we await its cure. Today,the vigilante movement is conspicuous by its rarity, despite the great fearexpressed by citizens that the older cities are becoming "urban frontiers."But some community-watchmen groups have skirted the line, and others maycross it in the future. Leefound evidence suggesting a possible second footprint, bolstering thedefense theory of a second killer. Inevitably, questions about police brutality come back to race. The tacit police-citizen alliance in theproject is reinforced by the police view that the cops and the gangs arethe two rival sources of power in the area, and that the gangs are notgoing to win.None of this is easily reconciled with any conception of due process orfair treatment. If the back alleys are cleaned up and the abandoned buildingstorn down, the drug users will go away. Most of the 44 "problem officers" singled out by thecommission -- headed by now Secretary of State Warren Christopher -- remainon the force. Wilson and Kelling note of crime, "Most crime in most neighborhoodsis local: the offenders live near their victims" (Wilson and Kelling 46).This makes people in these neighborhoods feel less safe, just as they canbe made to feel more safe if police offices live in the neighborhood. Moreover, the best people are usually kept in thedetective squad that handles the really big cases. The people expect the police to "do something" about this, andthe police are determined to do just that.But do what? If graffitipainters can attack cars with impunity then muggers may feel they canattack the people in those cars with equal impunity. Though the area was run-down, its streets were filled withpeople, because it was a major transportation center. If a dispute erupted between a businessmanand a customer, the businessman was assumed to be right, especially if thecustomer was a stranger. But if responding to incidents is all that the police do, thecommunity problems that cause or explain many of these incidents will neverbe addressed, and so the incidents will continue and their number willperhaps increase.This will happen for two reasons. Then, in 1984, DetectiveTony Duke, assigned to a newly created police task force, decided tointerview the residents of New Briarfield about their problems. New York: The Free Press, 1996.McAdoo, Maisie and Herbert Buchsbaum. Thepolice are familiar with this pattern, and they have learned how best torespond to it. The criminal-apprehension process was always understood toinvolve individual rights, the violation of which was unacceptable becauseit meant that the violating officer would be acting as a judge and jury--and that was not his job. Within a few hours, the car had beenturned upside down and utterly destroyed. Innovation may offendspecial interests, such as wealthy neighborhoods opposed to diversion ofmanpower to higher-crime areas. There is no way to cover the smell or thehumiliation one feels from wearing it. Cops in minority neighborhoodswould detain, question and push around people on the street without reason.If a young man asserted his legal right to leave, cops "kicked ass."Inevitably a number of officers felt justified in using illegal and attimes fatal force. J. In Congress politicians, right and left, often begin discussions ofcrime control by pointing out that 95 percent of all crime is local. It means working with the good guys, and not justagainst the bad guys.The link between incidents and problems can sometimes be measured. After the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles, theChristopher Commission was formed to investigate this matter and examinedthe question of racism and bias as it might affect the use of excessiveforce in cases like that of Rodney King. Perhaps the best known is thatof the Guardian Angels, a group of unarmed young persons in distinctiveberets and T-shirts, who first came to public attention when they beganpatrolling the New York City subways but who claim now to have chapters inmore than thirty American cities. The instructors arecivilians, often from California universities, and classes are held at avariety of sites around the state.A candidate for the college must be nominated by a higher-ranking officerand has to pass a two-day evaluation by college ``assessors.' ' Manygraduates go on to become chiefs or commanders of their own departments,and they frequently swap advice at an annual brainstorming conference.The curriculum reads like something from an Ivy League professional school:Defining the Future, Strategic Planning, Human Resource Management. KellingSometimes "fixing broken windows" does more to reduce crime thanconventional "incident-oriented" policingNEW Briarfield Apartments is an old, run-down collection of woodenbuildings constructed in 1942 as temporary housing for shipyard workers inNewport News, Virginia. To the residents, thepolice who arrive in squad cars are either ineffective or uncaring: to thepolice, the residents are animals who deserve each other. Theapproach