Innovative Neighborhood-Oriented Policing: Descriptions of Programs in Eight Cities.

Series: NIJ Report
Published: June 1995
99 pages
222,155 bytes

Innovative Neighborhood-Oriented Policing:
Descriptions of Programs in Eight Cities

Volume 1 of a Report Submitted to the
National Institute of Justice

by Susan Sadd and Randolph M. Grime

"There is risk in refusing to act till the facts
are all in; but is there not greater risk in
abandoning the conditions of all rational
inquiry?"    Learned Hand--American Jurist

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements 

Introduction

TEMPE
I. The Tempe INOP Project and the Target Area
  A. Introduction
  B. Community Policing in Tempe 
  C. The Target Area: Beat 16 
II. Drug Demand Reduction Activities 
  A. Drug Prevention 
  B. Law Enforcement Activities 
III. Other Program Components 
  A. Recruitment and Training 
  B. Community and Agency Partnerships 
  C. Outreach and Advertising 
  D. The Role of the Department's Management
     Information System (MIS) 
  E. Local Evaluation 
  F. BJA Funds 
IV. Expected Impacts 
  A. Community Effects 
  B. Departmental Effects 

NORFOLK
I. The Norfolk INOP Project and the Target Area 
  A. Introduction 
  B. Community Policing in Norfolk 
II. Drug Demand Reduction Activities 
  A. Drug Prevention 
  B. Enforcement 
III. Other Program Components 
  A. Recruitment and Training 
  B. Community and Interagency Partnerships 
  C. Community Outreach and Advertisements 
  D. Associated Technology 
IV. Expected Impacts 

NEW YORK
I. The New York INOP Project and the Target Area 
  A. Introduction 
  B. Community Policing in New York 
  C. INOP Target Areas 
II. Drug Demand Reduction Activities 
  A. Drug Prevention Activities 
  B. Law Enforcement Activities 
III. Other Program Components 
  A. Volunteers 
  B. Interagency Partnerships 
  C. Community Outreach and Advertisements 
  D. Program Evaluation 
  E. BJA Funds 
IV. Expected Impacts 

HAYWARD
I. The Hayward INOP Project and the Target Area 
  A. Introduction 
  B. Community Policing in Hayward 
  C. The INOP Target Area 
  D. Project Goals and Objectives 
II. Drug Demand Reduction Activities 
  A. Drug Prevention 
  B. Law Enforcement Activities 
III. Other Program Components 
  A. Recruitment and Training 
  B. Interagency Partnerships 
  C. Community Outreach and Advertisements 
  D. Program Evaluation 
  E. BJA Funds 
IV. Expected Impacts

PORTLAND
I. The Portland INOP Project and the Target Area 
  A. Introduction 
  B. Community Policing in Portland 
  C. The Target Area: The Iris Court Housing
     Complex 
II. "Community Partnerships": The Iris Court
     Community Policing Demonstration Project 
  A. Goals, Objectives and Strategy: Drug Demand
     Reduction 
  B. Enforcement and the Neighborhood Response
     Team 
  C. The Project Coordinator 
  D. Community Health Nurse 
  E. Human Service Partnerships 
  F. Community Contact Office 
  G. Landlord Training 
III. Other Program Components 
  A. Crime Prevention through Environmental Design 
  B. Evaluation 
  C. Associated Technology 

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY
I. The Prince George's County INOP Project and the
   Target Area 
  A. Introduction 
  B. Community Policing in PG County 
  C. The Target Area 
II. Drug Demand Reduction Activities 
  A. Drug Prevention and Treatment 
  B. Law Enforcement Activities 
III. Other Program Components 
  A. Recruitment and Training 
  B. Community and Agency Partnerships 
  C. Outreach and Advertising 
  D. Volunteers 
  E. The Role of the Department's Management
     Information System (MIS) 
  F. Local Evaluation 
  G. BJA Funds 
IV. Expected Impacts 
  A. Community Effects 
  B. Departmental Effects 

HOUSTON
I. The Houston INOP Project and the Target Area 
  A. Introduction 
  B. Neighborhood-Oriented Policing (NOP) in
     Houston 
  C. The Target Areas: Frenchtown and the Near
     -Northside BOND Area 
II. "Operation Siege": The Houston INOP Project 
  A. Goals, Objectives and Strategy: Drug Demand
     Reduction 
  B. Enforcement: Zero Tolerance, Cantina Squad,
     TACT Team andthe Warrant Squad 
  C. Target Hardening/Senior Citizen Home Repair 
  D. Community Partnerships 
III. Other Program Components 
  A. C.B. Patrols 
  B. Neighborhood Clean-Ups 
  C. Evaluations 

LOUISVILLE
I. The Louisville INOP Project and the Target Area

  A. Introduction 
  B. Neighborhood-Oriented Policing in Louisville 
  C. The Target Area 
II. Drug Demand Reduction Activities 
  A. Drug Prevention 
  B. Law Enforcement Activities 
III. Other Program Components 
  A. Recruitment and Training 
  B. Community and Agency Partnerships 
  C. Outreach and Advertising 
  D. The Role of the Department's Management
     Information System (MIS) 
  E. Local Evaluation 
  F. BJA Funds 
IV. Expected Impacts 
  A. Community Effects 
  B. Departmental Effects 

References
--------------------------------------

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This is an exciting time for the study of policing
in the United States. Major changes are taking
place as both large and small police departments
across the country make transitions to community
policing. The Innovative Neighborhood-Oriented
Policing projects have provided the Vera Institute
with a unique opportunity to study these sweeping
changes. We would like to thank the many people
who made the research possible.

We owe a great debt of gratitude to the National
Institute of Justice and to Charles B. DeWitt who
directed its program during much of the study and
made federal funds available to complete the
research. We would also like to thank George
Shollenberger, Craig Uchida, David Hayeslip, and
Winnie Reed of NIJ, who served as grant managers
for the research and who provided us with guidance
regarding NIJ's interests in the area.  Thank you,
too, to Maggie Heisler, Program Manager of the
INOP program, Bureau of Justice Assistance, for
including us in the INOP Cluster Meetings; they
gave us additional opportunities to talk to INOP
staff and learn about the programs. BJA provided
access to the sites and explained our role to the
jurisdictions.  
       
This research is certainly not our work alone;
there were many people at Vera, some of whom are
still here and others who have moved on to other
endeavors, without whom we could not have
completed this work. Vera's then Director of
Research, Sally Hillsman, guided us through the
early days of the project; her vast research
experience was indispensable in the design the
project. Since Sally left Vera to exercise her
considerable talents at the National Center for
State Courts, we have missed her expertise and
counsel more than she may know. Michele Sviridoff,
formerly a Senior Research Associate at Vera, was
an integral part of the research team for most of
the data collection phase of the project and was
instrumental in writing the Interim Report on the
project (which formed the basis of Volume I of
this report). Alexander Wright came to Vera as a
Research Assistant four years ago and worked at a
level far beyond that normally expected of
research assistants. We appreciate all his work on
the INOP project and wish him well at Harvard,
where he is attending the Kennedy School.  

Researchers always rely heavily on their support
staff to help them manage projects and produce
reports. Scott Sparks has been involved with this
project from start to finish:  he produced the
proposal at the beginning, the Interim Report in
the middle and both volumes of this report at the
end. We also want to thank Scott for his tireless
work arranging our many trips on this project--
four people traveling to seven out-of-town sites
on three different occasions, on different
airlines, from different airports, is enough to
drive most assistants mad. But Scott patiently
worked with the travel agent and made certain all
the airline reservations were made and the tickets
delivered in time. We would also like to thank
Stella Deacon, who worked with Scott on the hotel
and other travel arrangements and who, along with
Scott, transcribed a seemingly endless stream of
taped interviews.

None of the research could have been done without
the cooperation of the many people who helped us
in the INOP sites. From the first days of the
project, we relied on the INOP project directors
in the eight police departments to construct
itineraries for our visits, provide
transportation, and introduce us to members of
their departments, the community, and to members
of participating agencies. We also thank those
police officers who are making courageous efforts
to implement community policing where it counts
the most--on the streets of their cities. We hope
this report will be shared with them.

Finally, and most importantly, we are forever
indebted to the hundreds of community residents in
Tempe, Norfolk, New York, Hayward, Portland,
Prince George's County, Houston and Louisville
who, being unnamed, must necessarily miss their
fair share of credit. In each site they graciously
opened their homes to us, fed us, and made us feel
welcome. Their words and candor were more
important than they may know in making this
research possible. We will not soon forget their
generosity. We hope that the INOP police
departments will make this document available to
the communities they serve, for we have written it
as much for them as for the police. We also hope
that this exploratory study will add to their
knowlege of community policing and guide their
effors in involving the community.

Our thanks to all.
-----------------------------------------

INTRODUCTION

This is Volume I of a two-volume report on the
Vera Institute of Justice's evaluation of the
eight INOP projects. Volume II, entitled Issues in
Community Policing: Problems in the Implementation
of Eight Innovative Neighborhood Oriented Policing
Programs, contains the results of the analysis of
data on implementation issues and program outcomes
for the INOP projects. This volume contains
detailed descriptions of the eight programs.

In late 1990, the Bureau of Justice Assistance
(BJA) awarded funds to eight jurisdictions to
participate in a demonstration program entitled
the "Innovative Neighborhood Oriented Policing"
(INOP) program. This program was designed to
support the development of community policing
strategies and tactics at the neighborhood level
with the goal of reducing the demand for drugs,
including drug prevention, deterrence and control,
through community involvement and interagency
cooperation. Each of these eight jurisdictions
developed their own approach to the problem, and
although they have a number of characteristics in
common, the programs are widely varied with regard
to the context in which they operate; the nature
and scope of their neighborhood focus; the
approach to demand reduction; the nature of the
interagency planning teams; approach to community
outreach; and the variety of other services
provided. Because of this variation, the chapters
that follow contain individual descriptions of
each of the eight programs.

The eight INOP sites are Tempe, AZ; Norfolk, VA;
New York, NY; Hayward, CA; Portland, OR; Prince
George's County, MD; Houston, TX; and Louisville,
KY. The descriptions presented here are based on
data collected by the Vera Institute of Justice as
part of an NIJ-funded research project and reflect
the INOP projects as they were operating between
June 1991 and August 1992. Most of these programs
are on-going and may have changed since the end of
the data collection period. Furthermore, some of
the programs added target areas (as part of their
second-year funds) during the research period, but
too late to be included in the detailed
descriptions and analysis. These instances are
noted in the individual program descriptions.

TEMPE

I. The Tempe INOP Project and the Target Area

A. Introduction

Tempe, Arizona is a city of approximately 145,000
residents. At the time of the research, the Tempe
Police Department employed 234 sworn officers and
approximately 90 civilians.

At the time of the first Vera site visit in June
1991, the Tempe INOP project had completed the
recruitment and community policing and problem-
solving training of patrol officers participating
in the initiative; completed analysis of a survey
of residents and business owners in the target
area; established partnerships with various groups
representing city government, service agencies,
business associations and community groups within
the target area; and, after a period of delay
caused by the need to review and comply with
various city regulations and specifications (e.g.,
zoning, Dept. of Buildings), was ready to open a
mini-station in a modular unit located at the
center of the designated target beat. By the
second Vera site visit, in January 1992, the
mini-station was completely functional.

B. Community Policing in Tempe
When the Tempe Police Department was chosen as one
of the eight INOP sites, the concept of community
policing had not yet been introduced in the city.
Although the Police Department had been discussing
the development of a community policing program
since the appointment of the current Chief of
Police three years before, the Department's
selection as an INOP site proved central to the
implementation effort. According to Department
officials, before the BJA opportunity opened, no
clear model of community policing had been defined
and no detailed plans for implementation had been
developed.

In designing the INOP project, the Department
selected a single beat, characterized by a high
volume of calls for service and a long-standing
heroin trafficking condition, as the site for a
pilot community policing project (officially
designated as "Beat 16"). Under the pilot program,
one squad (consisting of a sergeant and six patrol
officers, under the direction of the lieutenant
for that patrol quadrant) was assigned
responsibility for the beat. The assignment of a
squad to a single beat represented a departure
from Tempe's normal assignment system, which is
temporal rather than geographic -- that is, squads
are typically assigned to shifts rather than
beats. Members of the Beat 16 squad, in
contrast, work overlapping shifts (e.g., beginning
at 7 a.m., 11 a.m., 3 p.m., etc.) within the beat.

Officers in the squad continue to be responsible
for calls for service within the beat itself. They
differ from the rest of the patrol force in that
they are not responsible for calls for service
outside their beat; at times, officers who are not
assigned to Beat 16 are called in to assist with
calls that can not be handled by the squad. In
addition, Beat 16 officers, unlike the rest of the
patrol force, have the right to set priorities and
delay their response to calls for service.

Yet, in many respects, patrol operations for
officers assigned to Beat 16 did not differ radi-
cally from routine patrol operations. In part, the
operational similarities between Beat 16 and the
rest of the patrol force resulted from the
decision, expressed by Department managers, to
implement community policing "philosophically
rather than programmatically." Officers in Beat 16
were not freed from responsibility for calls for
service and continue to patrol in radio cars for
most of their shift.

Apart from their long-term assignment to a single
area, the primary difference between Beat 16
officers and other patrol units is that they
received intensive training in the philosophy of
community policing and the strategies of
problem-solving policing, which is considered an
integral part of the community policing approach.
They were encouraged to develop extensive
knowledge of the target area and, particularly,
the troubled locations or "hot spots" within the
area; to interact frequently with the community;
to attend meetings of community associations; and
to become familiar with the characteristics and
habits of known drug offenders within the
neighborhood.

To aid in problem-solving, shortly after training
was completed, Beat 16 officers conducted formal
surveys of businesses and residents within the
beat. These surveys had multiple purposes: they
facilitated the development of a "Beat Profile";
they helped define the problems that were most
important to the community itself; they helped
introduce the officers and the concept of Beat 16
to members of the community; they helped squad
members establish contacts for future
information-gathering within the community; and
they provided baseline data for future assessments
of the effect of the program on order maintenance,
fear of crime and the community's perceptions of
quality of life within the beat.

Another central component of Beat 16 is the
mini-station located in a modular unit in a park
at the center of the beat. The mini-station is
staffed by the squad's administrative assistant
during the day. It serves as the site of a drug
information hotline. It also provides a
community-based setting for officers to complete
paperwork during the course of their patrol shift.
As one officer put it, the mini-station was
designed to "bring the community to us and us to
the community."

The project's Coordinating Committee, which
included representatives of community groups,
local business leaders, service providers and city
officials, was an integral feature of the Beat 16
project. According to Department officials, the
Coordinating Committee, not the Department, was
"in charge of" the project. The committee was
expected to play an active role in defining the
problems within the neighborhood and in
identifying resources within the neighborhood,
city government and private agencies which might
be used to develop solutions to these problems. By
the time of the final Vera site visit in July,
1992, however, the Coordinating Committee had been
dissolved due, according to respondents, to a lack
of interest among community residents.

C. The Target Area: Beat 16

In contrast to the rest of Tempe, Beat 16 is a
relatively troubled area. Beat 16 houses a higher
proportion of low income residents, of tenants in
Section 8 housing and of minority residents than
the other beats in the city. It is also the city's
primary site of street-level drug trafficking.

The size of the target area in which community
policing activities were concentrated was reduced
during the training period from the entire beat
(approximately one square mile, roughly 13,000 in
population) to a subsection of the beat (somewhat
more than half of the original beat) in which
calls for service and local drug trafficking
operations were concentrated. Although Beat 16
officers respond to calls for service in the beat
as a whole, the focus of their problem-solving
activities is a sub-area within the beat that
includes three distinct neighborhoods (Escalante
Park, Victory Acres and Don Carlos).

The reduced target area includes a substantial
business strip, featuring motels, bars and ware-
house-sized commercial outlets; a
centrally-located park (the site of the Beat 16
mini-station), which is adjacent to the local
elementary school and includes a recreation
center, pool and senior center; older privately
owned, single-family homes, many of which were
rebuilt over the past 15 years with Housing and
Urban Development (HUD) block-grant funds; newer
multi-family rental units; and small retail
establishments (e.g., convenience stores). It is
divided by a recently constructed highway which
has cut off established routes to the school and
park for some families (a source of concern within
the neighborhood).

The population of the area is also mixed. A
substantial number of families of Mexican descent
have lived in the area for generations; many own
their homes. Yet the beat as a whole is
predominantly white (71%; Latino, 23%). Most
residents are classified as being in the
low-to-moderate income range.

The surveys conducted by Beat 16 officers revealed
that the primary quality-of-life concerns of
residents within the area involved burglary,
drugs, juvenile crime (a local youth gang) and
graffiti. Prostitution was also cited as a primary
concern of business leaders (the prostitution
problem in the area is concentrated along the com-
mercial strip that houses motels and bars).
Meetings with community groups also helped
identify neighborhood concerns about specific bars
and motels which had been the locus of problems
within the area and a desire for streetlights and
sidewalks to improve safety and quality of life
within residential areas.

According to respondents, the neighborhood is
unique in terms of the residential stability of
families in the older houses. Several respondents
echoed the belief that, "People know everybody.
They've lived there a long time." One Beat 16
officer remarked that local trouble-makers were
generally easy to find because they always come
back to the neighborhood.

The local drug problem involved a pattern of
heroin trafficking and use that has "been going on
for generations" and is at least partly
responsible for the reputation of the area as "one
of the primary trouble spots in the city."
Respondents within the Department explained that
for the past 20 years a series of user-dealers,
often from the same families, controlled local
drug markets, developed extensive rap sheets and
took each others' places during periods of
incarceration. Although heroin trafficking in
Tempe is largely concentrated within the commer-
cial and residential streets of the target area,
purchasers are reportedly drawn from neighboring
communities throughout the region.

II. Drug Demand Reduction Activities

A. Drug Prevention

The drug demand reduction component of the Tempe
program drew primarily upon drug education and
prevention programs. Although a few respondents
expressed interest in referring arrested drug
purchasers to treatment facilities and in
identifying criminal justice alternatives for
them, even these respondents shared the general
hard-line "lock 'em up" approach to local drug
traffickers.

The project also established ties with several
prevention programs for local youth. One member of
the functioning Coordinating Committee, under the
auspices of Chicanos por la Causa (CPLC), runs a
prevention program for elementary school youth who
are identified as being at "high risk" for future
drug involvement. The program features home
visits, a daily presence on the school campus,
after school activities designed to enhance
self-esteem, and special community events (e.g., a
Cinco de Mayo festival which allowed Beat 16
officers to meet with the community).

B. Law Enforcement Activities

The primary drug enforcement effort was "Sweep
16"--a sustained undercover buy-and-bust
operation, carried out by the Department's
Selective Enforcement Unit (SEU) in early May,
1991. Sweep 16 led to the arrest of 18 local
user-dealers--a substantial proportion of known
drug traffickers in the small target area.
Respondents within the Department reported that
SEU personnel were initially reluctant to conduct
the sweep ("Why waste our time on small fries?")
but ultimately agreed to the task, defined as
"tactical enforcement," designed to change the
reputation of the area as a place where outsiders
could buy heroin safely.

The Beat 16 squad also worked closely with a
detective in the Criminal Investigation Division
who was assigned to the area to locate and
identify known offenders and to apprehend
individuals in the neighborhood for whom warrants
had been issued.

III. Other Program Components

A. Recruitment and Training

The Beat 16 squad was recruited directly from the
Department's patrol division. In announcing the
formation of the community policing component, the
Department indicated that applicants should expect
to work a substantial amount of overtime on the
project. Of the original 12 applicants, six
officers were selected.

There were several components to training. The
Tempe Police Department contracted with the
Institute of Law and Justice (ILJ) to conduct a
week of training in Tempe. The ILJ training
covered the identification of city resources,
crime prevention techniques, the philosophy of
community policing, drug recognition, addiction
and cycles of violence, problem-solving techniques
and community empowerment. Training also featured
a presentation on the nature and purpose of crime
analysis, the supervision of problem-solving
policing and extensive readings on community
policing and problem-solving. Representatives of
the Police Departments in Aurora, Colorado and San
Diego, California were brought in to conduct
seminars on community policing and problem-solving
strategies. In addition, the Beat 16 squad went to
San Diego for field training in problem-solving
techniques. 

Six members of the Project's Coordinating
Committee also received training at the Depart-
ment's Citizen Police Academy. The Academy, which
is independent of the Beat 16 project, conducts a
six-week course (one evening per week) for
citizens of Tempe who want to receive crime and
drug prevention training and learn more about the
structure and operations of the Department.

B. Community and Agency Partnerships

The awarding of BJA INOP funds to the Tempe
project was announced shortly after the first few
meetings of the developing Escalante Neighborhood
Association. According to a member of Beat 16's
Coordinating Committee, at first the Neighborhood
Association was characterized by "anger,
suspicion, disenfranchisement, and fear of
retribution from the drug dealers. . . . [It was
so bad that] people had been slashing city
employees' tires."

According to several respondents, this distrust
was evident at the first meeting of the Asso-
ciation that Beat 16 officers attended. One squad
member characterized that meeting as "a vigilante
group against the cops." He reported that
neighborhood residents felt that they had largely
been abandoned by the Department and were
skeptical about the squad's willingness to work
closely with the community.

