POLICE AND THE COMMUNITY
BRAD NATALIZIO
VILLAGE OF CHESTER P.D.
45 MAIN ST.
CHESTER, NY 10918
POLICE AND THE COMMUNITY
Lets profile our community
a.
Physical characteristics (boundaries, recreational areas, industrial locations,
type of housing, areas conducive to criminal activity);
b.
Demographics (age, gender, marital status, family structure, ethnicity, level of
education, occupation, employment);
c.
Economic characteristics (median household income, number of abandoned
homes, percentage of single heads of household);
d.
Social characteristics (civic and religious organizations, public and private
organizations, other significant groups);
e.
Incident trends (crime statistics, police officers); and
f.
Community resources (government, civil and private organizations).
POLICE AND THE COMMUNITY
C&S
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PEP BOYS
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STERIS
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GW’S/ COLONIAL LANES
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CHESTER LEARNING CENTER
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 BANKS
 GAS STATIONS
 ESTABLISHMENTS THAT SERVE ALCOHOL
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HISTORY OF POLICING
• Political Era
• Professional Era
• Community Policing Era
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POLITICAL ERA
• 1840’s till early 1920’s
• United States cities tried to copy the LMP model
• Dated from the introduction of police into
municipalities during the 1840’s
• Close ties between police and politics
•
Citizens told the police what was going on in the community.
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POLITICAL ERA
• Politicians ran precincts as small-scale departments.
• Hiring, firing, managing and assigning personnel as
they deemed appropriate
• Officers were selected for their political service,
the police officer owed his allegiance to the
ward boss and police captain who chose him
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POLITICAL ERA
• Foot patrol
• Police Officers had substantial discretion in
handling their individual beats
• Contact with command was maintained through the
call box
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POLITICAL ERA
Police provided a wide variety of social services:
• Ran soup lines
• Provided temporary lodging for newly arrived immigrant
workers in station houses
• Assisted ward leader in finding work for immigrants
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POLITICAL ERA
• Good job, but poor job security due to political
turnover (ex: Cincinnati 1895)
• New officers were sent on patrol with no training,
few instructions beyond rulebook
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POLITICAL ERA
• Officers were intimately connected to the social and
political community,
• Inability to provide supervision of officers,
• Gave rise to police corruption
POLICE AND THE COMMUNITY
POLITICAL ERA
Because police officers worked alone or in small
groups, there was ample opportunities to shake
down peddlers and small businesses.
Officers allowed gamblers, pick pocketers and thieves
to go about their business in return for a share of
proceedings.
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POLITICAL ERA
• Prohibition accelerated corruption, but caused
collapse of system
• Gangsters went from small gangs to regional
• Ability to control police from politics began to slip
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PROFESSIONAL ERA
• 1920’s to 1970’s
• Rejected politics as the basis of police legitimacy
• Civil service (ended political influences in hiring and
firing of police officers)
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PROFESSIONAL ERA
Using the focus on criminal law as a basic source of
police legitimacy, police in the professional era
moved to narrow their functioning to crime
control and criminal apprehension
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PROFESSIONAL ERA
• Implementation of radio car
• Better supervision
• Took police off patrol beats
• Removed from community
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PROFESSIONAL ERA
“The patrol car became the symbol of policing during
the 1930’s and 1940’s; when equipped with a radio, it
was at the limits of technology. It represented
mobility, power, conspicuous presence, control of
officers, and professional distance from citizens”
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PROFESSIONAL ERA
 Police education
 I.A.C.P.
 U.C.R.
 O.W. Wilson- introduced management concepts into
policing
 August Vollmer- Founded a police science program
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PROFESSIONAL ERA
When police were asked why they performed as they
did, the most common answer was that they
enforced the law.
Police agencies became law enforcement agencies
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PROFESSIONAL ERA
Police subculture developed
Problems with police community relations
Fear rose rapidly during the end of this era
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PROFESSIONAL ERA
• Inability of police to relate with communities they
worked
• The only time police dealt with the community was
disorder issues
• Police interactions with citizens set off riots
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PROFESSIONAL ERA
• Poor, young, minorities clashed with police the
most (laws developed by higher stake)
• Police were in their cars, windows up, AC on
• Communities grew distrusted of police
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PROFESSIONAL ERA
What was going on in the United States in the 1960’s –
1970’s?
