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by Shana Burg
In the winter of 1997, President Clinton announced his juvenile crime prevention
bill from Boston, Massachusetts, a city that is once again making history.
That year Boston achieved its lowest homicide rate in three decades. Since July,
1995, only one juvenile under age 17 has been killed with a firearm . Although that
is one far too many, more youth have been shot dead in other major cities.
President Clinton credits Boston's increasing safety to a violence reduction strategy
called neighborhood policing. Neighborhood policing is about citizens who call officers
by their first names, rather than looking at police badges and recalling a history
of brutality. It's about officers who ask youth, clergy, and business leaders to
lend a hand before problems escalate and people die.
While cities nationwide practice some form of neighborhood policing, Bostonians do
it with trademark flair. Here, where people take their history seriously, citizens
and police are learning to search their personal pasts and the chronicles of their
communities for clues about how to cut crime. (See "Boston's Strategy for Neighborhood
Policing" for more information.)
Today Will Morales and Boston Police Officer Danny Ramirez are ardent advocates of
neighborhood policing, which is a more compassionate model for keeping the peace
than the one they both knew 20 years ago. Today Morales and Ramirez are also best
friends, which is extraordinary if you know anything about their history.
Morales was a seven-year-old living in Boston, when Officer Ramirez kicked in the
door to his apartment. The raid was to arrest Morales' father, a heroin addict. Morales
recalls, "All these officers came in and ransacked the apartment and put the
biggest fright you could ever put into a young person's life."
To Ramirez, though, the raid was just another day at the office. He can't even remember
the incident that Morales will never forget. "I wish I could remember every
person I arrest," he says, "but I average 250 a year."
It is no wonder that by the time Morales became a teenager, he was an avid recruiter
for the X-Men, a gang whose standard operating procedure included physical combat
with the police. Morales says that during his gang years, Ramirez used to aggressively
scream at him to try to scare him into better ways.
It didn't work. At age 17, Morales went to jail for dealing drugs, leaving his younger
brother Hector to manage life in the streets by himself. Following his big brother's
lead, Hector had joined the X-Men too.
I knew that Hector was looking up to me," says Morales. "I felt like we
were growing up in the middle of nowhere with nothing to lose. Hector had to learn
at a young age that he had to be tough, learn the streets tough and meet an argument
violently."
"Hector was a witness when I got stabbed in the face and came close to dying,"
says Morales. "He, himself, became the victim of violence because first he was
stabbed at a very young age and almost died, and then he got shot in the head. We
were seeing our friends dying off and people getting shot on a regular basis."
One night, while serving his six-year sentence, Morales caught the evening news on
the prison TV and heard a broadcast that changed his life: Hector had open fired
on police. The officers shot back in defense.
Morales relives the memory on fast-forward, as if he can speed past the terror of
the moment he finally felt his own pain. "When you're illiterate and you hear
the newscaster say that the assailant has been identified as one Hector Daniel Morales
and that he's listed in critical condition and you don't understand what 'critical
condition' means, you're just thinking he's in the hospital.
"And you're getting mad and you say you're going to get out there and kill cops.
And you have an inmate who's dying from AIDS grab you by the throat and say, 'Do
you know what 'critical condition' means? It means your brother's on a thin line
between life and death.'"
Later that night, Hector died. "It was the first time the lifestyle, the drugs,
the gangs and everything caught up with me," says Morales. "I'm pretty
sure that a lot of young people never expect to go to prison or they never expect
death to be the consequence, but it became a reality."
Hector's death prompted Morales
to seek freedom behind bars. He took stock of recent history and then made changes
to keep the peace within. "I watched the L.A. riots in prison on the television.
You know Reginald Denney who was pulled out of the truck and beaten?" he asks.
"Denney forgave the individuals who did that to him."
Inspired, Morales began to forgive himself for the crimes he had committed. He began
to forgive Ramirez for kicking down his door when he was seven. He began to forgive
himself for leading his brother into gang life. And, eventually, he began to forgive
the officers who shot his brother dead.
