The history of modern policing is littered with the remains of well-intentioned reforms that faltered and died. community relations and team policing are only two of the most obvious recent examples. Both undeniably had merit. Both were launched with great enthusiasm. both involved many officers who cared deeply about making the programs work. And both have almost completely disappeared.
Now that there are more than 240 community policing programs nationwide, it might seem this revolutionary reform movement is too firmly entrenched to die. But my fear is that the approach is instead at a crucial point in its evolution, which means that everyone who cares about seeing community policing survive must try to understand the threats and then educate others both inside and outside policing about what must be done.
The unpleasant reality is that public policing in general is under siege, and if it fails to survive, all public police programs, including community policing, risk being "privatized" out of existence. In addition, community policing still remains widely misunderstood, and today's tight police budgets mean police officials face tough choices when they try to launch or expand a community policing effort.
Especially in our major cities, the problem is complicated further because police budgets cannot be stretched far enough to meet the need. As both businesses and residents who can do so continue to flee our cities, they take with them not only their tax dollars, but most of their spendable income as well. Those city services and businesses left behind therefore find themselves trapped in a downward spiral that may never reverse.
Many inner-city neighborhoods today have become the dumping ground for the elderly poor, the disabled, beleaguered minorities, the homeless, those on the public dole or unemployment, the mentally ill, or those who lack the job skills to find more than menial work. As the gap between rich and poor (and the middle class) grows even wider, the disparity in the police service each receives grows wider as well. The irony - or perhaps the result - is that the poor are the most likely to be the victims of crime and the least likely to be able to buy more police protection. Many urban police today struggle to handle bigger and bigger problems with fewer and fewer resources.
All too often as well, big-city police departments are not seen as the victims in this drama, but as one of the culprits. Since the reform movement of the Thirties, the police have billed themselves, first and foremost, as crime-fighters, and against that yardstick, many departments have failed - badly.
In rebuttal, police point to stagnant budget numbers and cite improvements in response times or arrest rates. Yet those figures mean little to the people who work and live in major cities where streets are littered with garbage, drunks sleep in alleys, gun-toting teenage toughs prowl the streets, and dealers openly sell drugs on streetcorners. While most of those conditions describe decay - and not crime - many police still don't realize that the "consumers" of police services see serious crime as only part of a broad range of social problems they expect the police to solve.
Educating the public that the police can do little about the root causes of crime, such as poverty and unemployment, may help improve their overall credibility, as can showing people that the police are only one element in an embattled criminal justice system. But explaining to someone who has been mugged why prosecutors must plea bargain that criminal back onto the street can backfire by undermining confidence in the system even more.
In this troubled atmosphere, when many people believe that government cannot handle any job well and that private enterprise would at least be a cheaper alternative, the future portrayed in the movie Robocop, where Detroit hired a private corporation to police the city, may prove prophetic. Experiments with for- profit prisons demonstrate that private enterprise is willing to try. In states such as California, well-heeled litigants in civil cases, who want speedier justice than the public system provides, can hire a private enterprise "rent-a-judge-and-jury" firm to render a legally binding decision by agreeing to split the $15,000 a week fee such companies charge. (Some firms offer an appeals judge service as well.)
If private policing ultimately replaces public policing, it may well appear first in our inner cities, the places where community policing often makes the biggest difference. In fact, private enterprise might well retain community policing as one of its approaches. When the city of Flint cancelled its foot patrol program, two large housing developments hired some program officers to patrol during their off-duty hours, the same as they had as part of the public efforts.
Yet even if private enterprise maintains community policing, it would not survive intact. An important part of the community policing contract with the community is that it allows residents a voice in setting police priorities. Private enterprise, by definition, listens to its stockholders, not citizens. The automatic loss of community input and control inherent in a private, for-profit police force poses a very real threat to our democratic civil rights.
Public police - and those who care about its future - should consider a two-part effort to promote its survival. As noted earlier, the public needs to see the "big picture" and how the police fit in. But, in addition, police departments must find ways to do more to improve the overall quality of life in our cities. So that voters can see firsthand what their police tax dollars buy. What police administrators need to understand is that community policing's obvious popularity among community residents may be an important key in ensuring public policing's ultimate survival.
Community policing means freeing the officer from the isolation of the patrol car and putting the same officer into direct, face- to-face contact with the same community residents every day. It means allowing that officer the freedom to explore new ways the police and community residents can work together to solve the problems of crime, fear or crime, and physical and social disorder. Though many well-meaning police programs sound like community policing, to qualify, they must meet these minimum requirements. In fact, those programs that are community policing in name only threaten the movement because they both perpetuate further misunderstanding and they also fail to deliver as well as community policing.
