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In 1994, Commissioner
Paul Evans wanted to lead the Boston Police Department to use a more comprehensive,
proactive strategy than its traditional, reactive approach. The Commissioner convened
a 16-team coalition to identify groups already working on violence prevention, to
research the problems in the streets and to generate solutions. The teams included
clergy, police union leaders, human service providers, police officers and the city-wide
anti-gang unit.
In all, more than 400 Bostonians were part of the process, which aimed to empower
neighborhoods by creating their own public safety initiatives. The coalition produced
the Strategic Plan for Neighborhood Policing, which is Boston's localized
approach to cutting crime.
The results have been phenomenal. Overall, homicides were down 39 percent and shootings
were down 28 percent in 1996 as compared with 1995.
In the spirit of the diverse coalition which produced the strategy, neighborhood
policing in Boston is based on the development of partnerships between judges, probation
officers, teachers, youth, religious leaders, business owners and police officers.
In Boston, all of these groups deserve credit for reducing violence by implementing
the multi-faceted approach to policing, which focuses on prevention, intervention
and enforcement.
In Boston, neighborhood policing means that "it's not my job" and "it's
in your backyard," are no longer acceptable excuses for officers or residents
to remain apathetic. Police are now likely to counsel youth, and teachers might help
trace weapons to their original source. Conflict-resolution training, after-school
programs, and community clothing drives are now as much a part of policing as crime
watches and curfews for juveniles on probation.
The Strategic Plan for Neighborhood Policing calls for regular meetings between
the officers, community members and representatives of City Hall in every police
district. Officer Zenen Ramos runs the Spanish-speaking meeting in the Jamaica Plain
neighborhood of Boston.
He says, "One thing is that Spanish people, when they come to the United States,
they don't trust the police. They come with the attitude that they had in their country.
They think that the police will beat them. When they come over here, they see the
difference. We teach the community not to be afraid and to give us the information."
The Strategic Plan for Neighborhood Policing also requires every neighborhood
to set quantifiable goals for crime reduction. The neighborhood of Allston-Brighton
aimed to reduce robbery. In the first half of 1996, citizens and police had worked
together to reduce burglary by 22%.
Sergeant Larry Van Zandt Sr. says that many of the goals set by residents of the
Jamaica Plain neighborhood focus on improving the quality of life by doing things
like erasing graffiti and fixing broken street lights. Van Zandt says that by maintaining
the quality of life, the neighborhood displays a sense of order which deters hard
core crime.
A key feature of the neighborhood policing strategy in Boston is the "same cop,
same neighborhood" approach, where officers are assigned to the same few blocks,
which they patrol for years.
Van Zandt explains, "Neighborhood policing says to the officer, 'You will have
these three blocks. Whatever goes on in these three blocks is on you.' That gives
the officer a stake. His main attention, and all he really cares about is making
sure that particular area is safe and protected." The concept hearkens the Sergeant
back to his youth in the 1950s, when he developed personal friendships with the officers
who patrolled his block year after year. Since the time of Van Zandt's childhood,
however, the role of police has changed.
"We put officers in cars and give them radios," says Will Morales, a youth
outreach worker, who works closely with Van Zandt to implement neighborhood policing
in Jamaica Plain. "The job wasn't any longer to do the one-on-one with residents,
but to respond to the calls. It became a race that you had to respond to the call
in under three minutes."
Neighborhood policing began to make a comeback when officers realized that despite
how many calls they answered, if they could not produce civilian witnesses, then
the chances of catching perpetrators were slim. "But the chances are,"
says Morales, "that the community is always watching, the community is always
hearing and the community is always willing to talk." |
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