Another respondent, who works closely with
neighborhood groups throughout the city, saw the
timing of the project as fortuitous. She reported
that, following the announcement of the initiation
of the Beat 16 project, at the next association
meeting "information poured out to the police
[and] residents surrounded the cops. . . ." She
characterized the neighborhood association as
actively involved in "reclaiming the neighborhood"
from the drug dealers and defined the Beat 16
initiative as an integral piece of the reclamation
process.

In fact, the involvement of Beat 16 with the
developing Neighborhood Association proved
instrumental in linking it with other
organizations that had the capacity to address the
problems identified as central to community
residents who attend association meetings. The
Beat 16 Coordinating Committee brought together
representatives of community groups (the Escalante
Neighborhood Association, the local businessman's
association, a local priest) with representatives
of city government (the liaison to the City
Council, assigned to work closely with
neighborhood associations and to provide direct
feedback to the Council about them; a
representative of the Public Works Department;
representatives of the city's Community
Development Agency) and local service providers
(the elementary school principal, the on-site
director of the city's recreation program in
Escalante Park, the Director of the CPLC
prevention program). In addition to groups
actively represented on the Coordinating
Committee, each member of the Beat 16 squad
attended meetings of a specific homeowner's
association or other neighborhood association
within the beat.

C. Outreach and Advertising

Outreach efforts made by the developing Escalante
Neighborhood Association in concert with the Beat
16 project were extensive. With the assistance of
the City Council's liaison to neighborhood groups,
the Association distributed 600 newsletters, based
on issues raised at Association meetings, to
families within the target area.

D. The Role of the Department's Management
Information System (MIS)

The Beat 16 project drew extensively on the
Department's Management Information System in a
number of ways--it was used to enter and analyze
data from the surveys of residents and business
owners; to develop an information system based on
Field Investigation Reports developed for the
project; to provide periodic reports on "hot
spots" within the beat; and to analyze changes in
criminal activity within the beat, using the
Department's new geo-mapping system.

E. Local Evaluation

ILJ was responsible for describing the process of
implementing the Beat 16 project and assessing its
impacts. Findings from the baseline survey of
residents and businesses were compared to outcomes
from subsequent surveys and provided a means of
assessing effects on quality of life and attitudes
toward the police within the beat.

In addition, ILJ compared departmental data on
crime complaints and calls for service within the
beat and the rest of the city for 12 months before
the initiative and 12 months after the initiative
began. ILJ reviewed problem-solving assignment
logs; gathered qualitative data on observable dif-
ferences in street drug activity; and explored the
attitudes of team members about community polic-
ing, the intervention itself and its effects.

F. BJA Funds

In Tempe, BJA funds (a total of $200,000) were
allocated to cover the cost of the project's
administrative assistant; rent for the modular
unit now installed in Escalante Park; officer
overtime expenditures; MIS purchases; the
evaluation component; training and travel; and a
Clean-up Fund, established to support
community-based, problem-solving activities.

IV. Expected Impacts

A. Community Effects

According to Department personnel and members of
the Planning Committee, a number of short- and
long-term objectives were held for the project.
Several respondents reported that Sweep 16 would
have visible short-term effects on local drug and
prostitution activities. Although project
supervisors repeatedly emphasized their belief
that "enforcement can't do it all," squad members
pointed to the value of demonstrating to the
community that "these guys (the drug dealers)
aren't invincible." They also expected that the
enforcement component of the project would
ultimately change the reputation of the area from
that of a place where outsiders can come in to
purchase drugs.

A number of respondents also expected that the
project, in concert with the developing Escalante
Neighborhood Association, would have the capacity
to address specific quality-of-life issues of
concern to the community--streetlights, sidewalks,
graffiti, traffic problems. By so doing, it was
hoped that the Project would influence the quality
of life in the area; address specific problems
associated with disorderly conditions; build
substantial ties to community residents in an
effort to expand the sources of information within
the community; and, ultimately, empower the
community in its effort to maximize its share of
city resources.

B. Departmental Effects

One issue raised by respondents concerns the
extent to which officers would "buy into" the
community policing philosophy and problem-solving
approach. Project directors voiced some concern
that some squad members might remain unduly
committed to a "lock 'em up" style of policing and
may not have fully integrated their training in
problem-solving methods. Although a few squad
members acknowledged that they are more
comfortable with a stronger enforcement
orientation than is commonly associated with
community-oriented policing, they reported that
the project's intensive focus on a single beat had
enhanced their ability to control drug conditions
in the area.

Ultimately, Department officials expected that the
pilot project would have a substantial influence
on the Department's efforts to increase
involvement in neighborhood-oriented policing.
On-going deliberations about ways to divide the
city into quadrants, rather than sectors, might
have some bearing on the way in which styles of
neighborhood-oriented policing, beyond the Beat 16
target area, are introduced in the city as a
whole. Although Department officials expected to
expand neighborhood- oriented policing beyond Beat
16 in the near future, they were somewhat
skeptical about whether such an approach would
prove valuable in the wealthier, less
problem-ridden beats in Tempe.

NORFOLK

I. The Norfolk INOP Project and the Target Area

A. Introduction

Norfolk is a city of 261,229 people, with a
population density of 4,856 per square mile (1990
Census, as reported in The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star, 6/24/91). Its police force has 684
sworn officers and 176 civilian employees.

B. Community Policing in Norfolk

Norfolk's community policing effort is part of an
overall city government initiative entitled Police
Assisted Community Enforcement (PACE). PACE is a
city-wide program whose stated goals are "to
reduce criminal activity and calls for service in
targeted areas" through a three-stage process: (1)
Sweeps, (2) Increased Patrols, and (3) Community
Partnerships. The program is "city-wide" in that
it formally involves every city agency, from the
top down, but its activities are focused in
particular areas, generally in and around public
housing complexes. Like the other INOP programs,
PACE incorporates community policing to address
crime and quality-of-life problems, especially
those related to drug trafficking and drug
abuse.

The PACE project was funded through revenue raised
from a $.03 increase in real estate taxes (which
generated $1.8 million), effective July 1, 1990.
The revenue obtained from the increased real
estate tax was used to provide the Norfolk Police
Department with 60 new personnel, 38 sworn
officers and 22 civilians. The hiring of these
civilians allowed the release of 22 officers, who
were performing non-enforcement roles within the
Department, to patrol functions. Additional
vehicles and communications equipment were also
purchased as part of the PACE initiative.

The three phases of PACE are described by police
department staff as follows:

(1) Sweeps -- intelligence gathering, undercover
operations, saturation patrol;
(2) Increased Patrols -- police, along with other
city agencies, address quality-of-life problems,
educate citizens regarding available programs;
(3) Community Partnerships -- community policing
itself, assisted by the police department.
 
PACE target areas are selected by high-ranking
police personnel from the Special Enforcement
Division, Vice-Narcotics Division, with input from
others, based on the level of street drug
activity. Information on street drug activity
comes from citizens, arrest statistics, and
observation. 

The number of officers assigned to a target area
varies depending on both the Phase and the part of
the Phase (see Section II below for a more
detailed description of the Law Enforcement
Activities). During the covert operations stage of
Phase 1, which lasts for two to three months, 16
officers (two undercover, four control officers,
eight investigators and two corporals) and one
Assistant Commonwealth Attorney are needed. When
the operation moves into the "reversals/search
warrants" stage (which lasts about 10 days), the
personnel requirements increase to 40 officers: 18
investigators from Vice and Narcotics, 16 officers
from Metro Tact, and six officers from patrol.
Then, on "Indictment Day," the staff increases to
77 officers: 55 supervisors and investigators from
Vice and Narcotics, 16 officers from Metro Tact,
and six officers from patrol.

Phase 2, Increased Patrols, involves personnel
from all divisions of the police department; three
marked units from the Special Enforcement Division
are assigned to each target area from 11:00 a.m.
to 7:30 p.m. and from 7:00 p.m. to 3:30 a.m., and
one marked unit from each of the (two) patrol
divisions are assigned to the area during the day
shift. Officers from K-9, Traffic, Crime
Prevention and Investigative Divisions assist as
needed on both vehicle and foot patrols.

During Phase 3, two marked units from each Patrol
Division are assigned seven days a week, between
the hours of 11:00 a.m. and 3:30 a.m., and Sector
Lieutenants and supervisors are actively involved
with the community in problem-solving efforts.
Personnel from the Special Enforcement Division
and Crime Prevention Division continue to work in
the area.

The first two PACE target areas (Grandy Village
and East Oceanview) began Phase 1 on January 25,
1991, Phase 2 on January 28, and were in Phase 3
(Community Partnerships) by March 4 of that year.
The second group of target areas, Calvert Square,
Diggs Town, Huntersville, and Oakleaf Forest (four
housing projects in close proximity to one
another), which entered Phase 1 on April 4, 1991,
were in Phase 2 at the time of the first Vera site
visit. By the time of the final research site
visit, PACE had been implemented in ten target
areas and was scheduled to expand into two more
areas.

The PACE Support Services Committee serves to
coordinate services from the police and other city
agencies involved in the initiative. The committee
has representatives from the Police Department,
Department of Human Services, Public Health
Department, Department of Parks and Recreation,
Department of Planning and Codes Administration,
Juvenile Court Services Unit, Norfolk
Redevelopment and Housing Authority (NRHA), and
Community Services Board. The Support Services
Committee meets at least monthly, and formal
minutes are kept.

Interagency coordination in Norfolk is extensive;
the FAST team (which is a subcommittee of the
Support Services Committee) is made up of
representatives from NRHA, Public Health
Department, Social Services, Community Services,
Norfolk Police Department, Norfolk Juvenile Court,
Department of Parks and Recreation, and the school
system. The FAST team is designed to provide a
neighborhood-focused approach to family assessment
and services whose purpose is "to enhance family
and individual functioning and self-sufficiency
through team assessment of service needs, action
planning and follow-up" (PACE Support Services
notebook). The FAST team provides interagency
staffing for multi-problem families and adults;
information, referral and advocacy; and community
involvement, needs identification, and
problem-solving. Identified service needs are
reported back to the Support Services Committee.

The purpose of the NEAT team (also a subcommittee
of the Support Services Committee) is to address
environmental problems in the neighborhood such
as, abandoned vehicles, vacant lots, houses in
disrepair, improper storage of trash, etc. The
NEAT team has members from the Police Department,
Bureau of Environmental Health, Department of
Public Works, Division of Existing Structures,
Parks and Forestry, and NRHA.

Community partnerships are a central part of the
PACE program and are initiated during Phase III
with the "Community Service Days." Community
Service Days are held in the PACE target area, in
either a Recreation Center or Community Center.
Each city agency (e.g., Code Enforcement, Human
Services, Health Department, Parks and Recreation,
NRHA, the Police Department) sets up booths, "like
a job fair," according to one agency staff member.
Residents are encouraged to attend to "present
your concerns and express your community needs . .
. Give members of these agencies an opportunity to
address your individual concerns and assist you
with solutions" (Community Service Days Flyer). 
PACE representatives also attend civic league
meetings and are present at virtually every
community function. NRHA publishes a newsletter
that is distributed in all the housing projects
(the location of most PACE areas).

II. Drug Demand Reduction Activities

A. Drug Prevention

The major prevention component of PACE is its PACE
Athletic League. The PACE Athletic League provides
Nighthawk basketball, baseball, and flag football.
It was reported that during the summer, 60-65
youths show up for each game, and the program also
provides outings (e.g., to baseball games of the
local AAA team, the Tidewater Tides). DARE is also
a part of PACE. Norfolk was the first jurisdiction
in Virginia to have the DARE program in elementary
schools as well as junior high and high schools.

The Second Patrol Division has a trailer, located
in East Ocean View (which was one of the first
PACE target areas). In this trailer, residents can
find literature on the DARE program; a calendar of
activities at the East Ocean View Community
Center; information on local civic leagues; a
newsletter and other information from the Ocean
View Services Project Team (composed of
representatives from Community Improvement, the
Fire Department, the Health Department, Human
Services, NRHA, Parks and Recreation, the Police
Department, Public Works, Utilities, and Existing
Structures). Information is also available on
AIDS, drug use prevention, and drug and alcohol
treatment programs. There are forms in the trailer
that citizens can use to report abandoned vehicles
and other nuisances.

One approach to drug prevention used extensively
in East Ocean View was demolition of abandoned
buildings known to be used for drug dealing.
Attempts were made to evict drug dealers from
apartments, and in East Ocean View (and other
areas with rental housing), rental housing owners
are encouraged to screen prospective tenants
carefully. Efforts were then made to inform other
developments of evictions so that these
developments would not rent to the drug dealers.

B. Enforcement

The PACE program is defined as having three
phases: Sweeps, Increased Patrol, and Community
Partnerships. The first phase is the most
concentrated assault on street drug activity. Once
a target area is selected, it is infiltrated by an
undercover officer and two investigators from the
street enforcement unit of the Vice and Narcotics
Division of the police department. The undercovers
are selected either from the recruit school or
from the patrol division other than that in which
the target area is located. The undercovers are
trained and then, under the direction of the
control officers, make buys from those who are
selling within the target area. In addition to
making buys, members of this Division do
surveillance and gather information on the nature
of the drug market. This first step, called "pre-
sweeps," lasts for about two months. For the last
week or two of Phase 1, using the information
gathered during the two months, about 40 officers
from Special Enforcement and the two Patrol
Divisions target both dealers and users in
"sweeps." Buyers are targeted through "reversals,"
in which the police:

. . . take the place of the dealers on the
corners, and we sell placebo drugs to the users
and then we arrest them. We do that, alternating
between the buyers and the sellers for a period of
a week, either a buy/bust where we make buys and
then go in and arrest, or through reversals. We
just keep a concentrated effort on that area for a
week or two and then on the grand jury date we go
in with the indictments and arrest those that are
still on the street.

Enhanced prosecution is a central feature of PACE
drug enforcement activities. The pre-sweeps step
ends on the "Grand Jury Day," when indictments are
handed down. (Unlike the practice in many other
cities, in Norfolk defendants may be indicted
before arrests are made.) Prior to this time, the
case is developed, and the control officers
prepare files. About two weeks prior to the
indictment day (which is selected through the City
Attorney's office and the court), the police take
the case folders in for the Attorney's review in
preparation for the grand jury. On "Grand Jury
Day" one of the control officers goes through the
folders in front of the grand jury. Indictments
are handed down, and within an hour or two are in
the Vice and Narcotics Division office:

. . . we package them in our arrest folders; we
have the teams there for the purpose of going out
and making the arrests -- and doing much like we
do with reversals, except we have a command post.
We're bringing them straight in because there's no
need to get notes together. Now we go out into the
target area with however many "arrestings" it
takes, depending on the number of people that have
been indicted.

Approximately four or five hours later, there is a
news conference announcing that the target area is
now a PACE area, and the narcotics officers pull
out. This marks the start of the sweeps step of
Phase 1. At the time of the press release,
statistics have been compiled regarding the number
of arrests made, including type and severity,
firearms recovered, and search warrants executed.
These statistics are broken down by target area.

The next 72 hours are known as the "sweeps,"
which, for especially the first 24 hours, entail
"zero tolerance." People who are drinking in
public are warned or receive a summons. Police
stop crap games, "hanging out," loud music, etc.
Abandoned vehicles are towed. During the sweeps a
mobile command post is set up in a trailer within
a half mile from the target area. Arrest teams
pick up sellers and buyers and take them to the
command post, where evidence is gathered and
labeled and documentation is prepared.

During this time, the traffic division is in the
area doing highway safety stops on major arteries
leading into and out of targeted areas. The canine
unit's drug dog is used in conjunction with these
stops:

. . . assisting the Vice and Narcotics unit in
trying to identify these people who have not been
picked up at this point on the indictments. We are
out there basically to soften up the area. The
worst of the bad guys are gone. They've either
been arrested, or they're in hiding somewhere, or
they're on the run. So they [Vice and Narcotics]
do us quite a service because these guys are gone.
The major dealers know something's going on, even
if they haven't been picked up. So once we come
in, the area's been softened up somewhat by Vice
and Narcotics, then we further do that job, in an
effort to get people out of their homes, to emerge
out. We want them to know we're there. That's the
first big impact in the sweeps, the impact on the
residents.

Safety stops are usually done from the time the
sweeps start (around 5:00 p.m.) until midnight,
when there is no longer enough traffic to
continue.

During the sweeps period, the police are there not
only to arrest violators, but to identify problems
such as defective traffic lights or signs. They
make "defect reports" to the appropriate agency,
through the Support Services Committee. They also
go door to door (to every home in the target
area), handing out flyers that describe the PACE
program to the residents. Residents are given
phone numbers to call with any information they
might have about criminal activity in the area.
During these first three days of the PACE program,
cars are towed; the appropriate agencies are
notified regarding broken street lights,
sidewalks, eyesores, hazardous areas, etc.

Phase 2, Increased Patrols then begins. Officers
from Special Enforcement, Patrol and Crime
Prevention talk to residents and distribute
information on PACE, door-to-door in the target
areas. In addition, Crime Prevention officers meet
with community leaders to organize civic leagues,
Neighborhood Watch, Operation Identification, or
other community organizations, and also conduct
security surveys. Also during this Phase, Public
Support Rallies and Community Service Days are
held; these include City officials, police and
community leaders in open forums with area
residents. An effort to clean-up target areas is
initiated during this phase; this process involves
a team of police, city agencies, and others (the
NEAT team) who work to remove abandoned vehicles,
improve trash and garbage pick-up, improve access
lighting, make street repairs, code enforcement,
etc. The FAST team also assesses the needs of the
community to provide assistance in education,
health care, recreation and referrals.

During Phase 3 the community is expected to begin
to reduce the burden on the police department, and
enter into a partnership with the police. At the
time of the final research site visit (July,
1992), this Phase remained a problem. Because of
lack of community organization, according to the
police, they had been unable to withdraw from any
of the PACE target areas. This had the effect of
stretching police resources too thin. (See Volume
II for further discussion of this problem.)

III. Other Program Components

A. Recruitment and Training

According to personnel interviewed during the
implementation site visit and subsequent visits,
"all officers are PACE officers." Therefore,
recruitment per se is not an issue for this
program. However, one of the training officers
indicated that,

. . . we have officers that do PACE every day;
that's their one assignment . . . [and others who
are] assisting with the PACE program as far as the
enforcement aspect is concerned, but . . . we're
starting off slow and we eventually want to cover
the entire city and get everyone involved in the
PACE program.

The officers who are assigned to work in PACE
areas are asked to make a commitment to stay in
that assignment for a certain minimum length of
time. If, however, their performance is not satis-
factory or they "burn-out," they will be
reassigned.

As indicated above, the PACE program was
implemented on January 25, 1991; prior to that
time, all Norfolk Police Department personnel
received PACE training, from the Chief of Police
down to patrol officers. Training began in August
of 1990 when four members of the force were sent
to Michigan State University for a three-day
seminar on community policing with Robert
Trojanowicz. The officers from Norfolk felt that,
because this seminar was specifically designed for
police from the state of Michigan, the classes
were not particularly relevant to their needs.
However, they felt that they did gain insight from
informal discussions and with Trojanowicz himself.

Subsequently, all police department staff with
ranks of lieutenant and above attended a two-day
seminar conducted by Trojanowicz, held at the
Norfolk airport. Later, the training officers from
Norfolk conducted eight-hour introductory
seminars, first for all the sergeants and then for
the corporals. Part of this seminar was a
presentation by the Assistant City Manager for
Public Safety regarding how the city officials saw
the PACE program and stressing the city's support
of the program and the importance of interagency
cooperation. They also had video presentations
from department heads in all city agencies. This
was followed by roll-call training for the
officers, providing an introduction to the PACE
program.

After all members of the Department had received
the introductory training, the cycle began again
with sergeants and corporals (separately)
receiving another eight hours on the specifics of
community policing and PACE. An integral part of
each of these sessions was a request for
recommendations and comments. An additional eight
hours of training was also provided to the
uniformed officers (including patrol officers,
investigators, all staff positions, in groups of
20-25). These sessions included two hours on
community policing; one hour on PACE; one hour on
sensitivity training; and two hours on drug
arrests and tactics that narcotics officers use on
the street. Also included was time for questions
and answers and feedback from the officers. One of
the outcomes of this feedback was the development
of "Quality Watch Forms," which provide the patrol
officers with a mechanism for receiving feedback
on problems they report to other agencies. In
addition to the police officers, staff from other
city agencies participated in the training
sessions (on community policing and PACE, but not
on narcotics arrests).

By the end of January 1991, all members of the
Norfolk Police Department had received the
training described above. Since that time, one of
the training officers has provided regular
in-service training on the PACE approach. In
addition, two of the training officers provide a
four-hour training session on community policing
and PACE to the police academy class.

B. Community and Interagency Partnerships

Interagency cooperation is extensive in Norfolk.
Every city agency is involved and has
representatives on the FAST or NEAT teams and/or
participates in the Support Services Committee.
The Support Services Committee represents all city
departments that are involved in PACE. Initially,
this was limited to human services and the police,
plus a few other departments (e.g., Code
Enforcements, Existing Structures). As the program
(PACE) matured, however, its scope became broader
and other agencies (e.g., Utilities) were drawn
into the program.