"Way before I began to forgive the police, I began to forgive myself as an individual,"
says Morales. "I let my pride down and said, 'Well, you're going to have to
learn how to read and write.' I did a lot of reading around police, youth relations,
and programming."
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There was a time when you would get a pat on the back if you arrested a young person.
Nowadays,with neighborhood policing, you receive a pat on the back because you have
the ability to communicate and help young people change their lives around. |
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By the time Morales got out
of jail, both he and Ramirez had taken a look back and decided to work the streets
differently. Morales is now pursuing a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, and
he is a youth-outreach worker in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood where he grew up.
As for Ramirez, he has begun to practice neighborhood policing. "Before I thought
'That's not my problem. My problem is just to arrest people,'" he says. "Neighborhood
policing has brought me an awareness that we have to build a friendship with the
kids. Not every young person is a punk, a maggot, a hoodlum... It has helped me to
understand their problems, their pressures, the things they're going through at home."
"There was a time when you would get a pat on the back if you arrested a young
person," Morales says. "Nowadays, with neighborhood policing, you receive
a pat on the back because you have the ability to communicate and help young people
change their lives around. That takes more of a challenge."
Facing History and Ourselves
Bill Johnston, the former
deputy superintendent of the Boston Police Department, would be glad to hear how
the relationship between Ramirez and Morales has improved over the years. But he
probably would not be surprised. That's because Johnston is an avid believer that
by examining their personal histories, individuals can access the tools they need
to build more caring communities.
Johnston says that analyzing the events of recent social history, such as the Civil
Rights Movement, can help police officers to discover the motivation and strength
they need to advocate for what they think is just. "Picture again those photos
of police officers holding leashes. At the end of the leashes were German Shepherd
dogs being turned on citizens who were trying to exercise their rights under the
Constitution."
According to Johnston, although these officers were practicing neighborhood policing
because they were acting on the will of the white majority, they were doing it wrong.
Johnston says that to do neighborhood policing right, officers need to develop the
moral courage to contest the morality of their colleagues and communities.
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We are helping officers learn how to make good decisions to protect people's civil
rights. Otherwise the Constitution doesn't mean a thing. |
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Years ago Johnston recognized
what he considered to be a great problem: new recruits coming to the Boston Police
Academy had no sense of the past. That's why, upon retiring from the Boston Police
Department, he joined the staff of an organization called Facing History and Ourselves
and tried to forge a solution.
Facing History is based in Brookline, Massachusetts. Each year more than half a million
middle and high school students grapple with issues of identity, peer pressure and
moral decision-making, by studying the Facing History curriculum. Students of Facing
History examine the demise of the Weimar Republic in pre-World War II Germany, in
order to understand how a country that had one of the most democratic constitutions
ever written could become a fascist, genocidal state.
Johnston and other Facing History staff members collaborated on the development of
a three-day program for new police recruits. In 1996, the Facing History program
was integrated into the curriculum at the Boston Police Academy.
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Jimmie Jones is the Director of
Police and Community Programming at Facing History. Jones explains that the Facing
History program for Boston police asks officers to analyze the history of law enforcement
in their city and in nations worldwide.
"We look at what happened in Germany in 1938 when officers were told 'When you
see a synagogue burning, don't stop it and don't arrest the people who set it on
fire," he says. "We look at Bosnia where they're trying to form a multi-ethnic
police force, but they hate each other."
"And we look at South Africa," says Jones, "where the officers had
to enforce Apartheid. We are talking about supposedly democratic societies where
the cultures allowed police to do things that were unlawful and violated people's
civil rights."
The focus of the Facing History's work with police is on moral decision-making. Instructors
trained by Facing History lead recruits to explore difficult questions such as, "What
will you do if you disagree with the laws you are instructed to enforce?" and
"What do the terms 'loyalty' and 'integrity' really mean?"