Civil Rights Era
Vietnam War
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PROFESSIONAL ERA
Draft- People didn’t want to get pulled into war, led to
the young having a clash with police.
Why?
Because police are the defenders of the status quo.
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PROFESSIONAL ERA
• The events of the 1960’s and 70’s forced the police,
politicians, and policy makers to reassess the
state of law enforcement in the U.S.
• Academics, sociologists, political scientists,
psychologists and historians began to
scrutinize different aspects of policing.
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At the end of the professional era, there was a series of
investigative studies of what was known about the police
What works and what does not
Federal commissions/ studies took a look
Studies found that police did not know anything about
their communities
Found that neighborhoods with the highest level of crime
had the least interaction with police
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KANSAS CITY PREVENTIVE PATROL EXPERIMENT
• Divided Kansas City into 5 sections, divided into 3 groups
each
• Doubled police patrol, no patrol, control group
• Study lasted 1 year, data was collected through victimization
surveys
• At the end of the year, it was found it didn’t make a difference
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WILMINGTON SPLIT FORCE EXPERIMENT
Decided to split force 70% answering calls, 30% crime
prevention
Successful in 2 ways:
1. How police were deployed
2. Spatial deployment
30% didn’t know what to do
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KANSAS CITY AND SAN DIEGO RESPONSE
TIME STUDIES
Fast response neither addressed serious crime
or enhances citizen satisfaction
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RAND STUDY OF DETECTIVES
Study found that of cases that did get solved:
50%: someone told police who did it
30%: police made arrest on scene
17%: Various other categories (fingerprints, etc.)
3%: Solved as a result of creative investigative work
WHAT DOES THIS TELL US?
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TEAM POLICING 1970’s
Officers assigned to geographical teams
Neighborhood policing units
Wanted police to be more like medical profession
Failed
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COMMUNITY ERA
• Police-citizen interactions are what matter
• Research that lead us to conclusion that police and
community need to collaborate to develop
lawfulness.
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COMMUNITY ERA
Integral dimensions
Engaging and interacting with the community
2. Solving community problems; and
3. Adapting internal elements of the organization to
support these new strategies
1.
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COMMUNITY ERA
• Process for greater sharing of information and values
by the police and the community (goes both
ways)
• Role has gone from crime fighters to problem solvers
and community advocates
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COMMUNITY ERA
• Partnership built between police and community
built on mutual trust, disclosure and shared
values.
• Reinforced through regular interaction, critique and
discussion
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COMMUNITY ERA
Mutual understanding between police and community
seeks to repair past practices of police talking
to and not with the communities they are
expected to serve
Ingredients of your community policing program
depend on the make up of your community
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ROLES OF THE CITIZENS - PASSIVE
Implies the process of citizen involvement to provide support to help establish
a process to assist police be more effectively.
Weekly structured, members come and go
Citizens take informal actions
Ex: Crime Watch-Getting citizens together to watch neighborhood
Problem with passive citizen role is that people tend to do something when
something happens. The goal of crime watch is to reduce crime and fear.
People participate because they are afraid. What happens when people join
the groups is they realize crime is spontaneous and people drop out. Best way
keep citizens involved is to keep citizens afraid
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ROLES OF THE CITIZENS – ACTIVE
Community groups believe police are part of the
problem or not working.
They may have empathy for the police, but they don’t
believe police are going to save them.
Ex: Guardian Angels
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Community Expectations of Police:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Protection of citizens’ rights
Development of solutions to community crime and
disorder problems
Response to citizens’ non crime needs
Enhancement of community support for the rules
and laws of society,
Development of role models for community
members
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PROBLEM ORIENTED POLICING
About solving problems
Understanding the root of the problem
“We need to stop running to individual calls and see
what each of these calls means”
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PROBLOM ORIENTED POLICING – SARA MODEL
S – scan (examine what is going on, pull quantitative and
qualitative data, interview citizens, police officers, etc.)
A – analyze (assess the data and come up with a response)
R – respond (an attempt to resolve the problem)
A – assess (see if response worked)
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PROBLEM ORIENTED POLICING
Whispering Hills Experiment
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QUESTIONS