also calls attention to the degree to which the police aredependent on the public for support, information, and cooperation. In July residents in the East L.A.neighborhood of Lincoln Heights threw rocks and bottles for two days whenpolice officer Michael Falvo shot and killed a 14-year-old alleged gangmember -- even though he was apparently holding a Tec-9 semiautomaticpistol later found to be fully loaded. When the police presencemade drug dealing unattractive, the dealers could not--again, at least notfor the time being--find another neighborhood that provided an equivalentsocial infrastructure.The second reason that incident-oriented police work fails to discourageneighborhood crime is that law-abiding citizens who are afraid to go outonto streets filled with graffiti, winos, and loitering youths yieldcontrol of these streets to people who are not frightened by these signs ofurban decay. Stressing that crime is primarily a local problem, hecontends that decategorizing federal money may be the most important stepthe federal government could take to enhance public safety.FEDERALIZING CRIMEThat crime, like politics, is a local affair is a universally acknowledgedtruth. ANortheastern University study to be published next month found thatstudents were more likely to see brutality in the arrest of a black man ifall the cops involved were white. Such partnerships are not always easy, however, and the policeand their new partners may have different goals in mind: "Thesedifficulties are often exacerbated by differences in class and standingbetween the police and their various potential clients and partners"(Sparrow, Moore, and Kennedy 173). A particular rule thatseems to make sense in the individual case makes no sense when it is made auniversal rule and applied to all cases. There's so much fear. In fact, some experts think physical presence and communicationsskills alone could handle up to 98 percent of the incidents potentiallyrequiring force. Congressman Barney Frank asserts that the current failure to usethe police force with the utmost effectiveness and efficiency is no reasonnot to increase its numbers. Now I wouldn'tmove.''After a rash of convenience-store robberies in central San Diego, Sgt.Carey Brooks and Detective John Lusardi conducted a computerized analysisof the crimes and then brought their data to the corporations that own thestores. And thus many of us whowatch over the police are reluctant to allow them to perform, in the onlyway they can, a function that every neighborhood desperately wants them toperform.This wish to "decriminalize" disreputable behavior that "harms no one"- andthus remove the ultimate sanction the police can employ to maintainneighborhood order--is, we think, a mistake. An experiment in Minneapolis, conducted by the PoliceFoundation, showed that men who were arrested after assaulting theirspouses were much less likely to commit new assaults than those who weremerely pacified or asked to leave the house for a few hours. The image of the police as an occupying army is especially strong inblack, Hispanic, and some other ethnic neighborhoods. ``This went from the bottom up, not top down,'' saysSgt. . Aspolice chief for 15 years in San Jose, Calif., I saw this approach succeedmany times where indiscriminate crackdowns had failed. They must not arise from a rigid concept of public order formulated within the police culture (McNamara 28). Nowmobility has become exceptionally easy for all but the poorest or those whoare blocked by racial prejudice. Citizens complain to the policechief, but he explains that his department is low on personnel and that thecourts do not punish petty or first-time offenders. Officers in the Southeast Divisiongot specialized training in how to involve citizens and other city agenciesin their struggle. For the police officer to be truly part of thecommunity, that officer must live in the community. Inthe March, 1969, Atlantic, one of us (Wilson) wrote a brief account of howthe police role had slowly changed from maintaining order to fightingcrimes. Good kids who want to goto school and do the right thing--they're afraid of the gangs and the drugdealers; they want to protect themselves and their families. If we don't firstchange the philosophy of policing in this country, whatever police officerswe add will fall into the black hole that exists in every policedepartment."Everybody talks about community policing, advocates agree, but few policedepartments practice it. Good kids, badkids--the categories don't apply anymore."THE IDEOLOGICAL COMMON GROUND OF "COMMUNITY"If good kids use guns, then crime is not simply a failure of character, asRonald Reagan once claimed. But the traditionalmodel of police professionalism--devoting resources to quick radio-carresponse to calls about specific crime incidents--makes little sense at atime when the principal threats to public order and safety come fromcollective, not individual, sources, and from problems, not