Facing History is now replicating its Boston-based work in other police departments
across the country. As a result, new recruits nationwide are beginning to think more
critically about the complex relationships between communities and police.
"At two in the morning, when there are no judges, lawyers or supreme court justices
on the streets, the police officers represent the Constitution of the United States,"
says Jones. "We are helping officers learn how to make good decisions to protect
people's civil rights. Otherwise, the Constitution doesn't mean a thing."
The Road Ahead
Neighborhood policing done right takes place on a two-way street. In Boston, there
are many programs working to facilitate more positive relationships between youth
and police. The statistics indicate that these programs may be working. Violent crime
in Boston's public schools was down over 20 percent in the 1995-96 school year compared
to the previous year.
Two Boston-based programs working to cut juvenile crime and enlist youth in improving
overall community safety are Youth and Police in Partnership (YPP) and Raising Issues
for Safer Education (RISE). While Will Morales draws from his legacy of life in the
streets to run YPP, Facing History applies more than 20 years of experience in creating
caring school cultures to its work with RISE.
"I grew up having nothing," says Morales. "I think about what kinds
of programs, institutions and organizations that I, as a young man, would have wanted
to be involved in. I began to realize that I need to create or support programs that
would have helped me when I was growing up."
YPP is certainly a program that might have improved the relationship between the
police and Morales during his gang years. Today, Morales trains teenagers like Rafael,
age 17, to facilitate roundtable conversations between youth and officers.
"When I first started YPP, I had a totally different mentality than I have now,"
says Rafael, whose father is in jail. "My parents used to tell me that the police
are bad. That they want to snatch you up and take you to jail. Once you are in this
program, you can teach other people what you learn, so that everyone doesn't feel
hatred toward the police."
In addition to participating in roundtable discussions, Rafael and other members
of the Jamaica Plain YPP work in partnership with police to organize the neighborhood
crime watch and to conduct a clothing drive for the poor.
In the nearby Dorchester neighborhood, Facing History staff are working with students,
teachers, principals, school police and city police to develop a critical force of
peace keepers at Dorchester High School. The hope is that the peace keepers will
be bonded by trustóa trust which evolves out of an honest analysis of past dynamics
between young people and authority figures, including police.
Through Facing History's RISE seminars, adults and teenagers delve into their personal
histories to discuss issues such as questioning authority, maintaining self-respect,
and suffering dehumanization. Edward, age 17, is a student at Dorchester High School.
He describes the night he was searched by the police for no reason.
Edward says that he walked to the train station at the end of his street to pick
up his cousin, when out of nowhere, two police officers approached and began to frisk
him. "They were searching me rough," says Edward. "They couldn't find
nothing on me. They ask you fast, so you give them the answers fast. Then they say
'slow down.' Then they say 'Get out of here or I'll find a reason to lock you up.'
I say, 'I live on this street. What am I supposed to do?'"
He adds, "It gets to a point that you don't care no longer if they got a gun
or a badge...When you get tired, it's like you get close to a certain limit."
Adrian, age 18, validates Edward's experience. Adrian vividly remembers how he felt
when he too was searched for no apparent reason. "This anger just rose up in
me," he says. "I thought, 'Look at this guy. I'm an honor roll student.
I grew up in a Christian family. This officer's talking to me like I'm some kind
of wild dog."
Since the introduction of neighborhood policing in Boston, Adrian says that he has
developed more positive relationships with police. He also recognizes that as a citizen
in a democracy, he needs to be a partner in the project to keep his neighborhood
safe. He says, "I want to live in this community for a long time. I want to
walk down the street any time of day and not be harassed by youth or police. That's
why I'm doing this work."
Like Adrian, many Bostonians believe that neighborhood policing is helping to prevent
violence. And like Adrian, they are studying the history of their city and the legacy
of their streets. They are working hard so that Boston will continue to receive high
honors for cutting crime.
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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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