Phase 3 of PACE is called "Community
Partnerships." An important part of Community
Partnerships is making city services more
accessible to the communities, and this is accom-
plished through the Support Services Committee.
According to one human services professional,
shrinking resources at all levels of government
and service delivery systems has resulted in human
services becoming very specialized functions and
less accessible to consumers. He believes,
however, that it is possible to change this
direction:

. . . there's no reason we can't invent that . . .
it's just like the police are reinventing
community presence; there's no reason we can't
reinvent a community presence, and that's what
PACE is all about. And there's a social strategy
for government; that's what PACE is all about. . .
. I don't know the exact years in Norfolk,
probably 10 or 15 years, never assigned caseloads
for ADC, food stamps, or any other payment program
on the basis of geographic area in the sense of
neighborhoods. . . . And we tried to start to try
reinventing that. Shift caseloads of an eligibil-
ity worker, a food stamp worker, an ADC worker,
all have the caseloads from a set geographic area,
or a number of workers depending on the size of
the geographic area.

Like the law enforcement side of PACE, the human
services shifts to neighborhoods are being done
gradually, starting with the communities
identified as PACE target areas. Thus, the PACE
police officer has a social worker and an
eligibility worker he/she can work with.
Within PACE this coordination is carried out by
the Support Services Committee, through its two
subcommittees (NEAT and FAST). The NEAT team
focuses on environmental concerns, while the FAST
team deals with:

. . . those multiple problem families that none of
us can crack individually, that maybe by working
together we can have an impact on those families
and the dysfunction that may exist in them . . .
see that referral processes are developed and
flow, services central clearing houses, receiving
cases, assigning cases, coordinates meetings . . .

Each PACE area has its own FAST team, which is
manpower-intensive, but the line-level staff appear
(according to their supervisors) to be happy with
the arrangement. While the original PACE design
called for separate NEAT teams for each area, this
was later revised so that there is just one
city-wide NEAT team. The interagency cooperation
exists at all levels, from line worker through
administrative staff. The first decision of the
Support Services Committee was that every
department would treat a PACE referral as the
priority referral of the department. So, the extra
time that is devoted to attending meetings is
recovered by increased efficiency:

There's no chasing anymore. It comes in as a PACE
problem, as a PACE referral, it's dealt with. And
because you know the people working in that
community, there's usually no loss of referrals and
information in the referral process in the
bureaucracies of the various departments.

C. Community Outreach and Advertisements

Community outreach begins during Phase 2 (Increased
Patrols) of PACE. At this time the police go
door-to-door distributing flyers describing the
PACE program and announcing Community Service Days.
Community Service Days provide residents of a PACE
target area with the opportunity to talk to
representatives of city agencies. Public support
rallies are held, and there is an Open Forum with
Norfolk city officials, the NRHA, the police, and
community leaders.

With regard to advertising, the PACE logo appears
on all police vehicles and those of many other
agencies (e.g., utilities, trash collection, etc.).
Lapel pins of the logo have been produced and are
worn by city employees and others. The Norfolk
Police Department has a sophisticated video
production unit which has produced tapes describing
the PACE program.

D. Associated Technology

As part of the civilianization of Police Department
jobs associated with PACE, the 911 dispatchers were
replaced by civilian "telecommunicators." In
addition, a call diversion program was instituted
through which the telecommunicator determines which
of the calls coming into the 911 lines can be
handled over the telephone (i.e., without sending a
car), which can be diverted to another agency, and
which are simply inappropriate for police response.

The telecommunicators are part of the Police
Emergency Services Liaison Unit (PESLU), which is
also staffed by a lieutenant, a sergeant, two
corporals and three police officers, and functions
from the Emergency Operations Center (EOC).

IV. Expected Impacts

The hopes of the City of Norfolk are that PACE,
through the combination of enforcement efforts,
interagency cooperation and community involvement,
will allow the residents of neighborhoods with drug
problems to reclaim their community. The
enforcement efforts are expected to stabilize the
neighborhood, and the residents are part of the
effort through the Neighborhood Watch Program and
civic leagues. Calls for service are expected to go
down as a result of decreased criminal activities.

As a direct result of the personal relationship
developed (through PACE) between the police and the
community, police officers and supervisors attend
community meetings and get to know the residents.
The goal of PACE is to:

. . . sell to the community that it's a common
interest among the police department and the city
and the citizens that we all unite. That no
community that's ever united and been strong has
had a problem with continuing crime. It just
doesn't stay where it can't operate. Without the
community we're just never going to provide the
kind of environment that is going to make crime [go
away].

NEW YORK

I. The New York INOP Project and the Target Area

A. Introduction

New York is a city of approximately eight million
people, living in five counties (known as boroughs)
that cover 319 square miles, with a population
density of over 25,000 people per square mile
(65,000 in Manhattan). In fiscal year 1990, the New
York City Police Department (NYPD) had 25,869 sworn
officers and 7,091 civilian employees. 

Community policing began as a pilot program in a
single precinct in Brooklyn in 1984. Through a
gradual process, community policing was expanded
until, by 1988, it was implemented in all 75
precincts of the NYPD. The evolution of community
policing in New York City is not over yet; the NYPD
has recently presented a revised strategy for
policing New York City in the '90s: "The dominant
philosophy and strategy for policing the city will
be community policing. The Department will return
to block-by-block policing throughout the city"
(Brown, Policing New York City in the 1990s, 1991).

B. Community Policing in New York

The goals of the NYPD involve changes in both
community policing and the philosophy of the NYPD
as a whole. However, at the time of the first Vera
site visit, the Community Patrol Officer Program
(CPOP) covered part or all of every precinct in New
York City. The basic structure had been to
divide a precinct (or the part of it covered by
CPOP) into beats, usually 10 per precinct. Each
CPOP beat was assigned a walking Community Patrol
Officer (CPO) for one shift; the hours worked by
CPOs are flexible, determined by the CPO and his or
her supervisor in response to the problems on that
beat. The CPOP sergeant is responsible for
supervising the 10 to 14 CPOs in his or her
precinct. Training for CPOs is provided in the
Police Academy. Primary responsibility for
responding to calls for service (CFS) remains with
the radio motor patrol (RMP) units, but the CPO is
also expected to take some calls (depending on his
or her location relative to the call).

C. INOP Target Areas

The INOP project in New York has three target
areas. The success of the project was contingent
upon the purchase and receipt of a large van for
each site and upon the recruitment of civilian
volunteers to staff the van. Therefore, the
approach used in the New York City INOP project was
to recruit and train volunteers for one target site
prior to receipt of the vans, and to wait until the
vans were ready before recruiting volunteers in the
other two sites.
The INOP project had one targeted area in the 23rd
precinct in East Harlem, one area in the 44th
precinct in the Bronx, and one area in the 72nd
precinct in Brooklyn. Each of these three
precincts was chosen as an INOP site for a
different reason: The 23rd precinct was chosen in
conjunction with the Department of Health, which
already had an interest in the area; the 44th
precinct was chosen because it had a "Katzenbach
school; and the 72nd precinct was chosen because it
was New York City's original community policing
precinct." The INOP target sites, where the
vans are parked, are each outside of an elementary
school or junior high school. 

The particular sites were chosen because they were
schools within areas of active street-level
narcotics dealing. The two blocks surrounding the
schools were designated drug-free zones. 
At the time of the first Vera site visit, the only
target site that was active was the 23rd precinct
site. The NYPD intended to have the vans ready
(i.e., painted, treated with anti-graffiti
chemicals, equipped with telephones, etc.) by
August 15, 1991, and at that time, begin the
volunteer recruitment and training process in the
44th and 72nd precincts. While the research did not
examine the INOP project in the 72nd precinct,
during the second and third research site visits,
data were collected on the 44th precinct. With the
exception of participation of some local agencies,
the program was the same in both precincts.

Each of the precincts in which the vans were
located has a substantial, well-documented drug
problem; a high proportion of very poor families
(incomes under $10,000: 23rd, 57%; 44th, 59%; 72nd,
47%); and a high proportion of minority residents
(black or Latino: 23rd, 88%; 44th, 92%; 72nd, 49%).

In the 23rd precinct, the van was initially parked
in front of a Junior High School (JHS 117) and
across the street from an elementary school (PS
83).  These schools are located at 109th Street and
Third Avenue, in Spanish Harlem, in an area
described by the CPOs as "a supermarket for drugs."
The major drugs being sold are heroin and crack,
primarily heroin. The four-block area immediately
surrounding the school where the van was parked
contains a substantial playground area (the site of
local drug trafficking); a stretch of public
housing projects; and two well-developed commercial
strips containing bodegas, mom-and-pop stores, and
repair shops along Second and Third Avenues.

In the 44th precinct, the van is located opposite
an elementary school (PS 11) which also houses a
comprehensive community center, MOSAIC (Maximizing
Opportunity, Service and Action in the Community).
The 44th precinct is located in the
Melrose/Highbridge section of the Bronx, about a
quarter of a mile north of Yankee Stadium.

II. Drug Demand Reduction Activities

The INOP project in New York involved several city
and private agencies (in addition to the NYPD): the
Board of Education, the Victim Services Agency
(VSA), the Department of Health, the Department of
Youth Services, and the Citizens Committee for New
York City, Inc. In the 23rd precinct, the Board of
Education provided the school building (to be used
for rest rooms and recreational activities) and
provided some volunteers to staff the van. In the
44th precinct, these services were provided by
MOSAIC, which also served as a back-up site at
those times that the van was out of service due to
mechanical problems. Victim Services Agency
provided a staff member from its Domestic Violence
Prevention Program (DVPP) who worked in the van at
least one day per week and served as "a liaison to
resources." The Department of Health provided an
injury prevention component for the 23rd precinct
(prevention of accidents and violence); a safe
corridor program, using "Safe Streets" funds; and
other drug and crime prevention initiatives (e.g.,
McGruff). The Department of Youth Services, using
money from the "Safe Streets, Safe Cities" program
provided a youth counselor who (along with the
precinct Youth Officer) conducted home visits three
days each week and worked in the van two days per
week. A drug counselor was available to make
referrals to treatment (either from the van or a
site in the community), and a youth outreach worker
worked from the van, with the assistance of the CPO
to identify kids with problems. The Citizens
Committee provided training for volunteers, CPOs,
and anyone else who staffed the van.

In each of the seven patrol boroughs of New York
City, the NYPD operates its Tactical Narcotics
Teams (TNTs); TNT is a buy-and-bust street level
narcotics enforcement program. TNT operates in
areas identified as having a high degree of street-
level narcotics dealing. Because TNT was designed
to be a first step in reclaiming for the residents
an area of drug dealing, TNT usually stays in a
target area for 60 to 90 days and then returns to
do periodic maintenance. According to a press
release issued by the Mayor's Office (9/10/91), "To
ensure the safety of volunteers and students in the
area, . . . TNT will conduct drug sweeps before the
resource centers are set up." Since this release
was issued to announce the arrival of vans, TNT was
not in the area prior to the start of the NRC.
Rather, TNT operated in these areas around the time
the INOP program began.

A. Drug Prevention Activities

Both the vans and the adjacent schools are
patrolled by CPOs, who did not work inside the
vans, but are available to provide drug prevention
activities and referrals to treatment.  There is
also crime prevention and drug prevention
literature inside the van.

The Van. NYPD staff who designed the INOP project
intended to park the van (in each precinct) in
front of the school for 16 hours each day (although
at the beginning of the project, it was there for
just eight hours per day). During that time it was
staffed by volunteers and the personnel provided by
VSA, the Department of Health and the Department of
Youth Services. At the end of each day, a
designated police officer would disconnect the
telephone and electrical services and drive the van
back to the police parking lot. In addition to
the services being provided inside the vans and in
the school, the two-block radius around the van and
school was designated a drug-free zone.

The hope of project staff was that people in the
community would see the vans as community
resources, and not police resources. As a result,
although the vans were painted the blue and white
colors used by the NYPD and have the NYPD logo on
them, they intentionally do not have "police" in
the project name (Neighborhood Resource Center)
painted on it, and police officers were not
expected to staff them. However, because of
problems obtaining volunteers, the NYPD assigned a
police officer in each precinct to be the
"coordinator" of the project. This officer delivers
the van to the site each day and spends varying
amounts of time, along with the volunteers, in the
van. In a further effort to disassociate the van
from the Police Department, police reports are not
taken in the vans; rather, citizens are instructed
to call the precinct or see the CPO outside.

The Citizens Committee was interested in using the
vans to identify residents who wanted to organize
buildings and blocks to resist local drug dealers.
To that end, the Citizens Committee was prepared to
provide drug prevention training and services to
community groups in the target areas, and has a
history of helping groups work with the CPOs
against specific drug locations.

B. Law Enforcement Activities

Unlike some of the other INOP programs, there was
not a big law enforcement component to the New York
INOP project. TNT had been in the 23rd precinct for
some months prior to the start of the INOP project
there, to reduce street-level drug dealing
(however, it is possible that TNT would be in that
area even in the absence of the INOP project). Once
the van was in place, the CPOs patrolled the area
around the van during the hours of its operation;
although CPOs in New York City have fixed beats,
responsibility for patrolling the area around the
van were rotated among the CPOs in the unit. The
expectation was that the CPOs would ensure the
safety of citizens using the services in the van
and volunteers staffing the van. They would also be
available to take information about narcotics
locations and conditions in the neighborhood. In
addition, the telephone inside the van would enable
volunteers and other staff to call the precinct to
report crimes or for citizens to provide
information they might have about criminal
activity.

III. Other Program Components

A. Volunteers

The volunteers were initially recruited through the
schools, with the cooperation of the Board of
Education. About 10 or 15 volunteers attended the
initial training session (conducted by staff from
the Citizens Committee) in June 1991. By the time
the second session was held, however, the schools
had closed for summer vacation and none of the
original volunteers attended that session. Instead,
there was a new group of volunteers (approximately
10) from the community. These volunteers expressed
concerns about security within the van and about
scheduling the hours that might be required to
staff the van.

The first training session was held in the 23rd
precinct station house on June 18, 1991. The
session was led by the Citizens Committee, and the
agenda included an overview of the project, a
discussion of the role of the volunteers,
confidentiality, practice, and training and
follow-up. The role of the volunteer was described
as providing information and referrals. The
importance of confidentiality was stressed.
Volunteers who attended the June 18th meeting were
told they would receive training in intake,
developing community resources, maintaining
confidentiality, entitlements, and interpersonal
skills. Initial training was to begin on July 2 and
involve five two-hour sessions. Also present at the
initial session were staff from VSA, the Manhattan
DA's office, the Department of Health, and command
level police staff.

The agenda for the July 2 training session included
a five-minute overview of the project and a
five-minute review of the previous session,
followed by training on intake and paperwork and on
developing community resources. Project forms were
reviewed and volunteers were instructed on how to
fill them out. Volunteers were also provided with a
skeletal list of community resources (containing
the telephone number of Community Boards and
listing "elected officials, churches, multi-service
centers, New York State Department of Substance
Abuse Services, phone book, other service providers
and community organizations, and word of
mouth").

There was some concern expressed by CPOs and higher
ranking officers from the NYPD that residents would
be afraid to volunteer to serve in the van.
According to the CPOs, local drug dealers have
threatened residents that they would "kill them if
they snitch," and some citizens are afraid that if
they were seen going in the van, dealers would
think it was to provide the police with
information. If, in fact, the number of volunteers
was insufficient, NYPD staff intended to use either
Police Cadets or Auxiliary Police officers to
staff the van. Neither the cadets nor the Auxiliary
Police wear the uniforms of the NYPD; it was,
therefore, hoped that they would not be seen as
police officers.

B. Interagency Partnerships

The interagency partnerships included the NYPD,
VSA, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, the
Department of Health, the Board of Education,
MOSAIC (in the 44th precinct), and the Citizen's
Committee. The police provided the vans and CPOs to
patrol the area around the vans and to make
referrals to the vans for services. Victim Services
Agency provided referrals to its Domestic Violence
Prevention Program (in the 23rd precinct only) and
to other programs (e.g., shelters for battered
women, legal services, etc.). The Manhattan DA's
office educated volunteers regarding the criminal
justice system so that they can provide this
information to members of the community. The DA's
office also runs a Domestic Violence Center,
located in the New York State Office Building in
Harlem.

C. Community Outreach and Advertisements

At the time of the Vera site visits, community
outreach was limited to the volunteer recruitment
efforts of the Board of Education and the Parent
Teachers Association (PTA) in the schools. During
July 1991, CPOs in the 23rd precinct distributed
7,000 copies of a letter (in English and Spanish),
signed by the Commanding Officer of the 23rd
precinct, describing the Neighborhood Police
Services Project and inviting residents to serve as
volunteers and/or to use the services provided in
the van. (No date for project start-up was
given in the letter.) Similar letters were
distributed in the 44th precinct, signed by the
Commanding Officer there. In addition, project
staff expected local newspapers to donate
advertising space (particularly in the local
Spanish-language paper) and hoped that local
churches would print information about the project
in their bulletins. In the 44th precinct,
information about the NRC also appeared in The
Highbridge News (a newsletter published by MOSAIC).

D. Local Evaluation

NYPD staff had planned to conduct the local
evaluation. They planned to use pre/post data
provided by the NYPD (on crime complaints, arrests,
drug-related activity, drug-related homicides,
etc.); the Department of Health (on injuries in the
target area, drug-related hospital admissions,
children born addicted to drugs, etc.); the Board
of Education (on school attendance and truancy
rates), and from a community survey (administered
by Police Cadets or college interns to 50 residents
in each precinct within the target area and 50
residents outside the area). The community survey
would measure residents' perceptions of
quality-of-life changes, drug-related activity,
police presence, and use of the van. In addition,
NIJ operates its Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) in
Manhattan (the borough in which the 23rd precinct
is located) and those data would be available for
the evaluation. The New York City Department of
Youth Services would provide data on the number of
youth contacts and referrals, youth involvement in
INOP project-related recreational and educational
activities and number of referrals to drug
treatment programs. At the time of the last Vera
site visit (in July, 1992), however, no work had
been done on the evaluation.

E. BJA Funds

The bulk of BJA funds on the New York INOP grant
was used to purchase the three vans. In addition,
site preparation (e.g., telephone hook-up) and
equipment for the vans (e.g., telephones, telephone
usage, typewriters, etc.) was paid for out of grant
funds. Jackets with a project patch were provided
for the volunteers through BJA funds. There were
also contracts with VSA to staff the van and with
the Citizens Committee to provide training.

IV. Expected Impacts

The goals of the New York INOP project were to
reduce crime, violence, and drug usage; increase
school attendance; develop a network of services;
increase resident involvement in their community;
increase youth involvement in activities; increase
community knowledge of resources and create a
"Resource Directory"; and increase interagency
cooperation. Reductions in crime, violence and drug
usage would be produced first by the enforcement
activities of TNT prior to the vans being in place,
and then maintained by the activities of the INOP
project (e.g., developing rapport with the
community which might increase the likelihood of
citizens providing the police with information on
narcotics activity). According to one of the
program planners, the mere presence of the van
should have an impact on school attendance: ". . .
And that's one of the logical things we can expect.
The police station is going to be in front of their
school. There's a good chance that more parents
will encourage their children to go to school." The
involvement of the youth officer and youth
counselor was expected to increase youth
involvement in recreational activities. This
involvement in recreational activities and the
referrals to drug treatment programs were expected
to reduce drug usage among youth.

In contrast to the expectations expressed by
project planners, the CPOs from the 23rd precinct
were less optimistic. While they indicated that
they hoped the project would be successful, they
were skeptical about its chances because of its
reliance on the van and volunteers. The CPOs
believed that many area residents would be afraid
to volunteer to work in the van because of the
threats of drug dealers and the fear of traveling
home from the van at night. They expressed the
belief that people in the neighborhood who might be
willing to volunteer had neither the knowledge nor
the skills to do the job, and would require
extensive training. In addition, they felt that the
people being tapped to be volunteers were those who
already work for other programs and therefore would
be unavailable to volunteer for the INOP project.
The CPOs' recommendation was that auxiliary police
officers (in plainclothes) be used to staff the
van.

In addition, the CPOs expressed their concern that,
even if volunteers could be found, people in the
area would be unlikely to use the services offered
in the van. The reason, again, was fear. They said
that, with the exception of a few "buffs," people
who like cops and would like to be cops, people
will not want to be seen going into the van. This,
in turn, the CPOs feared would be a disincentive to
the volunteers -- "if there are three or four
volunteers in the van and only two or three people
come in during the day to use its services, why
should they stay?"

The CPOs expressed the belief that the project
could not possibly succeed in its efforts at drug
demand reduction, that a drug-free zone in that
area would be impossible unless "you have 50 cops
around it, 24 hours a day." According to CPOs, they
couldn't even keep the local branch of the Public
Library drug- free. The dealers in the area will
adjust their hours to avoid the police, but they
will not leave. "These guys have no morals -- they
deal right in front of the community center where
old people go for meals."  The local housing
projects posed additional problems for drug demand
reduction because (according to the CPOs) it was
difficult to get cooperation from the Housing
Police Department.

