The cop car problem

Sam Smith - Back in the 1960s, the DC police department began moving its officers off the streets and into patrol cars. At the time I was editing a newspaper in a community behind the US Capitol that was two thirds black and included some of the poorest and most powerful people in the city. A few years later two of the city’s four 1968 riot strips would be in our circulation area.

It early seemed clear that isolating cops in cars didn’t help matters. While on a panel that included a local police official and a representative of a national police organization, I made this argument. A columnist for the Washington Post turned to a friend of mine sitting next to him and asked, “Who is that nut?”

The incident floated back recently as I read a detective novel by the sainted Michael Connelly in which the following appeared:

Through political opportunism and ineptitude, the city had allowed the department to languish for years as an understaffed and underequipped paramilitary organization. Infected with political bacteria itself, the department was top-heavy with managers while the ranks below were so thin that the dog soldiers on the street rarely had the time or inclination to step out of their protective machines, their cars, to meet the people they served. They only ventured out to deal with the dirt bags and, consequently, [detective Hieronymus] Bosch knew, it had created a police culture in which everybody not in blue was seen as a dirt bag and was treated as such. Everybody. You ended up with your André Galtons and your Rodney Kings. You ended up with a riot the dog soldiers couldn't control.

In the wake of Ferguson, it’s worth asking: why do we ask so few questions about how police officers do their work? Why is it so hard to suggest alternatives such as getting cops out of their cars and back into the ‘hood?

For example, in DC, as the cops were taking to squad cars, the Recreation Department was sending “roving leaders” out on the street to work with kids and their gangs. Several decades later, Jim Myers in the Hill Rag described how they did it:

Dennis Homesley, principal of Payne Elementary School, often talks about Roving Leaders. He got his start working with kids as a Roving Leader from 1972 to 1981, and he still believes in the concept.

The program, run by the District's Department of Parks and Recreation, was bigger in Homesley's day. But the idea remains the same: You don't wait for kids to cause trouble. You go out and find the kids who are heading in the wrong direction and help them.

The program seemed to founder in the late 1980s. By the 1990s, it was too easy to spot kids in the neighborhood that the system wasn't reaching - the ones most susceptible to negative influences. Thereafter, you could watch them "progress" on corners and local playgrounds from alienation to car thefts and stick ups or drug selling.

Now, we have Darby Clark and Bridget Miller, the two Roving Leaders who are assigned to work the schools, recreation centers and playgrounds of eastern Capitol Hill. Clark, 37, has been a Roving Leader for seven years. Miller, 41, a gang worker for 20 years, joined Roving Leaders only last year. . .

I saw Clark take a dozen squirming, noisy kids with their attention flying all over the place and turn them into a cooperative, engaged group of youngsters who raised their hands to participate in discussions about having positive attitude.

Magic it wasn't, but a serious change took place before my very eyes. "They want attention and structure - and consistency," says Clark. "Like if I say I'm going to be there for them at a certain time, I've got to be there." It sounds so basic, but these are missing elements in many kids' lives. . .

At Eastern High, Clark picks up names of kids who are not showing up for school - eight or nine kids in some weeks, he says - and visits their homes.

And even wise cops understand the problem, as the following illustrates.

Steve Dye, AssistantChief of Police, Garland, TX, Police Chief Magazine 2009 - Police technology must serve the community and advance the mission of community policing, not merely make internal processes more efficient. Community policing is most effective and most sustainable when meaningful partnerships develop between police departments and the community. The development of partnerships and collaborative efforts are largely dependent on officers and administrators who connect with residents through personal interaction. By stopping the car and getting out and speaking with people, officers can connect with the public, identify problems more quickly, and forge stronger partnerships. In spite of the growing list of duties of patrol officers, the surge of technological advancements in law enforcement, and the arrival of a new generation of technologically proficient officers, it is imperative that personal connections between officers and the people they serve remain at the forefront of departmental expectations, training efforts, and policies.

… New police technology, much of it installed in patrol cars and much of it useful, has added to the complexity of a patrol officer’s job and created a new challenge for administrators who embrace the community policing mission.

Whereas the inside of a police car previously contained a radio and maybe a high-tech office, many patrol officers receive their calls through in-car computers and enter their reports electronically while monitoring cell phones, speed enforcement technology, and automated license plate readers. No longer is the task of a patrol officer as simple as responding to calls over the radio, completing simple handwritten reports, and looking out the window for suspicious activity or circumstances. Technological proficiency is now an expectation in law enforcement just as much as physical fitness and sound decision-making skills.

Technology overall has given officers new tools for accomplishing community policing objectives, but it has not come without a certain degree of consternation for some veteran officers. Many of these officers did not grow up around an immense amount of technology and worked in law enforcement before law enforcement embraced computers. This lack of familiarity means that they sometime spend too much time focused on the technology while performing police operations. Many officers still working the streets today were trained at a time when most of their daily activity was generated through personal observations and contacts and knowing every detail of their assigned areas of the community.

By contrast, many younger officers grew up making technology a part of their education and their hobbies. They are proficient computer users, but they are vulnerable to becoming driven by the receipt of electronic information instead of generating activity through observations and community interaction. And a reliance on technology has, at times, lessened the development of people skills for some younger officers.

Regardless of an officer’s familiarity with technology or his or her level of expertise, it is clear that technology consumes a great deal of officers’ attention as they work the streets each day. This technological time consumption is important to monitor as it may have a tendency to take away from proactive community policing activities in the form of personal contacts and observations.

… Technology should not move officers away from the interpersonal contact with the community that is vital to developing collaborative partnerships and solving neighborhood problems. Departments need to train officers to use technology as a tool and not to rely on it to the point that they lose focus on getting out of their patrol cars and interacting with the community.

… The input of useful information starts with human interactions, and a balance must exist between the use of technology and the retention of people skills. Training programs must continue to emphasize the importance of proactive field work and the delivery of effective community policing. An emphasis must be placed on preventing officers from becoming accustomed to “watching the box” and being driven primarily by information received on their mobile data computers.

.. Police administrators should take note as they pass a squad car on the street and see how often an officer is able to make eye contact with them as opposed to being focused on some piece of technology or talking on the cell phone. Police leaders should carefully review technology to ensure that only the technology that facilitates a patrol officer’s core tasks of community policing are installed in squad cars—as opposed to technology that results only in benefiting administrative processes.

Officers must be continually encouraged to interact with the community, and their tasks and processes must be structured to achieve this objective. Performance evaluations and departmental expectations must align with the principles of community policing and effectiveness measured through outcomes of innovative problem solving and collaboration rather than quantitative outputs. As Sir Robert said years ago, “The police are the public and the public are the police,” and it will always be so.