incidents: fromwell-organized gangs and drug traffickers, from uncared-for legions of thehomeless, from boisterous teenagers taking advantage of their newfoundfreedom and affluence in congested urban settings.Even if community-oriented policing does not produce the dramatic gainsthat some of its more ardent advocates expect, it has indisputably producedone that the officers who have been involved in it immediately acknowledge:it has changed their perceptions of the community. The good order ofthis area was important not only to those who lived and worked there butalso to many others, who had to move through it on their way home, tosupermarkets, or to factories.The people on the street were primarily black; the officer who walked thestreet was white. The policemay well have become better crime-fighters as a result. Community policing is often described simplistically as a return to cops on the beat who are integral parts of the neighborhood (Kaminer 112).Kelling and Coles state that what is needed is for the community to becomemore involved and to accept mutual responsibility for involvement in crimeprevention (Kelling and Coles 1 6-1 7). ``Itwasn't as much an excessive-force problem as a communications problem,''says Capt. Similarly, police-citizentensions, over racial incidents or allegations of brutality or hostility,can often be allayed, and sometimes prevented, if police officers stay inclose touch with community groups. As an incident, it is trivial. TV transmits vivid pictures of actual violence into the nation'sliving rooms on a daily basis in more and more graphic detail. Being asworn officer--a "real cop"--seems to give one the confidence, the sense ofduty, and the aura of authority necessary to perform this difficult task.Patrol officers might be encouraged to go to and from duty stations onpublic transportation and, while on the bus or subway car, enforce rulesabout smoking, drinking, disorderly conduct, and the like. Arguments against include the ideathat it really does not matter where the officer resides but how he or sheis trained and the belief that sometimes the officer and his or her familymay be safer in a different community, given the tendency on the part ofsome for retaliation. Army Reserveand National Guard?Like a growing number of California police officers, Captain Freeman isapplying the knowledge she gained at the state's Law Enforcement CommandCollege. After listening privately to some 13 hours of tapes --conversations between Fuhrman and screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny -- JudgeLance Ito was expected to allow the defense to play portions in court.Depending on how much Ito allowed in, the tapes could totally discreditFuhrman -- who has testified he found a bloody glove at Simpson's mansion -- and seriously undermine the state's entire case. News & World Report (May 11, 1992), 27-35.March 1982Broken Windowsby James Q. At the same time, the survey found that New Yorkers by a 2-to-1 ratiowant newly hired police officers to be required to live in the city. Kennedy. "They feel theyshouldn't be deprived of the right to seek a suburban lifestyle." Giuliani, who is locked in a salary dispute with the PBA, saidyesterday that many police officers can afford to live in the city andinsisted that some neighborhoods "are just as affordable and possibly evenmore affordable than Nassau or Suffolk County." The mayor added that 72 percent of the newest police class will livehere, and called it "a myth," that the city is too expensive. Now they're charged with taking part intorture. Cops are regularpeople, no better, no worse. cops. Improved lighting,for instance, might cut down on a string of convenience-store robberies.Changing bus routes might prevent rival gangs from having repeated fightsat a particular bus stop.Despite the pressures to change, potent obstacles remain. Some residentsbenefit financially from the local drug trade. Alltoo often, however, the disputants move beyond shouting insults or throwingcrockery at each other. McNamara, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, served aspolice chief of San Jose, Calif., after retiring from the N.Y.P.D.Copyright 1997 Time Inc.JOSEPH D. "A Veteran Chief: Too Many Cops Think It's a War." Time (September 1, 1997), 28.Moran, Richard and Bonnie Bucqueroux. Next comes two weeks of aggressive enforcement, often inconjunction with the neighboring Miami Police Department, which tightensthe screws in adjacent areas under its jurisdiction. Politics, ideology, venality, and incompetence are aptto drive programmatic priorities at the local, state, and federal levelsequally. McNamara, formerlychief of police in San Jose, California, states, It was constantly necessary to emphasize to the officers that we were peace officers, servants of the community--not soldiers in a war against crime and drugs. 