HAYWARD

I. The Hayward INOP Project and the Target Area

A. Introduction

Hayward is a city of approximately 120,000 people
that covers 39 square miles. The Hayward Police
Department (HPD) employs 156 sworn officers. The
target area for the Hayward INOP project was the
entire city, although one area (Tennyson-Harder),
with a pervasive drug problem, receives more
attention than other areas of the city. The
cornerstone of the INOP project was a large van,
intended to be used as a mobile office and meeting
space for community groups; however, at the time of
the first Vera site visit (during the summer of
1991), this van had not yet been purchased. 
Community oriented policing is also new to Hayward.

The City of Hayward Police Department unveiled its
Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving
(COPPS) Implementation Plan in March, 1991, and the
implementation process which is expected to take
five years began on July 1, 1991 (just two weeks
before the first Vera site visit).

B. Community Policing in Hayward

The introduction of community policing to Hayward
can be attributed directly to the appointment of a
new Chief of Police in January, 1990. In his former
position in Santa Ana, California, the Chief was
actively involved in the development and
implementation of community policing, and he came
to Hayward firmly convinced that community policing
was a philosophy of policing that could more
effectively address community concerns than could
traditional policing strategies. Planning the COPPS
program began in August 1990 and resulted in
the COPPS Implementation Plan, dated March 1, 1991.

The organizational structure of the police
department was changed to accommodate community
policing; the patrol function for the city was
divided into three area commands, each managed by a
lieutenant who functions as the "Chief of Police"
for that area. The patrol staff are assigned to
these areas and report to Watch Commanders for
their particular shifts. All officers are expected
to be community police officers and to meet the
citizens on their beats.

C. The INOP Target Area

The target area for the Hayward INOP grant was the
entire city, with BJA funds paying the salaries of
one police officer and one Community Service
Officer, and paying for the purchase of the
van. Nearly half (approximately 45%) of the housing
in Hayward is renter occupied, substantially higher
than in the rest of the Bay Area. (The
Tennyson-Harder area has the highest proportion of
rental and Section 8 housing in the Bay Area.)
Although nearly two-thirds of the residents of
Hayward are white (65%), racial composition does
not accurately describe the city's population.
Hayward is characterized by tremendous ethnic
diversity -- some 40 languages are spoken in the
City, including Spanish, Korean, Farci, and
Russian. According to INOP project planners,
Hayward neighborhoods are not ethnically divided;
that is, people from these diverse cultures live
side-by-side throughout Hayward. Many people are
poor (39% of the households were classified as
lower income in 1980), and the city lags behind the
rest of Alameda county in education (71% of the
adults in Hayward have high school diplomas as
compared to 77% in the county as a whole). The
major problem in the area, identified by community
leaders, is drugs.

D. Project Goals and Objectives

Three major goals for the INOP project were
articulated in Hayward's proposal to BJA:

1. Increase community participation and
responsibility for neighborhood problem solving;

2. Increase the public's safety in neighborhoods by
reducing the level of drug abuse and trafficking
through exposure to law enforcement and community
programs; and

3. Facilitate and support the efforts of
community-based service organizations in their
neighborhood drug reduction and problem solving
efforts.

To attain each of these goals, several more
specific objectives were enumerated and associated
activities were described. Some of these are
dependent upon acquisition of the van which had not
been ready for use until the final Vera site visit
in 1992. Even at that time, the van had been on the
street for only one day. Other activities began
prior to the official start of the COPPS program
(7/1/91).

II. Drug Demand Reduction Activities

A. Drug Prevention Activities

The Van. The van, or Neighborhood Access Vehicle,
is the cornerstone of the INOP project in Hayward.
According to HPD staff, the van is to be a "moving
storefront," containing brochures and other
information about available services, serving as a
consolidated source of referral information. It
also contains meeting space that is available to
community-based organizations and treatment
programs to use for referral counseling.

The van also is expected to enhance the
relationship between the community and the police
by making the police more accessible to the
community. This would enable citizens to make crime
complaints and requests for service without having
to visit the HPD. At the same time, the van could
be used to provide high visibility and a police
presence in problem areas.

Increase Community Participation. One of the
approaches to increasing community participation in
problem solving was to form (25) new Neighborhood
Alert groups. According to INOP project
planners, Neighborhood Alert has been ongoing in
Hayward since the early 1970s, and there are some
132 listed Block Captains, 66 of whom are active
(although there may be only 20 groups that meet
regularly). While the files kept by the officer
contain log sheets indicating that 22 Neighborhood
Alert meetings had been held between November 1990
(the start of the BJA grant) and the time of the
implementation site visit in July, 1991, it was not
possible to tell which of these (if any) were new
groups. On average, 14 people attended each meeting
(six to 64 people had signed each log).
Neighborhood Alert groups were encouraged by the
Community Service Officer to purchase (for $20
each) and have the city erect "No Drugs Allowed"
signs in their neighborhoods. At the time of the
Vera site visit, eight requests for these signs had
been received since March 1991.

Some members of the HPD indicated that the police
found it somewhat difficult to interact with the
Afghan community. This was attributed only
partially to the language barrier; although none of
the officers speak Farci, they felt that other
cultural barriers posed a bigger problem. Both the
police and an Afghan community leader cited
cultural differences in the definition of spouse or
child abuse. In Afghanistan, for example,
wife-beating is an accepted practice. Similarly, it
is common "back home" to settle disputes with
neighbors without involving the police, through
acts of retribution. The first order of business
with the Afghan community, therefore, was
introducing them to the police and explaining how
to deal with domestic disputes and problems in the
neighborhood. According to a leader from the
community, a police officer contacted her in an
effort to involve the Afghan community.

Beat Health Abatement. Even prior to the COPPS
program, Hayward had a Beat Health Team consisting
of representatives from the Fire Department,
Buildings Department, Community Preservation, City
Attorney's Office, Police Department, Vector
Control (deals with rodents), Pacific Gas and
Electric Loss Prevention and the Department of
Public Works. There are no established meeting
dates and a police sergeant coordinates the team.
Although this team had been in existence since
1989, according to one of the project planners, the
INOP project helped mobilize it and solidify
relationships among the agencies involved.

Juvenile Diversion. Juveniles arrested for certain
first- time drug offenses are eligible for
diversion to Project Eden and project planners
envisioned diverting 50 percent of those eligible.
According to project files, between September 26,
1990 and March 27, 1991, eight such diversions were
made.

B. Law Enforcement Activities

The project planners intend to staff the
Neighborhood Access Vehicle with the police officer
and Community Service Officer for 1500 hours per
year, and use it to provide a highly visible police
presence in various neighborhoods. The procurement
of this van took a long time; therefore, as of the
final Vera site visit to Hayward in June, 1992, the
van had made only one appearance on the street.

Another stated objective of the INOP project was to
have the administrative/supervisory staff of the
Youth and Family Services Bureau (YFSB) of the HPD
meet with the principals of all 10 high schools and
intermediate schools in the district annually to
discuss and plan for appropriate on-campus drug
enforcement activities. Project files contained a
list of participants from the August 1990 (prior to
the start of the project) "School Kick Off"
luncheon and memoranda describing the purpose of
the luncheon. There were approximately 120
representatives of the Hayward Unified School
District, HPD, Project Eden (a drug education and
counseling program), the Alameda County Juvenile
Court, the Alameda County Juvenile Probation
Department, and Moreau High School in attendance.
According to materials in the files, the purpose of
the luncheon was to "introduce and facilitate
communication between the administrative staff of
the School District, the School Resource Officers,
the DARE instructors, Probation Officers, Project
Eden, the Probation Department and the Juvenile
Court."

Until the COPPS plan was implemented in July, 1991,
the HPD had a Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT) which
was responsible for "breaking the drug dealer to
drug buyer relationship." TNT accomplished this by
arresting drug users (for possession and being
under the influence) and by arresting drug dealers
through buy-and-bust operations. Between the time
the INOP grant was funded (November 1990) and the
time the TNT unit was disbanded (7/1/91), monthly
statistics of the number of TNT school sweeps, drug
influence arrests, and buy-and-bust arrests were
maintained. After July 1, 1991, the TNT activities
continued, but rather than being "permanently"
staffed by narcotics officers, any police officer
who was available on a given night might be drafted
for a "TNT" detail.

III. Other Program Components

A. Recruitment and Training

During March and April of 1991, COPPS training
sessions were held for police supervisors and
officers. Every Police Department employee received
40 hours of community policing training, taught by
police personnel who had been involved in the COPPS
planning. In addition to police department training
on community policing, the Building Inspection
Department, Community Preservation Department, City
Attorney's Office, Department of Public Works and
Planning Department each presented modules designed
"to increase our officers' understanding of the
usefulness of citywide resources and how city
departments can work with each other to solve
community problems."

During late May, 1991, a one hour introductory
training session was provided to Block Captains (of
Neighborhood Alert groups), followed in late June
with an hour on civil abatement procedures.
Subsequently, four additional hour-long training
sessions were held to deal with problem-solving
strategies, an overview of symptoms of drug use, a
display of drugs and drug paraphernalia, and drugs
and youth.

Using a curriculum developed in San Jose, the HPD
planned to work with the Eden Council for Hope and
Opportunity (ECHO Housing) to provide training to
rental unit managers. The purpose of this training
was to teach managers how to identify drug
trafficking and abuse and to inform them of their
rights and responsibilities.

Using the Landlord Training manual developed for
the city of Portland (by John Campbell Resources)
as a guide, the INOP officer and the City
Attorney's Office drafted a Landlord Training
program for Hayward. Adaptation of the program for
Hayward required amendments to fit the rental laws
of that city.

B. Interagency Partnerships

Another task for the INOP officer was to develop a
comprehensive information and referral resource
document to facilitate citizen referrals. A
Resource Guide was produced by the HPD, dated April
1991, which lists federal, state and county
agencies; city offices; courts; hospitals; human
services; public safety/investigative agencies and
schools. The INOP officer was responsible for
dissemination of this Guide. An additional guide to
alcoholism, drug abuse and family support resources
is now available for police officers to use when
making referrals.

A graffiti hotline (29-ERASE) was set up and went
on-line on July 9, 1991. The purpose of this
hotline was to allow citizens to report the
presence of graffiti for rapid removal by City
paint crews. The existence of this hotline was
advertised in the July 1991 Neighborhood Alert
bulletin (as well as in subsequent issues).

C. Community Outreach and Advertisements

Neighborhood Alert Block Captains have the greatest
degree of interaction with the police. In addition
to their local Neighborhood Alert meetings, the
Block Captains attend monthly meetings held at the
Hayward Police Department. According to interviewed
Block Captains, the meetings at the HPD were
attended regularly by 10 to 20 people.

D. Local Evaluation

An evaluation of the COPPS program as a whole is
being conducted by the HPD, coordinated by a
sergeant. This evaluation includes performance
evaluation of HPD personnel and a community survey
to be conducted annually for five years. At the
time of the Vera implementation site visit, the
development of parameters for performance
evaluation was in its infancy. But data collection
for the first community survey was well underway.

The survey was constructed, in consultation with
the Chief of Police, by an outside contractor
associated with the University of California,
Hayward, who also selected a random sample of all
Hayward residents. The original plan was to use
volunteers to do the door-to-door administration of
the survey. Thirty volunteers were recruited, but
their interest soon waned when they discovered how
difficult it is to get respondents to cooperate. As
a result, police personnel administered the
survey. A total of 833 interviews were
completed. Data collection began in late June 1991
and was completed in July; the contractor who
designed the survey analyzed the data and produced
a report on the results.

E. BJA Funds

The official start of the INOP grant, i.e., the
time the funds were released by BJA, was November
1, 1990; however, the Hayward INOP project did not
begin until January 1, 1991. BJA funds were used to
buy the van and pay the salaries of one police
officer and one Community Service Officer. In
addition, these funds allowed the Department to
leverage other resources: community partnerships
with COMPRE, the South Hayward Parish, the
Apartment Owners Association, the school district
and an enhanced relationship with Project Eden.
According to project planners, the BJA grant
focused efforts at the community level sooner than
would otherwise have occurred.

IV. Expected Impacts

According to the proposal submitted by Hayward to
BJA, the most immediate impact of the project would
be that of the van, which is expected to increase
the visibility, accessibility and the dissemination
of information. Aggressive street-level enforcement
in neighborhoods plagued by drug trafficking is
expected to lead to an increased number of
narcotics arrests; the ability of officers to make
such arrests is expected to be enhanced by improved
relationships with the people of the community.

Over the longer term, drug arrests are expected to
decrease as a result of prevention efforts
initiated under the project. The Beat Health
programs, modeled after Oakland's Beat Health
Program are expected to improve the appearance of
these neighborhoods, and Neighborhood Alert groups
are expected to play a active role in improving
lighting, reporting graffiti (using the hotline
established as part of the project), and other
environmental issues. The availability of referral
and counseling for drug problems (through the
Neighborhood Access Vehicle) is expected to reduce
the demand for drugs in the area.

PORTLAND

I. The Portland INOP Project and the Target Area

A. Introduction

Portland, Oregon is a city of 145 square miles and
approximately 418,000 people. The Portland Police
Bureau (PPB) currently employs 1,100 people -- 850
of them are sworn officers.  At the time of the
Vera Institute's first site visit to Portland in
July, 1991, the Portland Police Bureau's "Iris
Court" INOP demonstration project had opened the
"Iris Court Community Policing Contact Office";
assigned two police officers to the Iris Court
"Neighborhood Response Team"; completed the
recruitment and training of a civilian project
coordinator and community health nurse; completed a
survey of Iris Court residents and police officers
in the North Precinct; established a residents'
council and tenant association to aid in problem
identification and problem-solving; and established
partnerships with a number of city, county, state
and private non-profit agencies in an effort to
coordinate the delivery of social services to the
residents of Iris Court.

B. Community Policing In Portland

By the time it had received its INOP grant, the
Portland Police Bureau had completed its first year
of a five-year community policing transition plan.
The transition to community policing began in
May-June, 1989, when a series of five community
meetings were held to introduce the concept of
community policing to the residents of Portland and
involve them in the problem-solving process. These
meetings resulted in the creation of the Portland
Police Bureau Community Policing Transition Plan
which was later adopted by the Portland City
Council in January, 1990. Year one of the transi-
tion focused on building community-police
partnerships; increasing community involvement in
the problem-identification/solving process
("empowerment"); training officers in
problem-solving strategies; and developing an
overall management process for the transition to
community policing. The first year of the
transition also included implementing one community
policing demonstration project in each of the
city's three precincts.

One of these initiatives is the INOP-funded Iris
Court Community Policing Demonstration Project in
Portland's Northeast precinct. The Police Bureau
selected the Iris Court housing project as its INOP
target area primarily because of its high levels of
open air drug-dealing (especially crack cocaine),
calls for service, and gang-related violence. Iris
Court also appeared to be a good location for the
demonstration project because it is a small
community in which the police believed they could
foster active resident participation in the project
and reduce drug trafficking and drug-related crime
with the resources available through the grant.

The Iris Court project was based almost entirely on
a four-year-old community policing effort at
Columbia Villa (Portland's largest public housing
development--1,600 residents at full occupancy)
conducted by the Housing Authority of Portland
(HAP) and the Multnomah County Sheriff. The
Columbia Villa program was a response to high
levels of drug trafficking, gang activity, and
Portland's first drive-by drug-related shooting
that left one dead and two wounded at the
development. HAP utilized HUD Comprehensive
Improvement Assistance Program funds to create a
"Safety Action Team" for Columbia Villa. The Safety
Action Team consisted of one Lieutenant, three
Sheriff's deputies and two civilian community
service officers (who do everything deputies do
except carry firearms and make arrests). The Team
is permanently assigned to the Villa; team members
make their work hours coincide with the needs of
the residents. Office space for the Team and for a
number of social service providers (e.g., the State
Employment Division and Adult and Family Services)
was provided by HAP in the housing complex.

The sheriff's deputies did not replace the Portland
Police Bureau's normal patrol activity at the
Villa, however. Rather, the city police continued
to handle priority calls while the sheriff's team
focused on problem-solving policing in an effort to
keep problems (both crime and quality-of-life
problems) from recurring.

C. The Target Area: The Iris Court Housing Complex

Iris Court is an entirely residential public
housing project, owned and managed by the Housing
Authority of Portland. Although the Portland Police
Bureau refers to their INOP project as the "Iris
Court Community Policing Demonstration Project,"
the target site includes the Iris Court
development, Royal Rose development, Royal Rose
Annex and Sumner Court developments. The two-story
brick apartments are clustered around small
courtyards with each block of apartments having its
own play area for children. At the time of the
research, the complex consisted of 108 units (54
family units at Iris Court and 54 family units at
the Royal Rose, Royal Rose Annex, and Sumner Court
developments), 85% of which were occupied by
lower-income minority women with young children.
The housing development as a whole was home to 159
people with 61 of the residents being children (all
but seven of whom were younger than 13). About 85%
of all adult residents were single women.

The most recent figures supplied by the Police
Bureau showed that 39 of the 43 occupied units in
the Iris Court development are "single parent head
of household" units. Twenty-nine (67%) of the units
were occupied by minority residents. Twenty-three
of the head of household residents (53%) had
incomes of less than $5,000 per year and 16 (37%)
had incomes between $5,000 and $9,999. Only five
residents had wages as their source of income.
Eighty-one percent of the residents relied on Aid
to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) as their
major source of income.

The Royal Rose, Royal Rose Annex, and Sumner Court
developments also contain 54 housing units (49
occupied at the time of the research), reserved
primarily for the elderly (only 9 units are
occupied by persons under 50 years of age) and
disabled (16 units). The residents of these housing
developments had incomes that were generally lower
than those residing at Iris Court. Thirty-five of
the 49 resident heads of household (86%), for
example, had incomes of less than $5,000 per year.
Only 12 residents had incomes falling between
$5,000 and $9,999. Sixty- one percent of the
residents had social security as their primary
source of income. The percentage of minority
residents is somewhat lower in these developments
than at Iris Court (60% vs. 67%).

A Community Policing Problem Identification Survey
conducted by the Housing Authority of Portland
prior to the INOP grant project found that Iris
Court residents included "the chronic poor; the
undereducated; at-risk youth; young, single women
with children; and people with special needs. A
large number are drug dependent -- possibly as many
as 50 percent." The survey also found that a
majority of residents were "somewhat or very
afraid" of criminal activity occurring in the
housing development. The most frequently cited
problems, according to respondents interviewed by
Vera researchers during the first site visit, were
open-air drug markets and gang-related violence.
Respondents also complained of unauthorized
visitors, often gang members, illegally living in
the apartments of girlfriends who were residents of
the housing development. It is within this context
that the Portland Police Bureau has chosen to
implement one of its first community policing
demonstration projects.

II. "Community Partnerships": The Iris Court
Community Policing Demonstration Project

A. Goals, Objectives and Strategy: Drug Demand
Reduction

The goals of the Iris Court project are to: (1)
improve the quality of life and health of the 159
residents of Iris Court; (2) reduce the fear of
crime; and (3) reduce the incidence of actual crime
in the development. The Police Bureau believes that
for any drug demand reduction strategy to be
effective in the long term it must coordinate the
delivery of law enforcement and social services
into "a single service delivery network." The
reasoning behind this strategy is that law
enforcement alone cannot respond effectively to the
drug problem. It is more effective, argue those
involved in the planning and implementation of the
project, if the police aid in facilitating the
delivery of necessary social services to those who
are most at-risk for drug abuse or those whose
communities are plagued by drug trafficking. The
PPB thus intended to achieve their project goals
through: (1) Problem Solving Policing--interfering
with those activities that make drug trafficking or
use easy or attractive; (2) Empowerment--soliciting
active citizen participation in the problem solving
process; and (3) Creating Partnerships between
proactive social service providers, the residents
of Iris Court and the PPB.

The Iris Court project consists of several
interrelated components which focus on increasing
public safety and the social, economic,
educational, and physical/mental health of Iris
Court residents: (1) a street
enforcement/high-visibility patrol component; (2) a
"Neighborhood Response Team" consisting of two
uniformed patrol officers; (3) a civilian project
coordinator; (4 ) a community health nurse; (5) a
community policing contact office located in Iris
Court; (6) community partnerships established with
the residents of Iris Court and various social
service providers from the city, county, state, and
private organizations; (7) the use of Crime
Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED);
and (8) resident organizing and empowerment.

The project was originally directed by the Metro
Life Enhancement Team (MET) which was closely
modeled after the "Safety Action Team" created for
the Columbia Villa project (created by HAP and the
Multnomah County sheriff) several years ago. The
function of MET (coordinated by the PPB) was to
form an interdisciplinary service delivery network
which would work closely with the residents of Iris
Court, local government agencies, businesses and
schools to have a positive impact on drug use and
other quality-of-life issues affecting the
residents of the development. According to one key
organizer of the MET group, "Their [MET's] function
was to try to sit down and identify all of the
various people and groups who might have a role in
implementing the various action plans for the
project."

