Back to The Beat

By Richard Lacayo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With reporting by Elaine Shannon/Washington and Richard Woodbury/Tulsa