Policing Paradigms

1. Policing Paradigms

2. Development ofAmerican 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

3. “Broken Windows” • Landmark article by James Q. Wilson andGeorge Kelling in March 1982 Atlantic Monthlymagazine • 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

4. Community policing • 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

5. Concerns about thecommunity model • Is it rhetoric or reality? • “Cacophony” of purpose -- absorbing everycrime-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)

6. Problem-oriented Policing

7. What is problem-oriented policing? • 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

8. SARA • 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

9. Response -- develop and implement solutions • Example: street drug sales • Soft responses: No incoming pay phone calls;cleaning up junk and graffiti; urging landlords toscreen and evict drug-dealing tenants • Hard responses: Gang injunctions; concentrated enforcement; surveillance and undercover work • Assessment -- evaluate effectiveness of response with traditional and non-traditional measures • Crime trends, clearance rates • Citizen complaints • Truancy • Fear • Business profits • Property values

10. Evaluations of problem-oriented policing • 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

11. Integrative Strategies

12. Combining community policing &problem oriented policing • It’s now assumed that “community policing”incorporates problem-oriented policing • How to implement • Provide leadership: convince the troops thatprevention 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

13. Evaluation of community & problemoriented policing in Chicago • 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 oncommunity 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

14. The “New Professionalism” • 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?

15. Aggressive Policing

16. Policing “hot-spots” • Deployment strategies • Flood problem areas with cops • Uniformed officers look for gangstersand 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?”

17. Ceasefire / Project Exile /Project Safe Neighborhoods • Police Issues -- Slapping Lipstick I • Ceasefire -- a mixed approach • Law enforcement campaign to curb guntrafficking, plus a softer “pulling levers”approach to reduce the demand for guns • Hard: Feds and police arrested gun sellers andpossessors • 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

18. Evaluations • Police Issues:Slapping Lipstick II • Article in Criminology &Public Policy evaluatedCeasefire in Boston,Project Exile in Richmondand Compstat in NYC • Ceasefire • Youth homicidedropped 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

19. Police Patrol

20. Is routine patroloveremphasized? • 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

21. 1973 Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment • 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

22. Four years later:1977 Kansas City patrol study • 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 progressBut what about . . . 

23. Stumbling: Murder of husbandand mother of Federal judge • On Feb. 28, 2005 the husband and mother ofFederal judge were found shot to death in theLefkow’s Chicago home • Suspicion was immediately placed on right-wingmilitants against whom Lefkow had ruled on a civillawsuit. A huge investigation got under way. • Three days later a West Allis, Wisconsin patrol officer pulledover 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.

24. Stumbling: OklahomaCity bombing • On the morning of April 19, 1995, TimothyMcVeigh parked a rented truck full ofexplosives 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.

25. Stumbling:Lakewood shooter • About 12:45 am, 12/1/09 a Seattle policeofficer on routine patrol spotted a parked carwith 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”