Unfortunately, according to key participants in the
project, the structure and functioning of the MET
team did not develop as expected. In particular,
the MET group stopped meeting on a monthly basis
(after "three or four" meetings off-site). As one
participant explained: "I think people lost
interest. Things were going well at Iris Court and,
just like a lot of neighborhood groups, they are
crisis driven, and if there is no crisis they move
on to the next thing." 

A popular interpretation of the demise of regular
MET meetings was that once the team had created a
functioning service delivery network, and the
project coordinator had been hired to coordinate
delivery of those services to Iris Court residents,
MET ceased to function. After the demise of MET, an
implementation steering committee was created (made
up of some of the MET members) to advise the group
on an "as needed" basis. However, while
acknowledging that MET had ceased to function, one
member said, ". . . if there were some meat and
potatoes issues to deal with, then they know where
to find us, and we will come out when it is
important to do so." 

B. Enforcement and the Neighborhood Response Team

Enforcement. The Iris Court demonstration project
did not emphasize law enforcement as a means to
reducing drug demand. Its primary means to drug
demand reduction lay in the coordination and
provision of social services aimed at improving the
quality-of-life for the residents of Iris Court in
an effort to make drug use less attractive to
at-risk youth. In this sense, it is unique among
the eight INOP-funded demonstration projects.

Prior to the INOP project "kick off" in July, 1990,
the PPB targeted Iris Court for strong police
presence and enforcement (February--May, 1990). One
high-ranking officer associated with the project
explained:

". . . there was quite a bit of law enforcement
that took place within the complex itself simply
because we felt like we had an obligation at the
Police Bureau to prepare the people in the complex
for this invasion of social service people. We had
to impress on the [residents and social service
providers] that it was a safe place to be . . . We
served quite a lot of search warrants on drug
houses and gang houses. The Housing Authority was
very cooperative with evictions and that is why we
had such a high vacancy rate at the time."

One important aspect of the enforcement effort was
the attempt (beginning in May 1990) to "stabilize
occupant patterns" in the Iris Court development.
The primary means of achieving this was through
evictions and the enforcement of a trespass
ordinance. Both the Housing Authority and Police
Bureau reasoned that before residents of Iris Court
would take advantage of the social service
providers and the community contact office that
would eventually be located in the development,
they would have to feel safe. According to a
Housing Authority official, one of the biggest
problems at Iris Court had been "unauthorized
guests" of single women using apartments to carry
on illegal activities like drug trafficking. Most
often, these men were gang members and the
boyfriends of single women living in the
development. A partial solution to the problem was
the use of evictions of tenants who allowed
non-tenants to live in their apartments (a
violation of the HAP lease). Approximately 10
tenants were evicted during the stabilization
effort.

A second technique employed by the PPB and HAP was
the use of a state criminal trespass ordinance to
keep the complex free of non-residents intent on
criminal activity. Under an agreement with HAP,
police officers may act legally as "persons in
charge" for the purpose of enforcing trespass laws
upon Housing Authority Property (that is, private,
common property) at Iris Court. Thus, when police
officers have probable cause to believe that a
non-resident has violated any criterion for
exclusion from the Iris Court development, the
officers are empowered to approach the non-resident
and notify him/her of the violation. Officers then
fill out an exclusion form detailing why the person
is excluded from the property and provide the
person with a map of the property that he/she is
excluded from entering. Finally, the officers take
a photograph of the person and attach it to a copy
of the exclusion form (for the on-site manager).
The officers then explain to the violator that
he/she has the right to appeal the exclusion with a
Trespass Control Officer (an HAP attorney)
designated by the Housing Authority to process all
trespass complaints.

The criteria for exclusion from HAP housing
developments include: making unreasonable noise;
fighting; commission of criminal offenses; drug use
or trafficking; destruction of property; littering;
reckless driving; and engaging in gang activity
including claiming gang membership or wearing
clothing or tattoos unique to gang affiliation.
Anyone who refuses to leave HAP property when
requested to do so, or returns to the property
after exclusion, may be arrested by the police
under the criminal trespass ordinance. According to
most respondents, the trespass enforcement was a
particularly valuable tool (at least initially) in
reducing fear and decreasing criminal activity in
Iris Court because most of the criminal activity at
the complex, they claimed, was carried out by
non-residents. The constant harassment of
non-residents who had made Iris Court their hang-
out had, according to residents and police
officers, made a substantial improvement in the
quality of life at the development. As one officer
involved in the trespass enforcement argued:

" . . . it [trespass enforcement] made for a great
police presence. There would be two or three
[police] cars that would go in to target chronic
non-residents or persons that we knew had been
excluded . . . It [times for enforcement] varied
and we wanted to give the impression that this
procedure had some meat in it . . . In fact, there
was one person who was arrested some 35 times on
the property. . . . He was transported to jail
every single day. . . . He would get a citation but
he would go to jail also and be booked. The point
there was to inconvenience all non-residents to the
point where it would be unattractive to be back on
the property that they would go elsewhere. HAP
backed us up a great deal by signing all the
complaints for trespass and they went after a lot
of the residents who were housing excluded non-
residents or letting them back on the property. So
HAP was sending those residents notices that they
were in violation of the lease . . . some complied,
others did not and they were evicted by the Housing
Authority.

According to one commanding officer, 95 persons
were excluded from the property in the first five
months of enforcement.

The Neighborhood Response Team. Two patrol officers
from the North Precinct formed the "Neighborhood
Response Team" (NRT) assigned to the Iris Court
project. One of the officers was assigned in
November, 1990, and the other in February, 1991.
These officers made the housing complex a
"priority" but did not spend their entire shift
there. The officers worked the Iris Court complex
every day from November, 1990 through February,
1991 and their duties included high visibility foot
patrol in an effort to disrupt open-air drug
markets and gang activity and a great deal of
community outreach, particularly with young
children.

The NRT's primary role was community outreach and
problem solving. The officers thus attended the
regularly scheduled tenants' association meetings
at Iris Court and took note of residents'
complaints and concerns. They were also
instrumental in the Iris Court residents' council
that plans special events like the annual
job/health fair and various activities for children
in the complex. The officers also used (for about a
half hour per day) the Police Bureau's "Contact
Office" which is located in the housing complex.
The contact office allowed the officers to interact
with community residents who wished to register
complaints or make specific concerns known to the
police department.

The NRT's proactive enforcement activities included
the implementation of the trespass ordinance and
general street-level drug enforcement. During
their full-time assignment to Iris Court, however,
the officers were freed from responsibility for
answering 911 calls.

According to respondents, the NRT officers received
no particular training (other than instruction in
the trespass ordinance from the Housing Authority)
for their assignment to Iris Court. Because the
Portland Police Bureau was only one year into their
community policing transition plan at the start of
the program, the officers had not received any
general training in community policing prior to
their assignment to Iris Court, but were selected
on the basis of their demonstrated abilities in
problem-solving and their ability to interact
constructively with members of the community.

C. The Project Coordinator

Part of the Portland Police Bureau's INOP funds
paid for a full-time, on-site project coordinator
for the Iris Court project. The coordinator was
hired in January, 1991 and has been working in the
Iris Court development since February, 1991.  The
coordinator is a full-time civilian employee of the
Police Bureau and works in the Community Policing
Contact Office located at Iris Court.

The primary function of the coordinator is to act
as a link between the various service providers
recruited by the Police Bureau (see, "Partnerships"
below) and the residents of Iris Court. The
coordinator's office conducted a survey in
February, 1991 in an attempt to determine what
services residents were interested in obtaining.
The survey also provided the project with the
opportunity to inform residents about programs
available to them. The survey also asked residents
if they were employed, how many children they had
and their ages. Such information would allow the
coordinator to supply service providers with a list
of potential clients. Thus, from the survey, it was
determined that many residents had children in the
one-to-three year-old range. As the coordinator
explained:

I sort of see my role as a facilitator but I also
strive to encourage service providers to get
involved with the residents, especially from the
standpoint of recruiting them. What I now try to do
is provide the service providers with a list of
people that meet their selection criteria. I'll
give them a list and say, "Here's 20 people that
have children from 1-3 years-old." That's the
criteria for the "Great Start" parenting program. I
and my staff will get with the Great Start people
and do some canvassing and talk to residents about
getting involved in the program. I try to encourage
them to stay in contact with the residents who sign
up for their programs . . . they need to identify
one or two volunteers and use them as go-betweens
with the other residents who have not signed up.
Being one person, it's hard for me to recruit on a
custom basis for all of the service providers. We
try to do that as much as possible, but I try to
get them involved in their own recruitment.

In addition to his responsibility for linking
service providers and residents, the project
coordinator makes referrals and coordinated
outreach activities. The coordinator is also
responsible for maintaining records for the project
and writing reports to document the project's
progress.

D. Community Health Nurse

One of the most unusual aspects of the Iris Court
project was its Community Health Nurse. The nurse,
a specialist in chemical dependency, was hired in
April, 1991 under a Police Bureau contract with the
Multnomah County Health Division. She worked 32
hours per week (Monday through Thursday, 7:30 a.m.-
3:30 p.m.) at Iris Court exclusively in an effort
to intervene in family health issues. The nurse's
office was located on-site at the Iris Court
Contact Office, but did home visits for the
purposes of individual and family assessments and
provided short- term care where appropriate.

The nurse's primary focus was on the prevention of
health problems among residents. Although people
from the development came to her office for
consultations or referrals, the nurse believed that
the best way to care for the residents was through
active outreach. She thus spent a portion of her
day walking through the Iris Court complex and
speaking to people informally about their health
care needs. She did not do door-to-door canvassing
because she had not found it to be an effective
form of outreach. Instead, she employed creative
outreach strategies that she had found to be more
effective. For example, if she saw some older
people sitting on their front porch, she would
introduce herself and offer to take their blood
pressure. She also targeted the children of the
community for outreach and found that to be an
effective mechanism for gaining access to their
parents:

. . . what has happened, in establishing rapport
with the kids, is that I get to meet their parents.
I believe that the outreach portion of my job is
directly related to drug and alcohol demand reduc-
tion. There are many ways to go with outreach, but
I started with the kids because they are the ones
that will be trying drugs if they have not already
tried them. All these kids love bikes, and I began
meeting them when I started fixing the kids' bikes
for them. What has happened is that the parents
have started coming out of their homes to thank me
for fixing their kids' bikes.

The nurse's outreach efforts also focused on
referring residents to programs offered by other
service providers. Her most common referrals were
to the "Snack Attack" program, which teaches
children and adults about good nutrition, and the
"Women's Strength" classes for women's
self-defense.

Despite her specialty, the most common cases
handled by the nurse were prenatal and post-partum
care, and care of elderly patients with chronic
health problems. During the research period, she
had not handled any cases related to drug and
alcohol abuse. She was, however, developing plans
to bring drug and alcohol support groups like NA
and AA on-site and was confident that residents
would come to her with alcohol and drug-related
problems when she had more time to establish trust
and credibility.

E. Human Service Partnerships

The Portland Police Bureau believed that drug
demand reduction at Iris Court could be
accomplished best by providing necessary social
services to the residents, and it was this emphasis
on human services partnerships that made this
project unique among the eight INOP-funded research
sites. The Police Bureau believed that effective
demand reduction strategies must provide both
short-term effects and a foundation for long-term
prevention by helping to alleviate some of the
underlying social problems that make drug use
attractive. Thus, by providing residents with
on-site job placement assistance, a community
health nurse to help with health-related problems,
nutrition programs for parents and their children,
and supervised activities for youth, the PPB
believed that the quality of life would be improved
to the point that drug use would not be a desirable
or acceptable alternative. In short, the purpose of
these social services is prevention. When asked
about the project's emphasis on the provision of
social services and health (e.g., the community
health nurse, the "Snack Attack" nutrition programs
for adults and children, and the Great Start
prenatal program), one commanding officer argued:

". . we are trying to work through to the root
causes of crime, and I guess we are convinced that
if people are not in good health and have a good
living environment that they can more easily say, .
. . "I don't feel good. But if I can get some
[drugs] it will make me feel good." . . . People
are probably using drugs because they don't feel
good about themselves. . . . if we can get young
people healthy and provide them with a good quality
of life . . . they won't need drugs. So in that
sense we felt that the nurse was a real critical
component."

Thus, strengthening the overall quality of life
through the provision of human services would make
drug use less attractive.

A number of service providers work with the project
coordinator at Iris Court. The Oregon Employment
Division provides a job placement assistance
officer at the Iris Court contact office for 20
hours per week (the other half of her week was
spent at Columbia Villa). The placement
assistance officer instituted a "Job Club" for
residents that monitors state job openings, helped
with resume preparation and job applications, and
networked with local employers to create jobs.

Project Network is an intensive outpatient drug
treatment program for pregnant substance abusers
that worked closely with the Iris Court community
health nurse who helped identify potential clients.

Columbia Boys and Girls Clubs of North Portland
provides structured activities for Iris Court
children and teenagers. The Club runs a shuttle bus
to transport children from Iris Court twice a week.

The Oregon State University provides volunteers to
conduct parenting education classes on-site at Iris
Court. The goal of the program is to provide
parents with skills necessary to make child-rearing
decisions. Five parenting classes had been held at
Iris Court and had been attended by five to seven
parents.

The Oregon State University adult food and
nutrition program and "Snack Attack" food and
nutrition classes for children also holds classes
at Iris Court. The adult program teaches 13 basic
lessons in food preparation, nutrition and
shopping. Sixteen people had enrolled in the
program and seven had graduated during the
research. "Snack Attack" teaches the same lessons
as the adult class through hands-on food
preparation classes. During six different Snack
Attack sessions, 96 children attended and 11 adult
volunteers were trained.  In addition to providing
children with knowledge about good nutrition, the
program hoped to foster increased self-esteem
through positive group interaction and the
development of practical skills.

The Multnomah County Health Division supplied
(under contract with the PPB) a community health
nurse who served the residents of Iris Court
exclusively (see "Community Health Nurse").

Albina Ministerial Alliance/Head Start runs the
Amanti project for early drug prevention and
intervention. The preschool Head Start program had
served 17 children at their Iris Court Center. The
Alliance also provides free child care services
through the Head Start program.

The Youth Gangs Program was recruited by the
project coordinator to do gang outreach at Iris
Court. Two outreach workers (one female, one male)
worked with tenants on gang- related problems at
Iris Court. A particular focus of the outreach
workers was "empowering" young, single women who
have children by gang members to break free of the
influence of gang members who intimidated,
threatened and abused them while illegally
occupying Iris Court apartments.

In July, 1990 the Iris Court project staff
conducted a job-health fair. Various service
providers were represented at booths arranged along
the sidewalks of Iris Court and made information
available to residents there. In addition to the
service providers directly connected to the Iris
Court project, 21 agencies committed staff to
information booths for the event (e.g., the Red
Cross, U.S. Navy Recruiting, the Sickle Cell
Foundation).

Community Partnerships. In addition to the human
services partnerships created under the INOP grant,
HAP and the Iris Court coordinator created a
partnership with the residents of Iris Court.
Through HAP and the project coordinator's outreach
efforts, the Iris Court Resident's Council and
Tenant's Association were formed in 1991. The
council is composed of elected representatives who
serve the interests of the residents of Iris Court
and act as liaisons to the police department and
the Iris Court demonstration project. The council
publishes a monthly newsletter that contains a
variety of information including articles prepared
by the Iris Court project coordinator and police
officers from the Neighborhood Response Team.

F. Community Contact Office

The Portland Police Bureau Community Contact office
is located in the Iris Court development in an
apartment donated by the Housing Authority. The
primary purpose of the contact office, which opened
in October, 1990, is "to establish closer ties
between the police and the community." The contact
office is not a "mini-precinct" that takes reports
or houses full-time police officers; rather, its
basic function is to provide social service
referrals to the residents of Iris Court. At the
time of the research, the contact office was
staffed by two women who were placed through the
Private Industry Council's Senior Citizen
Employment Program. The Portland Police Bureau thus
does not pay wages to these civilian employees.

Though primarily a social service referral center,
the contact office is used by PPB officers
(particularly the NRT officers) as a "drop-in
center" for afternoon and evening shift officers
who needed to write reports or call the precinct.
It also gives them a place to meet with tenants on
an informal basis and provided a site for public
workshops. The contact center also housed the
community health nurse's office.

G. Landlord Training

The Landlord Training program is designed to teach
owners and managers how to keep drug activity off
their residential property and is considered by
many to be one of the department's most successful
community-oriented policing projects and a major
component of the INOP project. Since the
program was instituted in November, 1989, it has
trained more than 3,000 landlords and property
managers. The development, marketing and
implementation of the program is done by Campbell
Resources, a private consulting firm, through a
contract with the city.

The program recruits prospective landlords by
accessing the county assessment and taxation
database and selecting anyone who owns a
residential property. Two-thirds of all trainees
are "small" landlords having fewer than 10 units,
according to 1990 data. Trainees are attracted to
the course through three major sources of
information--letters from the chief of police
explaining the program (77%); "other" sources, such
as property management associations (16%); and
media exposure (7%).

The training usually takes place over two
consecutive week-nights or one Saturday session
(five hours for the full course) and contains
instruction in applicant screening procedures,
signs of dishonest applicants, warning signs of
drug activity, what to do if you discover a
clandestine drug lab, how to work with the Police
Bureau, and instruction on Section 8 housing. The
program is available to all landlords or managers
for a five-dollar fee to cover the costs of
printing course materials. The training manual is a
"plain English" overview of basic course content
and presents all applicable laws and a listing of
support organizations.

III. Other Program Components

A. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design
In June, 1990, the Iris Court project utilized
Crime Prevention through Environmental Design
(CPTED) as a component in its overall strategy to
decrease drug demand. North Sumner Street, for
example, had been used by drug dealers and gang
members as a drive-through drug market, and drug
deals were often carried out in parked cars along
the street. In an attempt to reduce space for
non-residents who might use N. Sumner Street for
such purposes, parking was limited to one side of
the street. In addition, N. Sumner Street was made
a dead end by installing a barrier, thus making it
a cul-de-sac. The barrier has helped reduce the
drive through traffic by non-residents. Also, the
basement laundry room, long a trouble spot because
of drug dealing and thefts, was redesigned and
opened in a ground-floor apartment in an effort to
make those activities far more difficult. Finally,
a newly paved basketball court provides youths from
Iris Court a safe place to play (an effort to
"encourage desirable behavior").

B. Evaluation

The evaluation of the Iris Court project was done
internally by the North Precinct command. The
evaluation consisted of a pre- and post-survey
questionnaire. The first survey was conducted in
July, 1990 by volunteers organized by the Piedmont
Neighborhood Association and resulted in 77 Iris
Court residents being interviewed. The survey
questions focused on levels of crime and fear of
crime and asked residents about whether they knew
where to find good health care in the area, whether
they needed child care, and how they felt about
police service in the area.

In addition to the survey of residents at Iris
Court, 61 officers from the North Precinct also
participated in a pre/post survey in July 1990, and
July, 1991. Officers were asked to assess the
quality-of-life in the Iris Court complex, what
they believed to be the most serious crime problem
in the complex, how they felt about the people who
live in Iris Court, and how they would feel about
having a mini-precinct in Iris Court.

C. Associated Technology

The North Precinct used the Community Police
Support Division computer system to determine
changes in reported crimes for the Iris Court area
before, during, and after the implementation of the
Iris Court demonstration project. The statistics
gathered include the number of Part I and II crimes
in the area over the course of the year and more
specific data, such as the number of gang-related
offenses in the area. Data sources include reported
crimes, calls for service and citizen drug house
complaints received by the Drugs and Vice Division.

The PPB also uses a desktop "Geographic Information
System" (GIS) that allows computer mapping of the
data sources mentioned above. With GIS, information
is downloaded from the Police Bureau's mainframe
(for reported crimes, or from tapes for the 911
system). The downloaded information is then
subjected to a conversion program (Tralaine) that
converts information to geo-coordinates for the GIS
(Mapinfo). The benefit of the GIS system is that it
allows the analyst to define specific geographic
boundaries (e.g., like the streets that form the
boundaries of the Iris Court complex) and request
all reported crimes or calls for service that fall
within those boundaries for a particular time
period. Because it allows a map to be printed indi-
cating the locations of events, the GIS system
provides a visual representation of arrests, calls
for service, reported crimes, etc., thus allowing
the Bureau to produce hot-spot maps and plan future
strategies as well as determine the effects of the
Iris Court project.

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY

I. The Prince George's County INOP Project and the
   Target Area

A. Introduction

Prince George's County (PG), Maryland covers an
area of nearly 500 square miles and has a total
population of over 700,000 residents. The western
end of the county, which is directly adjacent to
some of the more troubled neighborhoods in
Washington, D.C., shares many of the social
problems of that city -- relatively high rates of
poverty, drug abuse, violent crime and
female-headed households. The eastern end, however,
is decidedly rural and presents a marked contrast
to the western end in density and demographic
composition.

There are six police districts in PG County,
divided into ten separate patrol sectors. The site
of the original PG County INOP project (the
Community Oriented Policing Squad or COPS) was the
G sector in District III, which has seven
beats.