1 issue with New Yorkers;25 percent said so, followed by 19 percent who listed education. Every time conservative preachers and politicians rail againstpornography, or the media's attack on family values, or the legitimizationof homosexuality, they are addressing what they see as root causes ofcrime. "Police perjury, manufacturingevidence and a code of silence occur far too often," charges defenseattorney Barry Tarlow. For Police Chief Steven Bishop, a bespectacled, cerebral, 2 -yearKCPD veteran only days into the job, the turmoil represented an opportunityto begin changing the department's ethos.He acted decisively: One officer was fired, another suspended for sixmonths without pay. In New York--which dubbed its program CPR,for "courtesy, professionalism and respect"--commanders are heldaccountable for citizen complaints, just as they are for the number ofcrimes. Wilson and George L. The stakes must bepersonal in addition to professional. The first 3 officers totake the course totaled 73 complaints between January 199 and April 1991;in the following year, they had only 25.Not all the reviews are raves, to be sure. the researchers found thatefforts at social control within neighborhoods does indeed influence ratesof violent crime. "You can't force them back in," he said, pointing out that the highcost of housing in the city and a perception that schools are better in thesuburbs are often factors in the decision to leave. First, police meet with community leaders to identify andtarget areas of high drug crime. Community policing is oftendescribed simplistically as a return to cops on the beat who are integralparts of the neighborhood.NEW AGE COPSIn its sophisticated form, however, community policing entails what WilliamBratton, formerly Boston's and now New York City's police commissioner, hascalled a "sea change" in the concept of policing, from reactive, "incident-oriented" law enforcement to a hybrid of enforcement and community-servicework aimed at crime prevention. Under the rubric of"community" Reno can call for a return to the legal-service ethic of theearly 197 s while Orrin Hatch calls for government vouchers to ensureschool choice, getting values into schools, and "cleaning up" televisionand movies. Again, the "vandals" appeared tobe primarily respectable whites.Untended property becomes fair game for people out for fun or plunder andeven for people who ordinarily would not dream of doing such things and whoprobably consider themselves law-abiding. Instead of allocatingmoney for police officers, the argument goes, Congress should establish amore general, flexible fund for public safety or domestic security. But his critics ask whether that sort of trade-off isappropriate to democracy: if there's zero tolerance for street crime, whyisn't there zero tolerance for overzealous cops? Patrol cars arrive, an occasional arrest occurs butcrime continues and disorder is not abated. The KCPD hassince created its own curriculum, taught by nine respected sergeants.Citizen gripes are tracked by a computer, which flags any cop with three ormore complaints in six months. Some experts say it's the result of aggressive crimefighting.With more cops on the beat, there are bound to be more confrontations. When both a suspect in the shooting and a particularlytroublesome parole violator were arrested, gang tensions eased. From the earliest days of the nation, the police function was seenprimarily as that of a night watchman: to maintain order against the chiefthreats to order--fire, wild animals, and disreputable behavior. The school department may have expelled the truant children formaking life miserable for the teachers and the other students; the lastthing it wants is for the police to tell the school to take the kids back.All city and county agencies have their own priorities and face their ownpressures. Says Miami University Prof. They are the responsibility of the landlord,the tenants themselves, and city agencies other than the police. People usually wantthe federal government to extend jurisdiction in areas in which they favorstepped-up enforcement. A replica of abloody toilet plunger. InNew York, police began in 1994 to enforce behavior that it ignored foryears--going after people who drink or urinate in public, blow horns, jumpsubway turnstiles. They knew what the foot-patrol officers were doing, they knew it was different from what motorized officers do, and they knew that having officers walk beats did in fact make their neighborhoods safer (Wilson and Kelling 3 ). "In the beginning weall wanted the police to bomb the crack houses," she says. The prospect of aconfrontation with an obstreperous teenager or a drunken panhandler can beas fear-inducing for defenseless persons as the prospect of meeting anactual robber; indeed, to a defenseless person, the two kinds ofconfrontation are often indistinguishable. (It has always been fun.)Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychologist, reported in 1969 on someexperiments testing the broken-window theory. As part of the Rodney King case, itwas demonstrated that the police had commonly used racial epithets andracist language in communicating with one another over the policecommunications system, the MDT system: The officers typing the MDT messages apparently had little concern that they would be disciplined or otherwise sanctioned for making those remarks. If theneighborhood cannot keep a bothersome panhandler from annoying passersby,the thief may reason, it is even less likely to call the police to identifya potential mugger or to interfere if the mugging actually takes place.Some police administrators concede that this process occurs, but argue thatmotorized-patrol officers can deal with it as effectively as foot patrolofficers. Pedestrians are approached bypanhandlers.At this point it is not inevitable that serious crime will flourish orviolent attacks on strangers will occur. It iscommon in war to dehumanize the enemy. It is also true that federal control of funds is as effective asfederal officials. In the belief that he wasdefending his home, Peairs asked no questions; the entire encounter tookabout one minute.With more and more people feeling besieged, even at home, by namelessstrangers, like the man who abducted and killed twelve-year-old Polly Klaasin California, studies demonstrating that keeping a gun at home nearlytriples one's risk of being killed (often by someone one knows) willprobably have less effect than studies linking smoking to lung cancer.Millions of people start smoking and continue to smoke because they don'treally believe that lung cancer will ever attack them. "There's an enormous potential for abuse,"he says. This carping doesn't comejust from the criminal class. If someoneviolated them, the regulars not only turned to Kelly for help but alsoridiculed the violator. The authors reported on aprogram in New Jersey to compare neighborhoods with foot patrols to thosewith officers in cars. He said, 'I'm disappointed. Beat cops trained in human relationsskills and basic police training starting in the $2 , to 3 , rangewith preference for city residents would be a novel approach." As a community police officer or not, Gerb7545 argued that cops have tochange their self-image first. Aspracticed in those cities, experts say, the key is to make sure the copsbecome intimately familiar with their neighborhood and its residents.Chicago has also more than doubled the percentage of black and Hispanicofficers, to 36 percent of the force. "Politically, you take what you can get and try to dealwith the down side of the gift." What might be the down side of increasingthe local police force? They need to remember this at all times." To read the entire discussion or to continue it, please click on the'Let's Talk' button of the Newsweek screen margin, then on 'BulletinBoards.' Look for the 'National Affairs' board category -- topic: 'PoliceBrutality.' By the readers of Newsweek Interactive with Todd OppenheimerNewsweek 9/8/97 Departments/My Turn Online: The Thin Blue Line visit publisher NATION: A VETERAN CHIEF: TOO MANYCOPS THINK IT'S A WAR ------------------------------------------------------------------------In the wake of the violent abuse of police authority in New York City, onequestion stands out: How can this happen?One answer is that the nature of police misconduct, if not the volume, haschanged. But many residents will think thatcrime, especially violent crime, is on the rise, and they will modify theirbehavior accordingly. Not violentpeople, nor, necessarily, criminals, but disreputable or obstreperous orunpredictable people: panhandlers, drunks, addicts, rowdy teenagers,prostitutes, loiterers, the mentally disturbed.What foot-patrol officers did was to elevate, to the extent they could, thelevel of public order in these neighborhoods. If crime is to be controlled, police must reach out to other local institutions, and indeed to the broader community at large, and create partnerships. From the first, the police were expected to follow rulesdefining that process, though states differed in how stringent the rulesshould be. For example, when the New York City policecommissioner, Ben Ward, ordered Operation Pressure Point, a crackdown ondrug dealing on the Lower East Side, dealing and the criminality associatedwith it were reduced in that neighborhood and apparently did notimmediately reappear in other, contiguous neighborhoods. Crime also dropped in cities practicing communitypolicing, which I define as a partnership effort with neighborhood groupsin solving such problems as noisy bars, crack houses and prostitution. In many ways the issue echoes a longstanding and contentious debate:how to balance the rights of individuals against the community's interestin calm and order. We have seen this countless times. Liberals focus on root causes, we always say, whileconservatives focus on controlling the effects of crime. Mark Moore, ``it's hardto imagine [police] retreating from the idea of community engagement'' thatund
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