As this definition implies, it's the motor patrol officer, not the community policing officer (CPO), that departments must rely upon in cases where it's important to get an officer to the scene fast. This is part of why community policing will always augment - and never replace - traditional motor patrol efforts. Four out of five calls for service do not involve a crime in progress, so speed of response usually makes no difference in the outcome - but when it does, speed is crucial. What community policing does in provide a department a full spectrum approach that ranges from motor patrol's quick response to community policing's emphasis on what the officer does after he arrives.
In fact, as community policing continues to evolve, programs are experimenting with ways motor patrol officers can adopt community policing techniques. An article in the spring issue will focus on the Aurora (Colorado) Police Department's new program, where CPO's and motor patrol officers will work together in a community policing team approach.
Yet a major threat to community policing's future is the false sense of competition between motor patrol and community policing. Unless dealth with, this can escalate from a lack of cooperation to outright hostility. Part of the problem is that police themselves often see their role epitomized in the glitzy and glamorous ideal of the brave cop screeching up to the crime scene, where he saves innocent lives by arresting the bad guys, which for many is at most a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
Community policing recognizes that efforts such as finding a person or a program to help a youngster with problems learn how to read may have a far greater impact on both short-term and long-term crime rates. Though some criticize such efforts as being more social work than police work, community policing reflects the reality that the police are the only social service agency open 24 hours a day, and that social ills left untended often foster serious crime.
To survive, community policing requires strong commitment from administration, commitment clearly understood by those who think they have something to gain if community policing were abandoned. Lack of internal support often rests on misunderstanding - by both administrators and fellow officers. Many still confuse community policing with public relations, ignoring that CPO's are line officers who operate as fullfledged law enforcement personnel.
Others criticize community policing as no more than yesterday's foot patrol with a new name, implying that today's CPO's might succumb to the political and criminal corruption that hastened foot patrol's demise in favor of motor patrol during the Thirties. Some community policing efforts also call themselves foot patrol, which further perpetuates the confusion. While foot patrol may be a tactic that some community policing programs employ, today's community policing programs differ in many ways, including accountability. Today's CPO's may be even more accountable than motor patrol officers, since in addition to being supervised police officials, community residents have demonstrated they will complain loudly about a CPO they think is lazy, corrupt, or ineffective.
Yet even those police administrators who say they understand community policing's unique virtues often argue that it's a great idea, but they cannot spare the dollars to try it. Many insist that if they need to reach out to the community, it's cheaper to fund a crime prevention or community relations effort. What this ignores is that, compared to community policing, those programs often tend to humor the patient without curing the disease.
Many outside consulting firms often suggest the departments disband their community policing programs because they fall short on measures such as response time. This proves how many people inside policing who say they know what the program can do actually don't understand the concept and its achievements.
The fact is, however, that finding the money to initiate or expand community policing admittedly does require making tough choices. Funding community policing often means cutting other programs. Many choose to collapse their crime prevention or community relations efforts into a new community policing program that retains many of the same functions. The article in this issue on North Miami Beach shows that it made good sense to move property crime investigation into community policing, which allowed them to make two detectives into new CPO's. Other departments may want to look at undercover operations, honor guards, security for politicians, or other special units. The goal is to identify programs whose functions overlap community policing's role or whose relative merit makes them expendable in comparison.
Another possibility that is often overlooked is to ask taxpayers for more money. When Flint, Michigan, faced finding the money both to continue the popular experimental program and expand it to the rest of the city, after the foundation funding ran out, they chose to ask the voters for a special millage. Despite Flint's disastrous economy - this occurred during the recession when Flint's 25% unemployment rate was the highest in the nation - the voters voted for the new millage. Three years later, they voted it in again, this time by an even wider margin. This August, it was again renewed, by a two to one margin.
At least in those places where voters can see firsthand what community policing can do, departments may simply want to ask the voters for help. Admittedly, that's courageous, since if the initiative fails, the department only has more bills to show for the effort. Yet critics often point to community policing's popularity as if that were an indication average people don't understand police work. The reality is that community policing's widespread appeal may be the key to expanding the public police budget overall.
A controversial issue underlying the debate relates to the fact many community policing efforts at least initially target areas with the highest crime rates, typically neighborhoods dominated by the poor, many of whom are minorities. This can breed resentment among taxpayers who feel a disproportionate share of the dollars they pay will flow to those who they feel make little or not contribution. Racism can also play a role.
Tensions can rise even higher if those residents and business owners see services they value cut back to fund community policing for those they consider a drain on the system. Though it might seem to defy logic, the solution could be to make community policing a total city wide effort, so everyone benefits equally, even though that automatically makes the program more expensive.
While society may never completely eliminate racism and elitism, perhaps the biggest educational challenge we face in making sure community policing survives is to persuade everyone both inside and outside policing that until we are all safe, no one is truly safe. It requires courage to defend this approach and to find the resources necessary, but if we fail on either count, this could signal the end of public policing as we know it.
Robert Trojanowicz is director of the School of Criminal Justice
at Michigan State University.