In 1990, the PG County police force began a planned
expansion of the force from approximately 1,000
sworn officers to approximately 1,400 sworn
officers. The fiscal crisis of 1991, however,
capped the expansion of the force at 1,230 sworn
officers. A primary objective of Department
commanders in the expansion of the force was to
devote staff, for the first time, to continuous
neighborhood-oriented, problem-solving policing.

B. Community Policing in PG County

On January 1, 1990, a new police chief, committed
to the principles of community-oriented policing,
was appointed to head the PG County Police
Department. Then, the BJA Request for Proposals
announcing the INOP program provided an opportunity
for Department personnel to define ways to
operationalize that interest. It represented a way
to introduce a new approach to policing in a
Department that had admittedly been very
"traditional" until that time.

Yet the Department did have some prior experience
with problem-solving approaches. In 1985, an
experimental problem-solving squad, the ACTION
(Attacking Crime through Involvement of
Neighborhoods) team, was formed to provide a
permanent capacity for tactical responses to
identified neighborhood problems at the request of
District commanders. Although Department personnel
reported that they had been impressed with the
unit's problem-solving approach, they were
concerned with the frequent mobility of the unit
(referred to as "hopscotching"), particularly in
response to high-volume drug locations. The ACTION
team did not provide long-term attention to
specific problem locations.

In designing COPS, therefore, Department planners
reported that they were particularly concerned with
developing a "permanent, constant" presence in
problem-ridden locations. Department planners
sought accountability within the patrol squad for
neighborhood conditions and a "continuing . . .
relationship between operational line officers and
average local residents."  According to one
Department planner, COPS officers would be
"advocates for the community" in a project designed
to "take regular street cops and tell them to apply
management techniques that would normally be used
at the administrative level."

As originally conceived, the COPS officers -- a
supervising sergeant and seven patrol officers,
each assigned to one of seven beats within the G
sector -- would function as a "sixth squad" within
the sector, which is currently staffed by five
rotating patrol squads, responsible for responding
to calls for service. Although the "sixth squad"
concept was eventually dropped, COPS officers were
still expected to interact regularly with officers
working on their beats from other squads; to
exchange information about problems on the beat
with other patrol officers, beat detectives and
members of special units; to attend occasional roll
calls of other squads; to help patrol officers, if
possible, with selected calls for service in the
beat; and to function as a general manager of
problem-solving activities on their beats.

In early February 1991, members of COPS established
satellite offices in problem-ridden apartment
complexes within their respective beats. Each
squad member holds office hours in the satellite
office for about ten hours a week. The schedule
of office hours is posted; answering machines in
each office are available to take messages in the
absence of the officer (squad officers also carry
pagers). Offices are stocked with brochures for
both children and adults on drug prevention, crime
prevention and available local services. The
officer's presence within the complex itself was
expected to reduce the residents' fears, increase
police visibility within the complex and provide an
accessible role model for neighborhood children.

In addition to their regular office hours, squad
members are expected to conduct foot, motor and
scooter patrols; to conduct home visits and home
surveys in selected areas within the beat; to
organize and oversee Neighborhood and Business
Watch groups; to attend community meetings,
marches, rallies, festivals and parades; to conduct
crime prevention counseling in residences and
commercial locations; to establish and meet
regularly with "mini- planning committees" drawn
from their respective beats; and to provide service
referrals for neighborhood residents. In the course
of conducting these various activities, squad
members also gather information about neighborhood
problems and conditions.

Squad members, all of whom have been trained in
problem-solving techniques, are also expected to
identify and address neighborhood problems, known
within the squad as SARAs (Scanning, Analysis,
Response and Assessment) and based on Herman
Goldstein's (1990) four-stage problem-solving
process. They were also expected to document the
nature of each SARA on their beats and the actions
taken to address it.

In the early days of the unit, each squad member
created a beat profile, providing descriptive
information about the beat. After beat profiles had
been developed, squad members were expected to
complete Beat Conditions Reports on a monthly
basis. These reports outline identified problems
(crime reports and calls-for-service patterns,
drug activity, environmental conditions and social
conditions); describe activities related to
community organization and community involvements;
and provide information about neighborhood
canvassing, crime prevention activities, meetings
attended, service referrals, law enforcement
activities, departmental interaction and roll calls
attended. Documentation of the SARA's addressed by
each squad member is appended to the report, along
with letters from community leaders.

C. The Target Area

District III in PG county is known within the
Department as a "line" district -- that is, it is
one of three districts (containing six sectors)
that share a border with Washington, DC. The
District shares a number of the problems that
characterize troubled areas in Washington, DC --
drug trafficking, drug- related violence,
prostitution and poverty. According to a command
level staff member, in spite of the suburban
character of much of the county, in District III,
"This is big city policing."

District III is more densely populated than the
rest of the county. It comprises only six percent
of the total area of the county (29.5 square
miles), although it accounts for roughly 18 percent
of the county's population (131,384). The COPS
target area, the G sector (one of two sectors
within District III) constitutes less than half the
land area in the district (42%, 12.5 square miles)
and houses less than half the District's population
(41%, 55,000).

There are a number of townships within the sector,
although only four (Fairmount Heights, Glenarden,
Seat Pleasant and Capital Heights) are fully
incorporated municipalities with separate police
departments. These departments employ from two to
ten officers each. Service calls are dispatched to
these departments through the county's computerized
area dispatch system (CAD).

In the past ten years, the demographic composition
of the county has changed dramatically, from 46
percent black in 1980 to 65 percent black in 1990.
The proportion of black residents in the target
area, however, is substantially higher than in the
rest of the county. In June 1992, a New York
Times Magazine article described PG County as an
up-and-coming area, populated by a high percentage
of African-American professionals. While this may
be an apt description of the county as a whole, it
does not describe the INOP target area. In
addition, residents in this part of the county are
less likely to be professionals.

According to Departmental data, at the start of the
COPS program, the G sector (which is one of ten in
the county) accounted for a disproportionate number
of drug arrests (41%), drug-related calls (33%),
and homicides (22%). Open-air and apartment-based
drug dealing were common.

Although there are three large industrial parks and
several shopping malls within the sector, the area
is primarily residential. Neighborhoods
characterized by tracts of privately owned,
single-family houses are adjacent to multi-family
housing complexes, heavily populated with families
who are dependent on Section 8 housing subsidies
and public assistance. COPS officers characterize
the residents of these housing complexes as highly
transient.

Drug trafficking and abuse, loitering, trespassing
in housing complexes, street violence and street
crimes were commonly cited community problems,
according to COPS officers. In addition, several
area bars and convenience stores were widely
recognized as problem spots by both the police and
the community. Other identified neighborhood
problems included abandoned houses, underlit parks,
the lack of recreational facilities for area youth,
the lack of appropriate male role models for youth,
trash dumping sites, abandoned cars, inadequate
fencing, domestic violence, black-on-black crime
and prostitution.

Although there are a few recognized heroin spots in
District III, the drug problem has been shaped
largely by the expansion in recent years of the
crack cocaine market. Open-air drug markets are
evident in apartment complexes and residential
areas throughout the county. District officers are
especially concerned about the periodic emergence
of Jamaican drug posses from New York City as
significant figures in local drug trafficking.

II. Drug Demand Reduction Activities

A. Drug Prevention

COPS officers are involved in a wide variety of
drug prevention activities. Several officers
actively recruited local youth (14-25 years old) to
join the Explorers program, a police- run uniformed
troop, loosely modeled on the Boy Scouts; designed
to promote a positive interaction between youth and
police officers; provide positive role models for
youth and help them develop alternatives to drug
involvement. According to one COPS officer, quoted
in a local newspaper, because of active recruiting
by COPS staff, "All of the kids in my [Explorer]
Post come from areas that are having a lot of
[drug] problems." Explorers meet as a group on a
regular basis at the police station. They
participate in public service projects at least
every two weeks, tutor other young people and
distribute anti-drug literature.

COPS officers also take part in a male mentoring
program, generally catering to pre-adolescent and
adolescent boys. This program is also designed to
provide positive male role models and develop
alternative activities for neighborhood youngsters.

The satellite offices provide a center for the
dissemination of literature and flyers on drug
abuse, prevention and treatment. COPS officers
attend DARE programs in local schools.

COPS officers participate actively in organizing
community anti-drug marches, rallies and festivals,
and work actively with Neighborhood Watch groups to
encourage such activities in their beats. Some
officers have organized citizen groups that
maintain an evening presence at the entrances and
exits of housing complexes to "keep an eye" on the
traffic moving through the complex and, in essence,
reclaim the area for residents.

COPS officers are trained to advise apartment
complex residents about Maryland's FIST (Families
Insisting upon Safe Tenancies) programs. Apartment
complexes participating in FIST require tenants to
sign riders to their leases permitting eviction if
a preponderance of evidence points to the incidence
of drug trafficking or unlicensed guns in the
apartment. According to a representative of FIST,
the program is designed "to heighten the awareness
of landlords and tenants," to increase the ability
to get rapid evictions of troublesome tenants and
to promote "zero tolerance" within drug-ridden
apartment complexes.

COPS officers are encouraged to refer drug abusers
within their beats to treatment facilities and to
provide information about AA and NA meetings.
Monthly Beat Conditions Reports document the number
of such referrals by individual officers.

B. Law Enforcement Activities

The COPS program employs a variety of enforcement
techniques in its drug demand reduction efforts. By
building community contacts and developing
information sources throughout the beat, each COPS
officer develops detailed, specific information
about narcotics locations. Some of this information
is passed directly to the Narcotics Enforcement
Division (NED); Beat Condition Reports document
drug arrests made by other units based on COPS
information. In other instances, COPS officers work
directly with the NED or the ACTION team in efforts
to close down drug locations. They also respond
regularly to drug calls on their beats and
establish a visible presence at known drug
locations on their beats.

Another tactic used by COPS involves traffic
checkpoints, conducted in concert with the ACTION
team, at the entrances and exits of apartment
complexes that are known for drug activity. All
cars entering or exiting the area are stopped and
licenses and registrations are checked. This
activity establishes a short-term, intense police
presence designed to deter drug dealers in the
complex who drive in from other areas.

COPS officers are also actively involved in
exploring avenues of civil enforcement. COPS
officers regularly investigate abandoned houses
that are being used as drug locations and make
efforts to have those houses sealed up by either
the owners or the county (at the expense of the
owner) or, in some instances, demolished. They
actively enforce loitering and trespassing
provisions within housing complexes and have been
exploring methods of enhancing eviction powers to
combat drug dealing within those complexes.

III. Other Program Components

A. Recruitment and Training

In early January 1991, PG Department commanders
sent a memo throughout the Department describing
community policing and asking for volunteers.
Fourteen volunteers responded to this notice, and
seven were selected to serve in the COPS unit. The
initial response to the request for volunteers was
recognized within the District as relatively
meager. Some COPS officers acknowledged that they
were strongly urged to volunteer.

The fourteen original volunteers were trained in
community policing between January 7 and January
25, 1991. Initial training was provided by the
Department, which adapted the ACTION Team training
component for the COPS unit, with the assistance of
an FBI unit familiar with the theory and practice
of community policing.

The initial COPS training provided introductions to
various county agencies expected to be instrumental
to the project (Public Works, the Department of
Environmental Resources or DER, the Liquor
Board, the County Attorney and the Health
Department). COPS officers also received FBI
training in community policing, training in civil
citations, drug investigations training, and
training in officer safety (driving, survival
skills and the use of firearms).

Training continued on a regular basis even after
COPS became operational. In February 1991, all
officers on the squad began reading sections of
Herman Goldstein's (1990) Problem-Oriented Policing
and discussing those readings in weekly squad
meetings. At the end of February, all COPS officers
went to Newport News, Virginia, to examine the
community policing initiative there. In addition,
training has continued at weekly squad meetings,
which bring together the whole squad, including the
Sergeant and supervising Captain, with various
guest lecturers. The squad as a whole also
received additional training in April on Beat
Condition Reports. All squad officers also attended
a week-long motorcycle training in preparation for
scooter patrol.

In April 1991, COPS officers received two days of
training by the Police Executive Research
Foundation, along with additional PGPD supervisors
and members of other units (approximately 40
officers attended). The PERF training was conducted
off-site and covered the history of 20th century
policing, the nature of traditional police
responses, the problem-oriented approach to
policing, illustrations of SARAs from other
jurisdictions and workshops on addressing and
resolving community problems. The PERF training has
been supplemented by on-going technical assistance
throughout the course of the project. 

B. Community and Agency Partnerships

The COPS Planning Committee. In early January 1991,
COPS supervisors sent letters to selected County
and private service organizations and members of
the Department's Citizen's Advisory Council
describing community policing and asking for
representatives for the COPS Planning Committee, an
advisory group set up to review COPS strategies and
to provide inter- agency and community support. By
early February, the members of that committee had
been selected. The project Planning Committee
includes four community representatives (a City
Council member; the president of a Recreation
Council, the president of a local non-profit youth
services corporation and an employee of a large
property management company with multiple sites in
the target area). It also includes five agency
liaisons, representing DER, the Health Department,
Child Protective Services, the Department of Public
Works and the Apartment and Office Building
Association.

The agency liaisons were expected to be a central
component in developing solutions to community
problems. PGPD command staff felt that relying on
informal, "bottom-up" relationships which officers
developed with agency people would be a mistake:

We had a couple of police officers who could get
things done through people they know. I didn't want
that kind of relationship because I felt that we
didn't want to have an informal relationship where
you could call Joe and get something done, because
what about the next guy that comes along, how about
the guy that doesn't know Joe? We wanted a formal
relationship where it would get done because it was
community policing, and you have to do it when
community policing calls.

Yet District command staff, along with COPS
officers, continued to be frustrated about the
nature of inter-agency responses even after the
Planning Committee had been established. As one
commander put it:
       
". . . our impression of the program was [that]
when I make a phone call to my contact person in
public works, they see to it that it's done. My
obligation to get it done is to contact the person
who does it, and he handles it from there. And I
think it took us a long time to realize that we had
to change not only our way of thinking but we had
to change the way that government, and the services
of government, think."

Because COPS officers continued to be frustrated by
perceived delay in the response of other agencies,
in July 1991, the County Executive held a meeting
with all agency heads in PG County, featuring a
"symbolic cutting of red tape." At that meeting,
the County Executive insisted that requests from
COPS officers be given priority treatment, as if
the requests were from the office of the County
Executive himself.

District commanders later expanded the Planning
Committee to include representatives of other
agencies that might contribute to the COPS
initiative (e.g., the State Attorney's Office).
Although it took about a year to work out a good
meeting schedule, by the time of the final research
site visit, committee members were happy with
meeting bi-monthly. Also, prior to each meeting, an
agenda is prepared so members know what to expect.

Mini-Planning Committees. Each COPS officer also
developed a mini-planning committee to provide
advice and support for problem-solving strategies
on particular beats. The nature of these committees
varies according to the individual beat. Mini-
planning committees include area businessmen,
political leaders, school representatives, tenant
representatives, clergymen, etc. These committees
meet on a monthly basis and provide an opportunity
for area residents to bring issues to the attention
of the officer, for group brainstorming about
approaches to short-term problems and long-term
issues. They also provide officers with a community
workgroup of involved community residents.

Other Partnerships. COPS officers work closely with
various other groups on their beats -- church
groups, members of Neighborhood Watch and Business
Watch, and tenant organizations in the apartment
complexes where their satellite offices are
located. The nature of these organizations varies
greatly from beat to beat. One officer organized a
Business Watch in an industrial park housing
several Fortune 500 companies that were concerned
about security in their common parking lot. Another
officer works closely with the owners of
Mom-and-Pop stores troubled by persistent loitering
and drug sales near their premises.

COPS officers interact with municipal officials in
the various townships on their beats. In some
instances, such officials have been included on
mini-planning committees, a tactic which can help
defuse potential town-county rivalries.

In addition, COPS supervisors have been approached
by directors of the Interfaith Action Committee
(IAC), a consortium of 43 local churches interested
in expanding community policing throughout the
county. During the first year of the COPS project,
IAC established one satellite COPS office within
the H sector in District III. The COPS officer
working in H sector participated in G sector
training, supervision and weekly staff meetings.

C. Outreach and Advertising

The COPS initiative has been the subject of several
articles in local newspapers. These include an
article about the formal opening of the satellite
offices in housing complexes, an article about the
resurgence of the Explorers Post in the County and
an article describing one COPS officer's daily
activity.

The COPS officers themselves have engaged in
extensive outreach on their beats. Satellite
offices are marked by signs that officially
designate the presence of a police substation. The
satellite offices are outreach centers, containing
flyers about community events and the COPS program,
along with crime and drug prevention literature.
COPS officers also attend a wide array of community
meetings and events where they make presentations
about the program.

Officers spend some of their time conducting home
visits, designed to gather information about
perceived problems in a specific location. In the
course of conducting an informal home survey,
officers go door-to-door on a particular block,
introduce themselves to residents and provide
information about COPS and other relevant services.

D. Volunteers

Although the COPS program does not rely heavily on
volunteers, individual officers occasionally use
volunteers (e.g., they call upon church groups in
organizing a barbecue for National Night Out or
solicit free materials from a business for a
neighborhood clean up). In addition, they draw upon
the Explorer's group as needed to help organize
community events.

E. The Role of the Department's Management
   Information System (MIS)

In preparing their Beat Condition Reports, COPS
officers are expected to analyze trends in calls
for service and crime reports for their beats. To
facilitate this process, and avoid the delays
inherent in relying upon the Department's Crime
Analysis Unit, training was provided for all COPS
officers in how to perform crime analysis
functions. By the second year of the project, COPS
officers had access to a computer terminal in the
District office and were able to retrieve
beat-specific data.

F. Local Evaluation

The evaluation of the project was conducted by PERF
staff, who have also been involved in providing
training and technical assistance for the project.
Although the evaluation examined routine pre/post
data on calls for service and crime reports, the
primary focus of the impact evaluation was on the
COPS response to problems within individual beats.
Thus, the process evaluation, describing the
implementation of the COPS initiative, will be
closely linked to the impact evaluation, which will
provide a qualitative assessment of the program's
effect on identified problems in the various beats.

G. BJA Funds

The primary expenditure for the COPS program under
the INOP grant (approximately $200,000) involved
establishing and furnishing the satellite offices.
Project funds paid for computer equipment,
answering machines, pager rental fees, office
furniture and supplies, printing expenses and
utilities. In addition, project funds covered the
PERF contract for evaluation, motorcycles for
scooter patrol and travel expenses. A small propor-
tion of project funds subsidized staff salaries.

IV. Expected Impacts

A. Community Effects

According to one project planner, COPS officers
serve as Beat Condition Managers whose primary goal
is to "turn things around in [their] neighborhood."
To do so, it is expected that COPS officers will
respond effectively to identified problems on their
beats; reduce the fear of crime, particularly
within the apartment complexes where their
satellite offices are located; and improve
police-community relations.

B. Departmental Effects

Expanding COPS. Command personnel in PG County had
expressed substantial interest in beginning
community-oriented policing before the BJA program
was announced. According to one project planner,
however, "the grant allowed us to do what [the
Chief] wanted to do." While PGPD expressed a
commitment to expanding the COPS model into other
Districts, there was some concern about how readily
this model could be adapted to the more rural, less
dense western Districts in the county. By the final
site visit, community policing had been expanded
into other Districts, but not as a "team." Rather,
a single community police officer was assigned to
each expansion District.

Improved Intra-Departmental Communication. If COPS
officers are to function effectively as "beat
condition managers," it is important that they
interact readily with the regular squad officers
who work on their beats. COPS officers often need
the cooperation of squad officers in addressing
neighborhood problems (e.g., establishing a visible
patrol presence in known loitering spots). Squad
officers interviewed during the implementation site
visit reported that there had been some resentment
of the squad early in the program, but that the
personalities of the individual COPS officers had
helped to "override that resentment."

Similarly, COPS officers often require the
cooperation of other units (NED, Crime Analysis) in
identifying and addressing neighborhood problems.
These relationships can be problematic for COPS
officers. For example, because of delays in getting
information from the Crime Analysis Unit, training
was provided for COPS officers in crime analysis
techniques; in addition, in the second year of INOP
funding, support was obtained for a statistical
officer to provide enhanced crime analysis (e.g.,
geo-mapping techniques) for the unit.

One COPS officer reported that it was sometimes
difficult to engage the Narcotics Division in
investigations on his beat. According to this
officer, NED gets so many tips that, "I gotta make
mine more attractive." He tries to do so by
providing very detailed, documented information to
NED about specific locations; he believes that the
COPS program has enhanced his ability to receive
and pass on such information to NED.

Improved Partnerships. According to one member of
the project Planning Committee, COPS officers
provide a valuable link between community groups
and county officials. For example, by feeding
information to COPS officers about narcotics
activity within apartment complexes, apartment
managers can try to expedite evictions, based on
the arrests of known drug traffickers within the
apartment complex. Similarly, by passing on
information about drug activity in abandoned houses
to DER, COPS officers attempt to address narcotics
problems by having these locations either boarded
up or torn down.

