TheeBadOne
Moderator
Cops on the ground express frustration with "broken windows" approach to crime fighting
by Jose Torres
Community policing was the hottest thing in law enforcement for the last two decades, but a new study conducted among officers in the San Diego Police Department says the effort did not result in a drop in crime, which was the ultimate goal of the program. The study, "Problem-Oriented Policing in practice," appeared in a recent issue of Criminology & Public Policy, an academic journal published by the American Society of Criminology. It was based in large part on interviews with 320 San Diego police officers and a written survey of 276 officers. There are around 2,000 sworn officers working for the San Diego P.D. Community policing, also known as problem-oriented policing, or POP, stresses that police focus more on problems than incidents to improve public safety. San Diego was a likely department to study as this agency was widely considered to have one of the most effective community policing programs in the country. The San Diego "Problem Oriented Policing" (POP) program served as the model for hundreds of agencies around the country. Instead of hunting for burglars, car thieves and other suspects, officers working the POP assignment were asked to get out of their squad cars, walk around neighborhoods and develop personal relationships with residents and business people so they could discover the underlying causes of crime in the neighborhood and then make a plan to solve the problem. The biggest complaint from officers cited in the study was they didn't have the time to do community policing. They generally expressed support for it, but they also were also skeptical about the entire strategy. The study's authors concluded that in San Diego, "the POP glass was half full." Assistant San Diego Police Chief Lou Scanlon told Joe Hughes, a reporter with The San Diego Union-Tribune, that the department remains committed to community policing despite the critical study. "The men and woman of the department employ problem-oriented policing and apply problem-solving techniques every day," Scanlon said. "The real world application, given time constraints caused by understaffing, may not meet the rigorous standards demanded by academia.” San Diego ranks 27th out of the 28 largest cities in the United States in number of police officers, with 1.6 per 1,000 residents. Joe Hughes reported that Police Chief William Lansdowne was out of town and unavailable to comment on the study, but that he had said that proper implementation of POP should occupy 40 percent of a police officer's time - something that's impossible now because of understaffing. The study was conducted by Gary Cordner and Elizabeth Perkins Biebel of Eastern Kentucky University and edited by Professor Todd Clear of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of New York. They said officers engaged in problem-solving often chose to focus on drug and disorder issues instead of an entire range of community problems such as personal crime, property crime and traffic violations. The scope of problem-solving by officers tended to be small, they said, focusing on a person, an address, a building, a parking lot or intersection - a narrow approach to soft problems. Elizabeth Biebel said that the goals of community policing and the chances for success have too much potential for it to be scrapped. Rather, Biebel said it should be more fully embraced and expanded. "For instance, an entire squad should get involved in certain projects rather than just one officer," she said. Joe Hughes, in his report in the San Diego Union-Tribune, says that during the 1990's, more than $1.4 billion in federal money was spent on community policing, but priorities changed after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11,2001. The 2005 federal budget has only $10 million appropriated for community policing programs.
by Jose Torres
Community policing was the hottest thing in law enforcement for the last two decades, but a new study conducted among officers in the San Diego Police Department says the effort did not result in a drop in crime, which was the ultimate goal of the program. The study, "Problem-Oriented Policing in practice," appeared in a recent issue of Criminology & Public Policy, an academic journal published by the American Society of Criminology. It was based in large part on interviews with 320 San Diego police officers and a written survey of 276 officers. There are around 2,000 sworn officers working for the San Diego P.D. Community policing, also known as problem-oriented policing, or POP, stresses that police focus more on problems than incidents to improve public safety. San Diego was a likely department to study as this agency was widely considered to have one of the most effective community policing programs in the country. The San Diego "Problem Oriented Policing" (POP) program served as the model for hundreds of agencies around the country. Instead of hunting for burglars, car thieves and other suspects, officers working the POP assignment were asked to get out of their squad cars, walk around neighborhoods and develop personal relationships with residents and business people so they could discover the underlying causes of crime in the neighborhood and then make a plan to solve the problem. The biggest complaint from officers cited in the study was they didn't have the time to do community policing. They generally expressed support for it, but they also were also skeptical about the entire strategy. The study's authors concluded that in San Diego, "the POP glass was half full." Assistant San Diego Police Chief Lou Scanlon told Joe Hughes, a reporter with The San Diego Union-Tribune, that the department remains committed to community policing despite the critical study. "The men and woman of the department employ problem-oriented policing and apply problem-solving techniques every day," Scanlon said. "The real world application, given time constraints caused by understaffing, may not meet the rigorous standards demanded by academia.” San Diego ranks 27th out of the 28 largest cities in the United States in number of police officers, with 1.6 per 1,000 residents. Joe Hughes reported that Police Chief William Lansdowne was out of town and unavailable to comment on the study, but that he had said that proper implementation of POP should occupy 40 percent of a police officer's time - something that's impossible now because of understaffing. The study was conducted by Gary Cordner and Elizabeth Perkins Biebel of Eastern Kentucky University and edited by Professor Todd Clear of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of New York. They said officers engaged in problem-solving often chose to focus on drug and disorder issues instead of an entire range of community problems such as personal crime, property crime and traffic violations. The scope of problem-solving by officers tended to be small, they said, focusing on a person, an address, a building, a parking lot or intersection - a narrow approach to soft problems. Elizabeth Biebel said that the goals of community policing and the chances for success have too much potential for it to be scrapped. Rather, Biebel said it should be more fully embraced and expanded. "For instance, an entire squad should get involved in certain projects rather than just one officer," she said. Joe Hughes, in his report in the San Diego Union-Tribune, says that during the 1990's, more than $1.4 billion in federal money was spent on community policing, but priorities changed after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11,2001. The 2005 federal budget has only $10 million appropriated for community policing programs.
In all fairness, I hardly ever run into this here in noVA. And "more resources doesn't always cut it. Look at DC, more cops in DC per capita than any place on earth... There are maximum security prisons with lower crime rates.