HOUSTON

I. The Houston INOP Project and the Target Areas

A. Introduction

Houston, Texas is a city of roughly 1,700,000
people occupying more than 700 square miles. The
work-day population of Houston is said to be to
over 2 million. The Houston Police Department (HPD)
employs 3,950 sworn officers and 1,550 civilians.

By the time of the first Vera site visit to Houston
in August 1991, the Houston Police Department's
INOP-funded "Operation Siege" project had
implemented a Zero Tolerance enforcement detail in
both target areas; formed a Cantina Squad focusing
on quality-of-life problems associated with local
bars in one of the two target areas; enlisted the
aid of the department's Tactical Response Unit,
which conducts regular street-level buy-and-bust
narcotics and prostitution enforcement; formed a
special warrant squad to apprehend wanted persons
in one of the target areas; conducted a number of
neighborhood clean-ups targeting vacant lots in
both areas; helped to form a new community
association in one target area; developed liaisons
in a number of key city and county agencies;
identified a group of private sector volunteers
willing to help repair the homes of senior citizens
and install target hardening hardware; and
conducted approximately 200 home security surveys
in both areas.

Two planned project components had not been
implemented at the time of the first site visit.
Due to a delay in the release of BJA grant funds
from the City of Houston, the target hardening
component of Operation Siege had not begun. Home
surveys designed to identify houses eligible for
target hardening continued, however, as did the
estimation of target-hardening costs for those
houses deemed eligible.

B. Neighborhood-Oriented Policing (NOP) in Houston

Neighborhood-oriented, problem-solving policing has
a relatively long history in Houston, beginning as
early as 1982 with the appointment of Lee P. Brown
as Chief of Police. Chief Brown's efforts at
transforming the Houston Police Department from a
traditional law enforcement agency into a
neighborhood- oriented police department are
well-documented in the community policing
literature, which often cites Houston to emphasize
the need for a broad change in departmental style
and philosophy to successfully implement community
policing (Sparrow et al., 1990; Brown, 1989; Pate
et al., 1986).

Brown began to shift Houston's policing philosophy
in 1983 with a series of programs designed to
improve communication between police and
communities and to allow officers to work with
neighborhood residents in solving local problems.
These experiments (which included a police
newsletter mailed directly to area homes, a special
police unit whose main purpose was to encourage
civic groups to organize, and a police substation
designed to encourage walk-in traffic and
collaborative police/community problem solving)
were the focus of an early National Institute of
Justice study of fear reduction through innovative
policing in Houston and in Newark, New Jersey (Pate
et al., 1986).

Between 1982 and 1987, the HPD pursued its vision
of community policing through the development of
additional experimental programs, all of which
incorporated the notions of beat integrity, a
problem-solving approach to quality-of-life issues,
increased and improved interaction between police
and citizens, and community involvement in policing
decisions and activities (Oettmeier & Brown, 1988;
Brown, 1983). In 1987, through a series of
executive sessions within the Department, the HPD
developed a department-wide agenda for community
policing which it called Neighborhood Oriented
Policing (NOP).

The development of NOP inaugurated the beginning of
what Chief Brown then called "Phase II" (Brown,
1989). This shift from Phase I, which sought to
implement community policing gradually, through
discrete programs in specified locales, to Phase II
of community policing in Houston, involved a
sweeping resolve by the Department to adopt
community policing as its dominant operating style
(Brown, 1988). This resolve was clearly stated in
the HPD's 1987 mission statement, which mentions
first the desire to "enhance the quality-of-life in
the City of Houston by working cooperatively with
the public . . ." (Oettmeier & Brown, 1988:121).

It is within this context of extensive
experimentation with community policing and of the
post-1987 commitment to NOP as a departmental style
that the INOP grant project in Houston, called
Operation Siege, developed.

C. The Target Areas: Frenchtown and the
   Near-Northside BOND Area

Frenchtown is located in the city's Fifth
Ward--nicknamed the "Bloody Fifth" by police
officers because it leads Houston in Part I crimes.
The area (consisting of about 600 homes) came to be
known as Frenchtown because of the large number of
Creole immigrants from Louisiana that settled there
just after the turn of the century. Today,
however, most of the residents of Frenchtown are
African Americans. The majority of the people who
inhabit Frenchtown are lower-income, although some
of the well-maintained homes are occupied by
working and middle-class families who own their
homes (nearly 70% of the residents rent their
homes).

The major problems in Frenchtown identified by
members of the Frenchtown Community Association
(the only active community group in the area)
during the Operation Siege problem-identification
phase were: prostitution (there are three motels in
the Frenchtown area, all of which rent by the hour
and, according to residents and police, cater to
prostitutes); crack cocaine dealing; abandoned
buildings which are used by crack users; and trash
in vacant lots. The drug and prostitution problems
here are exacerbated, according to respondents, by
Frenchtown's easy accessibility from several major
highways. The highways make it relatively easy for
"drive through" drug buyers and johns to engage in
illegal activities and make a quick exit from the
neighborhood.

The Near-Northside BOND area is named after the
neighborhood watch group that covers the second
target site. The 155 square blocks that make up
the target area are adjacent to the Frenchtown
site. Its largely Latino population is lower income
and, like Frenchtown, a large number of families
rent their homes rather than own them. One of the
BOND area's most distinctive features is its large
number of cantinas. Because Houston has no zoning
ordinances, visitors to the area will find as many
as three or four cantinas located in the middle of
an otherwise completely residential block. There
are 33 cantinas located within the BOND target
site. According to surveys done by HPD, BOND area
residents identified cantinas and criminal activity
associated with cantinas as one of the major
problems plaguing their community. Unlike
Frenchtown, which reportedly has a serious
street-corner drug problem (mostly crack), the BOND
area's problems are confined primarily to the
cantinas, prostitution and vagrants.

Site Selection. The Near-Northside BOND and
Frenchtown communities were selected as the
Operation Siege target sites because they had high
levels of drug activity and drug-related crime and
because residents had expressed a willingness to
form partnerships with the police in an effort to
address the conditions that have contributed to the
drug problem. The high-ranking supervisor
responsible for the selection of the sites did not
base the selection on any formal research or needs
assessment. Rather, he felt that the two
neighborhoods were reestablishing themselves
through revitalization efforts and becoming more
formally organized. His belief was that the
Operation Siege project could contribute to that
revitalization. 

II. "Operation Siege": The Houston INOP Project

A. Goals, Objectives and Strategy: Drug Demand
   Reduction

Operation Siege was unique among the eight
BJA-funded INOP sites because its approach to drug
demand reduction was primarily
enforcement-oriented. It thus stood in contrast
to projects like Portland's which rely primarily on
the provision of social services. The goals of
Operation Siege were to enhance the quality of life
by preventing crime at the neighborhood level;
introducing crime prevention strategies (e.g.,
target hardening), and reducing fears associated
with reporting crime. The HPD had hoped to enhance
its usual drug enforcement strategies by involving
the public and private sectors in the demand
reduction effort. The project thus allowed for the
systematic inclusion of community residents, other
criminal justice agencies, city departments, and
the public and private sector in the demand
reduction strategy.

The project was implemented in six stages: (1) a
series of meetings were held with community groups
to identify problems and plan a crime prevention
strategy; (2) heavy enforcement activity by the
department's TACT squad (undercover operations,
buy-and- bust); (3) saturation patrol and Zero
Tolerance; (4) neighborhood clean-ups; (5) crime
prevention surveys; (6) target hardening and senior
citizen home repair.

Operation Siege may also be unique among the eight
INOP projects because it was implemented in a
police department undergoing large-scale
reorganization. In addition, many of the original
planners of Operation Siege left the department or
had been reassigned by the time the research began.
This had a largely negative impact on project
implementation for both the BOND and Frenchtown
sites, but especially Frenchtown, where the officer
placed in charge of the project had less than two
months of experience with the project by the time
of the first Vera site visit. Operation Siege
officially began in April, 1991.

B. Enforcement: Zero Tolerance, Cantina Squad, TACT
   Team and the Warrant Squad

Zero Tolerance. Zero Tolerance was one of the three
enforcement strategies implemented in Houston's
demand reduction effort. Zero Tolerance (initiated
on May 11, 1991) was a high-visibility patrol
effort using four to five officers in one- and
two-person patrol cars working only within the
boundaries of the target areas. Officers worked
this detail on an overtime basis and did not
respond to calls for service. Officers
volunteered to work on this program through a
sign-up procedure. The times and dates for Zero
Tolerance were posted and officers filled in their
names in the time/day slots that they wished to
work on a first-come, first-served basis.
Except for those officers who work Zero Tolerance
every day as their regular assignment, officers
signed-up to work on their days off and were paid
on an overtime basis. Supervisors (sergeants)
were responsible for relating the Zero Tolerance
strategies to officers who had not worked the
program before and for informing them of the
particular types of offenses taking place in the
target sites. The program was not unique to this
project; it had been used by the HPD before (most
notably in the 1988 Link Valley Experiment) but had
not been used in the two Project Siege target
areas.

Under Zero Tolerance, uniformed officers in marked
units patrolled the two target areas during the day
and early evening shifts searching primarily for
open-air drug activity and prostitution.
However, because open-air activity was not very
common (especially during the day/early evening
shifts when Zero Tolerance operated primarily),
patrol officers attempted to make arrests for any
infraction of the law. Officers would, for example,
make arrests for public intoxication and urinating
in public. As one sergeant who has supervised Zero
Tolerance said:

Zero Tolerance is going out and enforcing all laws,
including all traffic laws and minor misdemeanors
-- the more minor things that are generally
overlooked. And that can be effective because it
lets people know that not only are the police
officers out there, but they're actively engaged in
policing.

Because they arrest or cite people for a great many
"minor" infractions of the law, officers who work
this detail may make many more arrests than the
average patrol officer. Two officers in Frenchtown,
for example, averaged 250 arrests per month.
Officers who work Zero Tolerance every day of the
week as their regular assignment will also take all
narcotics complaints that come into the district
station desk (which are placed on "alert slips"),
and do checks on as many locations as they can
during their shift. Since crack houses are often
located in abandoned buildings, officers explained,
they are often able to close the house down by
having illegally installed utilities shut off. The
non-project officers who work zero-tolerance every
day had developed informal partnerships with
individuals within various city agencies. According
to officers working the INOP program, no formal
partnerships with city agencies or private
utilities were established through Operation
Siege.

Prostitutes are targeted by Zero Tolerance,
officers explained, because "they are always
looking to buy drugs; that's why they're out there
selling themselves for the most part." Officers
will use local ordinances like, "hitchhiking and
walking in the street" to cite prostitutes plying
their trade. Two officers in Frenchtown, for
example, created a notebook of ordinances (local,
state, federal) that they could use for the Zero
Tolerance program.

Cantina Squad. During meetings with community
leaders in the BOND area, HPD learned that the
community's greatest concerns were truancy and the
problems (drugs, fights, prostitution, noise,
loitering) caused by the local cantinas in the
area. Because Houston has no zoning ordinances, it
is very common in the Near-Northeast BOND area to
find several cantinas located in the middle of
residential areas in homes converted into liquor
establishments. According to residents of the BOND
organization, many cantinas are centers of drug,
gambling and prostitution activities. Residents
also complain of general quality-of-life problems
caused by the cantinas, such as loud noise and
parking problems generated by the lack of parking
on cantina property.

The Cantina Squad was a purely enforcement-oriented
response to those concerns that serves to check all
cantina/liquor establishments and their surrounding
areas for intoxicated people creating
disturbances. The detail did not function in
the Frenchtown area, where cantinas or bars are few
compared to the 33 that operate within the 155
square block BOND target site. This detail, like
Zero Tolerance, was staffed by patrol officers and
a supervising sergeant working on overtime. The
staffing of the Cantina Squad was accomplished by
the same sign-up procedure used for Zero Tolerance.
The Squad worked a bi-weekly schedule, Thursday,
Friday and Saturday nights from 9:30 p.m. to 2:00
a.m. (peak times for the cantinas, many of which
are open only on these nights). The Squad was
staffed by four uniformed officers in marked patrol
units and one sergeant (usually riding in an
unmarked unit).

Typically, the officers working the Cantina Squad
would meet at a designated place where a sergeant
would brief them on what cantinas they would check
for the evening. Any cantinas that had been the
source of numerous calls for service or complaints,
for example, would be targeted. Officers would
enter a Cantina and check for signs of disorderly
behavior and public intoxication. If any patron was
intoxicated or causing a disturbance, he/she would
be arrested.

The Cantina Squad also checked Cantina licenses to
be sure that they were in order and for any other
violations of the state alcoholic beverage code
(e.g., serving a patron who is clearly
intoxicated). Under Texas law, citizens may
petition the County Commissioner's Court (which is
responsible for processing liquor licenses and
conducting hearings when license renewals are
protested) to deny the renewal of a license to any
liquor establishment that has been a source of
chronic criminal activity or violation of Texas
Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) laws. The
officers working the Cantina squad had been trained
using TABC manuals to enable officers to recognize
common criminal offenses pertaining to the Texas
Alcoholic Beverage Code.

HPD used arrest reports or records of citations
given cantina managers/owners ("Public Disturbance
Report for the TABC") to inform TABC of any
violations. This information might then be used by
the County Commissioner's Court if TABC or
community residents wished to protest a liquor
license renewal for a cantina that they considered
a nuisance to the community. Cantina Squad arrests
or citations are thus routed to a TABC liaison who
used the information to help Commissioner's Court
deny license renewals to chronic trouble spots.
Between January and August, 1991, three cantinas
had been closed through this process.

Because the Commissioner's Court is not a criminal
court, officers previously were not paid for the
time they spent testifying in licensing hearings.
The INOP project facilitated such testimony since
INOP funds could be used for overtime expenses.

TACT Squad. The Tactical Squad (TACT) functioned in
both the Frenchtown and BOND areas. This unit was
put into operation for Operation Siege on April 1,
1991. Its covert operations targeted drug sellers
(through buy-and-bust tactics) and prostitutes
specifically. Prostitutes were targeted because
they are active drug buyers, according to police,
and because they have been identified as a major
crime problem by Frenchtown/BOND residents in
police community meetings.

The undercover operations ran from three to five
days per week and enlisted 18 officers (eight
officers per unit and two sergeants) who worked
7:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. or noon - 8:00 p.m. Because
it would be counterproductive to have extra marked
units in an area where TACT is attempting to
conduct an undercover operation, HPD did not
schedule Zero Tolerance when the TACT Squad was
functioning.

Warrant Squad. Another enforcement component in the
Frenchtown area of Operation Siege was the Warrant
Squad which, like Zero Tolerance and the Cantina
Squad, functioned on an overtime basis. Officers
who worked this detail developed information on
suspects on whom warrants had been executed and
attempted to make arrests of these suspects. The
detail (usually two officers) worked from 2:00 a.m.
- 6:00 a.m.

C. Target Hardening/Senior Citizen Home Repair

In an effort to reduce the fear of crime among the
elderly and prevent burglaries (i.e., drug-related
crime), Operation Siege planned to replace doors
and locks, install window burglar bars, 180 degree
door viewers, and drop bolt systems in a "target
hardening" effort. Home surveys conducted by HPD
officers, volunteers from the BOND organization and
volunteers from the Southwest Voters Registration
Drive, were used to identify those who qualified
for target hardening.

To qualify for the target hardening, a homeowner
would have to be 65 years old or handicapped and
have an income of less than $2000 per month. The
home security survey conducted by the police
department determined the security needs of a
particular home. The home might have needed, for
example, two new solid- core doors and two deadbolt
locks and burglar bars for the windows. Labor for
the installation of the hardware was free of charge
and was supplied by volunteers from the community
who were trained by the HPD and volunteers of the
Private Sector Initiative (PSI), a private
non-profit agency.

Unfortunately, the BJA funds slated for target
hardening (approximately $64,000) were "improperly
tagged for it to be channeled to the appropriate
divisions." It is still unclear whether the city or
the police department was at fault for the delay in
the delivery of funds. According to representatives
of the Frenchtown and BOND sites, they had
completed over 200 security surveys and had
absolutely no funds to deliver the work promised.
By the final Vera site visit, however, the funds
had been released.

This delay in the release of funds, however,
clearly disrupted the target hardening schedule,
and perhaps more importantly, created a crisis of
legitimacy for the project. According to several
officers responsible for the implementation of the
target hardening effort:

"The community was all fired-up when we had the
April and May kick-off for the project and there
was no money for the project. We're not here to
point any fingers but someone in this department
dropped the ball on this thing."

In addition to the target hardening, Operation
Siege incorporated a senior citizen home repair
program into its overall effort. The program is
administered and implemented by the Private Sector
Initiative (PSI) based in Houston. Twice a year
the PSI home repair program recruits volunteers to
paint and repair between 80 and 120 homes owned by
low-income, elderly or handicapped people. Homes
for repair and target hardening were selected from
the home security surveys done by the HPD and its
volunteers. The purpose of the program was to
instill pride in ownership and reduce the risk of
crime by, for example, replacing inadequate doors,
locks or windows, and doing some low-level CPTED
in the form of trimming shrubberies. In addition,
the program was expected to reduce fear of crime,
especially burglary, among senior citizens.
Thus, the HPD delivered the hardware (doors,
locks, security bars) to PSI crews who installed
them for homeowners free of charge.

D. Community Partnerships

Operation Siege created partnerships with two
citizen groups that became the focus of the HPD's
community outreach efforts. In the Near-Northside
BOND area, HPD enhanced an already strong
relationship with the BOND organization (which
was, according to officers in the area, the only
formal civic organization in the target site). The
neighborhood watch group assisted the police
department by providing volunteers to do home
surveys when necessary, helping to organize and
provide volunteers for neighborhood clean-ups and
senior citizen home repair projects and providing
information on drug and prostitution hot-spots in
the project site through the CB Patrol. In
addition, the BOND group formed a Cantina
Committee which monitored community problems
related to the many cantinas in the area. The BOND
group also offered testimony at liquor license
renewal hearings that resulted in helping to
close-down three cantinas that had been
troublesome to the community.

In the Frenchtown community, the police department
was directly involved in the recent revitalization
of the Frenchtown Association. Like the BOND
group, the Frenchtown Association was the only
active civic group (meetings are currently held
every two weeks) in the Frenchtown community. The
Association aided the police department in
neighborhood clean-up activities and supplied
volunteers in the senior citizen home repair
projects. In addition, the members of the
association have helped police by providing
information on drug and prostitution activity in
the target site.

III. Other Program Components

A. C.B. Patrols

Another program used in the BOND area for
Operation Siege was the CB Patrol. The patrol is
composed entirely of citizens (between 15 and 20
volunteers) who volunteer their time to patrol the
BOND area. The volunteers are all part of the BOND
organization. The police department provides all
volunteers with CB radios (and a base station
radio whose operator can contact the police
department directly) and signs to put on the side
of their private vehicles indicating that they are
the civilian patrol. The police department also
provides two training seminars (six hours) which
every volunteer must complete before being allowed
to patrol the street. The CB Patrol was
instrumental in supplying the HPD with drug and
prostitution locations before Operation Siege
began.

B. Neighborhood Clean-Ups

Operation Siege also conducted neighborhood
clean-ups in an effort to instill pride in
community and as a vehicle for building community
partnerships and trust. Some officers received
overtime to work security details for the clean-up
efforts.

C. Evaluations

The evaluation of the Operation Siege project in
both the BOND area and Frenchtown was to be
conducted internally by the HPD (two evaluations
were to be done -- one by officers responsible for
the BOND area and another by those officers
responsible for the Frenchtown area). According to
the project proposal the evaluation would
determine "if there has been a disruption in . . .
street-level drug trafficking, . . . and other
criminal activity." Data would be collected for
time periods before and after the Operation Siege
intervention to determine whether the project had
any impact on reported crime and calls for
service.

Although the evaluation was not completed,
officers involved in the BOND area were able to
provide some early details about the evaluation
during the last Vera site visit. First, the
possible effect of the project on calls for
service would not be considered in the evaluation.
Second, when target hardening was finally
instituted (when money was released for hardware,
and it had been installed) the evaluation team
would like to see whether target-hardened homes
are burglarized less frequently than the average
home. The evaluation team, however, was skeptical
that enforcement efforts would result in many
drug-related arrests (for reasons that are
unclear). As one sergeant said:

"We are going to end up with a bunch of arrests but
they are not going to be narcotics. We are going to
have a handful . . . arrests will be nothing near
what they said [in the proposal]. But on some of
these other programs -- Cantina, Zero Tolerance --
they are just scooping them up. [As far as the
program's effect on drug demand reduction] . . . I
think that what [Operation Siege] is going to do .
. . is that the way we are going to be successful
is that we are going to move those people [i.e.,
drug traffickers, prostitutes] to a different
location . . . They know they are not going to go
back to that neighborhood and sell the drugs . . ."

An officer from the BOND area attempted to get
computer programmers in the department to label
all crimes reported within the BOND area with a
special code. The purpose of this, he explained,
would be to make it easy for the evaluation team
to monitor Operation Siege and its progress. At
the time of the final Vera site visit, he
explained that he had been told that this was not
possible due to limited programmer resources.

At the time of the final Vera site visit, no
evaluation plan had been developed for the
Frenchtown project. Ultimately, according to
officers in the program, no evaluation of the
Houston project would be completed in either
target site.

LOUISVILLE

I. The Louisville INOP Project and the Target Area

A. Introduction

Louisville, Kentucky is a city of approximately
300,000 people. The Louisville Police Department
(LPD) has an authorized strength of 671 sworn
officers, supported by 295 civilian employees.
There are six police districts within Louisville.
The Louisville INOP project includes the entire
Fourth District.

B. Neighborhood-Oriented Policing in Louisville

According to current LPD command personnel, at the
time that Louisville submitted its original INOP
proposal to BJA, there was relatively little
command-level support for neighborhood-oriented
policing in the LPD. The proposal was developed
and submitted by the commander of the Fourth
District, a captain who had come to believe that
old styles of policing simply were not working in
his command -- the predominantly black, relatively
low-income "West End." Shortly after the
Louisville INOP proposal was funded, a new Chief
of Police, a strong supporter of community-
oriented policing, was appointed.

The Captain's recognition of a need for a more
neighborhood-oriented style of policing stemmed in
part from the widespread image (both within the
LPD and within the community) of Fourth District
officers as an "occupying army" in the area.
According to several members of the Department,
for many years the Fourth District had served as a
"dumping ground" or "punishment" for officers who
"got into trouble" within the Department. In
previous years, according to some members of the
Department, district officers under other
commanders had developed a reputation of
brutality, defined by one outside observer as a
"kick ass and take names" approach to policing.
This image had reportedly softened a bit in recent
years, following a foot patrol experiment in one
of the most troubled housing projects in the
district. Yet the Captain remained concerned with
the District's inability to address recurring
problems within identified "hot spots" in the
District, to counteract the negative perception of
the Department within the community and to
mobilize the support of other units within the
Department (e.g., the Narcotics Division).

To avoid the divisiveness of an "elite" unit
approach, the Louisville INOP proposal
deliberately did not designate a special
neighborhood-oriented unit within the District.
Ultimately, all officers within the District are
expected to participate in the INOP project,
implementing strategic responses to priority
problems identified in community forums.

INOP was designed to have two phases -- a first
phase for planning and problem identification and
a second phase for strategy development and
strategy implementation. During the first phase,
only the six officers selected to work with 12
community leaders on the Project Committee were
intensively involved in project work, although all
District officers went through community policing
training during this period (from February through
mid-August of 1991). Project committee
officers defined their role as being, at least in
part, the "ears and mouth of the community."
During the start-up phase, officers on the Project
Committee were relieved from their platoons to
help develop the project's advertising campaign in
collaboration with community representatives on
the committee; design the project's computer-
aided call diversion effort; conduct three open
community forums (held in April, 1991); and define
the priority problems of the community by
reviewing the content of those forums.

During the second phase, which began in August,
1991, officers on the Project Committee returned
to their platoons and the nine officers on the
Strategy Committee (senior officers selected for
their experience in the District) left their
platoons for a two-week period of intensive
strategy development. At the end of this period,
all District officers were to return to their
platoons to work collectively on the police
strategies selected to address priority problems
(e.g., surveillance at drug locations, followed by
intensive enforcement; foot patrol). Ultimately,
the structure of the project was modified,
combining the two committees into a single Project
Committee. This committee had police
representatives from the original two bodies and
the community members from the original Project
Committee.

According to the original project design, once
strategies for addressing priority problems had
been defined, the District was to implement a
split patrol. Some proportion of each platoon
would be freed from responsibility for answering
calls for service to carry out problem-solving
activities. Assignment to problem-solving would be
rotated among the officers in each platoon. Plans
for call diversion and delayed response were
central to the split-patrol concept; analysis of
the District's CFS workload in 1990 revealed that
20 percent of calls did not require that a patrol
car be dispatched immediately.

According to senior LPD personnel, a central
implementation problem involved the computer-aided
call diversion component of the COP initiative.
Because this component required modification of
the central Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system,
and because capital funds for that system were
frozen pending an independent review of city- and
LPD-based computer systems, efforts to implement
the COP call diversion plan met substantial
impediments (see the discussion of the MIS
component below), and at the time of the final
site visit, call diversion was just beginning.

In spite of the delayed implementation of several
program components, the Fourth District began
experimenting in July 1991 with problem-solving
strategies in Algonquin Park, an area identified
at the community forums as the site of drug
activity and loitering. In concert with the
Department of Parks and Recreation and the
Department of Public Works, the District
redesigned the area. With city funding, secured by
a local Alderman, barriers were erected, a parking
area was replaced with grass and "no stopping"
signs were posted. The Algonquin Park
experience was cited frequently in interviews with
city and Department officials as an example of
what COP might accomplish in Louisville.

During the time the City was receiving INOP funds,
there was substantial support for
community-oriented policing in both the LPD
command structure and in the city
administration. Second- year INOP funds were
focused primarily on expansion of community
policing to the First District, which includes the
downtown area. 

C. The Target Area

The Fourth District in Louisville, one of six
police districts in the city, occupies seven of
the 66 square miles in the city and has a
population of over 42,000 residents. It has the
highest volume of violent crime (homicide, rape,
robbery and aggravated assault) of the police
districts in Louisville. It also has a
substantially higher proportion of minority
residents than the rest of the city (91% of its
residents are African-American compared to 29% for
the city as a whole); a substantially higher
unemployment rate (18%) than the city as a whole
(10%); and significantly lower assessed mean
housing values (approximately $18,000) than the
city as a whole ($47,000).

The Fourth District also has among the highest
concentrations of public housing in the city,
including four housing developments that are
either the locus of or adjacent to many of the
quality-of-life problems within the District
(domestic violence reports, loitering, drug abuse
and trafficking). In addition to these housing
projects, administered by the Housing Authority of
Louisville, there is a largely abandoned,
privately-owned development, known locally as
"Peyton Place," where several vacant apartments
have been broken into and vandalized or, in some
instances, used as "shooting galleries."

Much of the area consists of privately-owned
single family homes and rented houses, many of
which have been abandoned and boarded up, even on
relatively well-maintained blocks. Some
neighborhoods within the District, however, house
the relatively affluent members of Louisville's
black middle class -- doctors, lawyers, city
officials.

There is little commercial development in the
area, although there is a concentrated industrial
area in the eastern end of the district. There are
also a substantial number of liquor stores and
bars, many of which have been defined as "hot
spots," the locus of repeated crime reports and
calls for service. Several of these spots are also
identified drug trafficking locations.

At the time of the INOP research, Louisville did
not have a major crack cocaine problem, although
there was a substantial volume of powder cocaine
and marijuana trafficking (marijuana is the
primary cash crop in the State). The Fourth
District, in previous years, had been the center
of heroin trafficking within the city, although
the heroin problem has reportedly abated in recent
years.

At the three community forums held in April 1991,
residents identified 43 problems, many associated
with particular locations in the district. The
project committee divided these problems into 13
categories: random shootings; street corner drug
dealing; loitering around liquor stores; other
congregations of loitering men; congregations of
youth; burglary; auto theft; police-community
interactions; loud music; vandalism; traffic
problems; illegal dumping; and stray dogs.

II. Drug Demand Reduction Activities

A. Drug Prevention

Even before the development of the Louisville INOP
project, a number of active, organized block
associations had been formed within the Fourth
District and several block association leaders
became active members of COP's Project Committee.
Project planners expected that training in drug
abuse prevention received by community resident
Committee members would be carried back to their
respective block watch groups.

In addition, an advertising program, originally
planned for Autumn 1991 but not yet implemented at
the time of the final site visit, was to be
targeted at building community awareness of drug
issues through the media, billboards and
newsletters. Other strategic responses to identi-
fied local drug problems, employing either drug
prevention or drug education techniques, were not
developed during the research period.

COP was included as an integral member of the
AWAREE (Area-Wide Alcohol/Drug Rehabilitation,
Education and Enforcement) Coalition, a joint
city-county initiative, begun in the Fall of 1990.
The objectives of the Coalition are to recruit
volunteers to serve on AWAREE committees, to
develop a drug prevention curriculum, to hold a
local conference on drug issues and to conduct a
survey, assessing perceptions of local drug and
alcohol problems. Through this coalition of
enforcement groups and service providers, COP is
formally linked to the consortium of treatment and
prevention programs (e.g., DARE, the Probation and
Parole Drug Testing and Treatment Program, the
Community Alliance for Prevention) in the area.

B. Law Enforcement Activities

The enforcement strategy used almost exclusively
to respond to identified drug problems in the
Fourth District was to set up a "Task Force" of
officers (who volunteered for the assignment).
This Task Force would use a variety of techniques
(e.g., surveillance, saturation patrol, foot
patrol) in response to drug problems, and would
last from a few weeks to a few months, depending
on the problem.

The COP project also received support from the
newly reorganized Metro Narcotics Unit (MNU). In
October 1990, shortly before the INOP project was
funded, the Mayor of Louisville and the County
Executive of Jefferson County (where Louisville is
located) created a joint city-county narcotics
unit of 48 officers. The unit is directed by a
Major in the Jefferson County Department, whose
appointment marked the beginning of a new
cooperation between District police units and the
Narcotics Division. The director of the MNU
pledged his support to the COP initiative, and in
an interview during the implementation site visit,
he reported that his street enforcement unit had
made over 100 arrests in the past month at one of
the most active "hot spots" in the COP target
area. Command staff in the Fourth District
reported that both the MNU's responsiveness to
District problem spots and its willingness to
address something other than major cases (e.g.,
street-level drug sales) represented a departure
from previous practice within the LPD.

III. Other Program Components

A. Recruitment and Training

The police officers who served on the Project
Committee and on the Strategy Committee were
selected by the Captain. District officers were
asked to volunteer for both committees. The six
officers on the Project Committee were drawn
equally from the three platoons. The nine officers
on the Strategy Committee, seasoned veterans of
the force, were selected for the extensiveness and
variety of their police experience within the
District. The supervising Lieutenant on the
project transferred to the Fourth District
specifically to participate in developing the
project's approach to neighborhood-oriented
policing.

All officers in the District underwent two days of
training in preparation for the implementation of
COP. Training was conducted jointly by faculty
from the Southern Police Institute (SPI) and by
District Command personnel. Training covered the
history, evolution and objectives of
community-oriented policing; a description of the
Louisville COP project; problem-solving methods
and examples of how the problem-solving approach
was implemented in other jurisdictions;
police-community relations; and practice in
problem analysis and response development.
Community members of the Project Committee
participated in this training to the extent that
their schedules allowed.

Officers on both the Project Committee and the
Strategy Committee received an additional day of
training. This training session focused on problem
identification; problem management; special
investigations and operations; and the development
and implementation of tactics. Selected members of
the Project Committee, along with several
high-ranking members of the LPD, also attended a
three-day workshop on community policing held by
the National Crime Prevention Institute at the
University of Louisville.

In addition, the Project later provided training
to eight community representatives through the
Citizens Training Unit at the LPD academy. This
training covered the COP program itself, drug use
and abuse, domestic violence, black-on-black crime
and crime prevention.

Four civilian employees in the Fourth District
also received 40 hours of training on the
computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system in
preparation for the call diversion component of
the COP initiative.

B. Community and Agency Partnerships

A primary motivation for developing COP in the
Fourth District was to have active community
participation in identifying priority problems.
According to the Captain, there were both
practical and political reasons for increasing
community involvement:

". . . as district commander, I was getting
complaints, problems fired at me right and left. I
had more than I could deal with. It was left up to
me to decide what was [most] important, and every
time I made that decision, I was continually asked
to justify it . . . I'd rather have the community
decide . . . . And I wanted to be able to identify
some strong community support for [enforcement]
activities, rather than the police just responding
to a complaint here and there . . ."

The central methods of soliciting community
involvement in problem identification are through
the community representatives on the Project
Committee (and, initially, through the three
public forums held at the end of April of 1991).

Although the project also participates in a set of
formal partnerships with twelve city agencies
through its Support Committee, these partnerships
are used on an ad hoc basis. The Support Committee
includes representatives of the Sinking Fund (the
Mayor's taxing authority); JTPA (initiative
undertaken under the Job Training Partnership
Act); the Health Department; Public Works (traffic
and highways); the Housing Authority; Inspections,
Permits and Licenses; the Department of Law;
Public Safety (Police, Fire and Emergency
Services); Economic Development; Parks and
Recreation; Solid Waste (sanitation); the local
Housing and Urban Development office; Human
Services; and the Community Action Agency. The
Mayor has firmly endorsed the COP project and has
insisted upon the active cooperation of all
supporting agencies in the neighborhood-oriented
policing effort.

City officials interviewed during the
implementation site visit reported that they
expected few problems in operationalizing
interagency partnerships because the Mayor and his
staff will ensure that agencies "understand the
importance of responding." These officials
identified three agencies as most likely to be
drawn upon frequently by COP -- Inspections,
Permits and Licenses (IPL); Solid Waste
Management; and Parks and Recreation. They also
envisioned the active involvement of the
Department of Public Works and the Department of
Human Services. By the time of the final research
site visit, it was apparent that the most
frequently involved agency was IPL.

Commanders in the Fourth District had already been
working collaboratively with representatives of
the Housing Authority of Louisville on problems in
the public housing projects in the area well
before COP was developed. The OASIS project,
developed several years before the COP project,
placed Fourth District officers on foot patrol in
District housing projects. According to both
Housing Authority personnel and the LPD, this
collaboration increased with the advent of the COP
project.

C. Outreach and Advertising

Outreach and advertising play a central role in
the COP project. During the first few months of
the project, the Project Director and the
secretary attended 23 community meetings to
announce the project and explain its goals. In
preparation for the public forums held in April
1991, the project hired a local advertising
consultant to publicize the event. The project
arranged to have extensive television, radio and
newspaper coverage of the public forums. Flyers
announcing the forums were distributed throughout
the target area and letters were sent to pastors
of all local churches. Public service
announcements were broadcast on local radio
stations.

In addition, the Project Committee and the
advertising consultant spent over a year devel-
oping an advertising/public awareness campaign to
run in various forms of media (radio, billboards,
print, television). The public awareness
campaign focused on drug prevention, domestic
violence and black-on-black crime. The project
also disseminated 3,000 newsletters about relevant
police and community issues in target
neighborhoods on a regular basis.

D. The Role of the Department's Management
   Information System (MIS)

The COP project initially anticipated purchasing
computer hardware to permit the development of a
separate call dispatch system for lower priority
Fourth District calls, diverted from the central
CAD system. Yet consultations with personnel
in charge of the LPD CAD system convinced COP
project directors of the utility of maintaining
records (e.g., the disposition of the run) and
procedures for the diverted calls within the
central system. These consultations also
convinced them that the CAD unit had the capacity
to program an automatic diversion of these calls
to a satellite computer at the District.

Under this system, lower priority calls are
automatically transferred to the Fourth District
satellite computer. District staff are supposed to
place a follow-up call to the caller and either
take crime report information over the phone or
schedule an appointment. Data are then supposed to
be entered and/or updated on the dispatch screen;
"clearing the run" (i.e., entering run disposition
data) would provide a complete record of call
response, linked to the central data system.

Implementation problems resulted from the decision
to rely on modifying the central CAD system for
call diversion. In 1989, the city's data
processing department had begun to argue that the
independent LPD data processing department should
be taken over by the city. In early 1991, the
Humana Corporation, which is centered in
Louisville, was commissioned to conduct an
independent study of the two systems. During the
course of that study, the capital budget for LPD
MIS expenditures was frozen. Although the Humana
study, released in June 1991, fully supported the
independent LPD computer system, the period for
approving capital budget expenditures in
Louisville had passed. While the call diversion
system was eventually implemented, it was in its
infancy at the time of the final research site
visit (a full year after the implementation site
visit).

E. Local Evaluation

The evaluation of the Louisville INOP project was
carried out by the Southern Police Institute
(SPI), located at the University of Louisville.
The evaluation consisted of both an impact
analysis and a process analysis.

Telephone surveys of random samples of each
neighborhood in the target area (N=400) and of a
comparison neighborhood outside of the District
(N=200) constituted a central component of the
impact analysis. These surveys were developed
by the SPI research team, based on standardized
Fear of Crime survey instruments, similar to those
developed by the Police foundation (and used in
many community surveys of fear of crime throughout
the country); additional questions were developed
to address the priority problems identified by
target area residents in the public forums. The
survey instruments were designed to examine
quality-of-life issues, fear of crime,
police-community relations, victimization and
awareness of the COP project.

The surveys were conducted under the INOP grant by
the Survey and Evaluation Unit of the Urban
Research Institute at the University of
Louisville. Baseline survey data were used to
verify the list of priority problems identified at
the community forums and to provide baseline data
on the experimental area and the comparison area.
Follow-up surveys, assessing the impact of the
project in the target area, were conducted after
the implementation of strategies addressing
priority problems.

In addition to the survey, the impact analysis
reviewed changes in calls for service and crime
complaints in both the target area as a whole and
the comparison area. Findings from the various
components of the impact analysis were
supplemented by the process analysis, which
examined the implementation of the project,
problems in the target area, strategy development,
community involvement in project activities and
the call diversion/split patrol initiative.

F. BJA Funds

In Louisville, BJA funds ($187,290 for Year 1)
supported the evaluation component and the com-
munity survey, the advertising consultant and the
computer consultant. BJA funds were also allocated
to cover the costs of computer hardware and
software, training, printing (including
newsletters), postage and travel.

BJA funds provided the salaries of two support
staff hired to work on the COP project -- a
secretary and a data entry clerk. The project
secretary, a resident of the District, is
responsible for correspondence, the minutes of the
various committee meetings, scheduling meetings
and the transcription of recorded public forums.
She is also scheduled to attend the citizen
training sessions and will address community
groups on the COP project and crime prevention
techniques.

IV. Expected Impacts

A. Community Effects

The Louisville INOP proposal clearly identified
the goals and objectives of the project with
respect to the community. The primary stated goal
was to reduce crime and disorder in the target
area. An ancillary goal was to improve
police-community relations.

Reducing Disorder. The Fourth District's
experience in redesigning Algonquin Park to reduce
drug trafficking and loitering led to optimism
among several respondents interviewed during the
implementation site visit about the project's
ability to reduce disorder. According to a local
alderman, the Algonquin Park initiative "served
notice" to drug dealers and loiterers that they
"can't hang out here." Another city official
claimed that the initiative "turned that problem
around over night." Community members of the
project committee also expressed hopes that
inter-agency efforts targeted at abandoned
properties or disruptive street-corner locations
might make negligent property owners take better
care of their property and, thereby, improve some
problem locations.

Police-Community Relations. Respondents from both
the community and the Department were very vocal
about the history of hostility between the police
and the community. One Department official
reported that in the past the LPD had "totally
ignored" what the community wanted. An officer
remarked that local children "are trained to hate
us." A community member of the Project Committee
defined the program as an effort to "re-educate
the police on how to handle us." A high-ranking
member of the Department defined it as an effort
to "turn 'them' into 'us'."

A few district officers raised questions about the
project's ability to maintain community
involvement in the project, particularly given the
extensive delays in implementation. One officer
was particularly skeptical about the community's
willingness to become involved with the police or
to care about improving conditions; he believed
that community residents were "afraid to help us."

Yet, on the whole, District personnel expected
that, by actively soliciting community involvement
in setting police priorities, the project would be
able to improve relations between the police and
the community. Project staff reported that both
police and community members on the Project
Committee were surprised to discover a consensus
between the two groups on the identification of
priority problems in the District. It was hoped
that improved communication and interaction
between these groups would lead to increased
community satisfaction with police services.

B. Departmental Effects

Another stated goal of COP was the efficient
resolution of problems and investigation of
crimes. Yet the lengthy delay in the project's
efforts to introduce a split-patrol and delayed
response model may have decreased expectations in
this regard. A few district officers questioned
the project's ability to provide sufficient
coverage for the calls-for-service workload if
this model were implemented. They also were
skeptical about the community's willingness to
accept anything other than a rapid response to
calls for service.

Another, less clearly defined, potential benefit
of the project for the Department itself is
improved communication between individual
Districts and centralized units (e.g., crime
analysis, the CAD division, the Narcotics Unit).
It was hoped that the increased interactions
between the District and these units necessitated
by the COP project would improve their working
relationship.
-----------------------------------------

REFERENCES

Brown, Lee P. 1983. The plan of action. Houston:
Houston Police Department (April).

Brown, Lee P. 1989. Community policing: A
practical guide for police officials. Perspectives
in Policing, No. 12. Washington, D.C.: National
Institute of Justice and the John F. Kennedy
School of Government, Harvard University.

Oettmeier, Timothy N. and Lee P. Brown. 1988.
Developing a neighborhood-oriented policing style.
Community policing: Rhetoric or reality, edited by
Jack R. Greene and Stephen D. Mastrofski, 121-134.
New York: Praeger.

Pate, Antony M., Mary Ann Wycoff, Wesley G.
Skogan, and Lawrence W. Sherman. 1986. Reducing
fear of crime in Houston and Newark: A summary
report. Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation and
National Institute of Justice.

Sparrow, Malcolm K., Mark Moore, and David
Kennedy. 1990.  Beyond 911: A new era for
policing. New York: Basic Books.

NCJ 157934