The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S.

Department of Justice and prepared the following final report:

Document Title: COPS: Innovations in Policing in American

Heartlands

Author(s): Marcia R. Chaiken Ph.D.

Document No.: 194604

Date Received: May 28, 2002

Award Number: 95-IJ-CX-0047

This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice.

To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federallyfunded grant final report available electronically in addition to

traditional paper copies.

Opinions or points of view expressed are those

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect

the official position or policies of the U.S.

Department of Justice.
COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands 

Marcia R. Chaiken, Ph.D. 

LlNC 

Alexandria VA 2231 3 

POBox924 . 

703-549-8222 

September 2001 

Additional Product under Grant 951JCXOO47 

Submitted to: 

Brett Chapman 

Project Manager 

National Institute of Justice 

US Department of Justice 

810 7‘h Street 

Washington DC 20531 

PROPERTY OF 

Nationai Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) 

Box 6000 ,;y-epT--- Rockdle. MD 20849-6000 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands 

Marcia R. Chaiken, Ph.D. 

LlNC 

September 2001 

Executive Summary 

Overview 

This report describes changes in community-oriented policing in eight law enforcement 

agencies that participated in a locally-initiated research project sponsored by the 

National Institute of Justice in the late 1990s. The agencies included four police 

departments serving small- to medium-size cities (Eureka and Redding, California; 

Pocatello, Idaho; and Rapid City, South Dakota) and the four Sheriffs Offices 

responsible for policing surrounding counties (respectively Humboldt, Shasta, Bannock, 

and Pennington counties). The departments worked closely with the LlNC researchers 

and exchanged promising practices among themselves. 

The participating agencies represent only a tiny fraction of the agencies in the U.S. that 

enhanced their community policing activities during this period. Nevertheless, given 

the broad variations among problems and policing practices in the study sites, the 

report should be pertinent to many city and county officials, law enforcement 

administrators and officers, and citizen groups who are considering implementing 

community-oriented policing services. The report provides descriptions of varieties of 

community-oriented policing activities that departments were able to implement at 

different stages of development. The report also provides information about factors 

and strategies that helped move departments to function at progressively higher stages 

of community-oriented policing services. 

a 

The report is intended to be equally useful for officers and decision makers in large 

cities as well as small and medium-size cities and rural counfies that are addressing 

concerns similar to those confronted by departments that participated in this study. 

Many problems and negative conditions identified and addressed by officers in this 

report are very similar to those addressed by officers in major metropolitan areas. 

Many forms of internal departmental resistance to change in policing strategies are 

also the same. 

e 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
The findings presented in this report were derived from comparative case studies 

involving an iterative process of collecting and comparing data on community-policing 

activities carried out over five years by participating police departments. Data were 

collected through periodic onsite interviews (not only in the law enforcement agencies 

but also with city and county officials, residents, and business people), reviews and 

extrapolation of data from pre-existing documents, observations at departmental 

meetings, observations at meetings between law-enforcement officers and staff from 

other city and county and community-based agencies and citizen groups, ride-a-longs 

with teams of officers from different departments, and shadowing individual officers and 

recording their activities. 

Five stages in the development of community-oriented policing services 

All the participating departments carried out some form of community policing activities. 

For the purpose of helping readers understand the differences among the ways 

departments developed community policing, this report is structured around five 

progressive stages of departmental focus and priorities. In Stage I ,police activities 

are primarily driven by demands made by individuals who call to request emergency 

police response or other non-emergency services, and community crime prevention 

activities are separate from regular patrol and are carried out by civilians or officers 

with special assignments. In Stage 2, police activities are concentrated on reducing 

high rates of particular crimes and misdemeanors in specific neighborhoods. In Stage 

3, police activities are partially shaped in meetings with neighborhood groups, and the 

department places a relatively high priority on collaborative projects that address 

specific local concerns. In Stage 4, police activities are planned as part of crossagency/ community-wide coalition plans of action to prevent crime and delinquency, 

And in Stage 5, police activities are an outgrowth of integrated community-based 

approaches for engineering more productive and economically-sound use of 

neighborhoods and redirecting individual or group activities that present a high 

potential for harm to people or property. 

a 

Incremental introduction of community policing 

In the participating departments, stage 2 of community-oriented policing was launched 

in geographically-defined neighborhoods, schools, shopping malls, downtown business 

areas, and far-flung isolated communities with high demands for service. Officers were 

mandated to reach out to residents and to focus response on local crime concerns. 

Some scholars recommend implementing community-oriented policing by involving the 

entire department and assigning officers for carrying out problem-solving approaches in 

all areas of the city. However, the departments in the LlNC study considered this plan 

neither ideal nor feasible in an environment where radical change of any kind is viewed 

suspiciously - especially when promoted and funded by the federal government. 

i i/Executive Summary/LI N ClSeptem ber 2001 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Each department selected specific residential neighborhoods and specific officers for 

their city’s first community-oriented policing activities. All four of the participating police 

departments assigned officers to carry out community-oriented policing in downtown 

business areas; some assigned officers to shopping malls. 

Compared to municipal police departments] territory that is under sheriffs’ departments 

jurisdiction is typically substantially larger. Sheriffs’ jurisdictions commonly include 

small incorporated cities and towns that contract for their policing services, as well as 

pockets of relatively densely populated unincorporated areas in far-flung reaches of 

their counties; these include trailer parks, settlements of religious and other sects 

seeking isolation from mainstream America, and, in the California departments that 

participated in this study, towns on Indian reservations. The approach taken by three 

of the four studied sheriffs’ departments was to institute community policing in small, 

concentrated geographical areas; one sheriffs department took the approach of 

promoting innovative forms of community policing throughout the county. 

/ 

Municipal police departments and county sheriffs alike adopted an early strategy of 

placing community-oriented officers in the schools. 

Early staffing decisions 

In most departments, top-level administrators were involved in selecting officers first 

assigned to community-oriented policing. For the most part, good community-policing 

officers were mature, experienced officers who realized the futility of trying to increase 

community safety by taking action offender by offender. They had previously 

demonstrated informal leadership skills, innovative thinking] and a willingness to listen 

to and consider ideas of people from different walks of life. They were committed to 

their community, and had the trust of their chief or sheriff. 

0 

In departments where community policing progressed furthest through the stages 

described in this report, an increasing number of officers with these characteristics 

were attracted to apply for and carry out community-oriented policing. In departments 

that stalled in their advancement of community policing, some of the officers who were 

first appointed grew frustrated and impatient about their inability to exercise their 

innovative skills. 

From the onset, virtually all chiefs and sheriffs were concerned about the selected 

officers’ becoming an elitist group, resented by officers not involved in community 

policing. Gaining the support of other officers and staff, especially those not initially 

directly involved with community-oriented policing, turned out to be key for making 

Stage 2 community policing actually work. An important role was played by community 

policing officers’ first-line supervisors. Those who are advancing community-policing 

typically report on community-oriented policing efforts in roll call. They give credit to 

iii/Executive Summary/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
officers who were not formally involved but who provided even the smallest degree of 

support. They listen carefully and considerately to officers who resisted the 

departmental shift in focus; rather than arguing the theory or philosophy of communityoriented policing, they point to “seeing is believing” successes from their own 

departments and give examples from other cities or counties where there have been 

significant impact on the types of problems they have right in their own areas. 

Successful first-line community-oriented policing officers also went out of their way to 

provide support for other police activities in their cities or counties, and not behave as if 

community policing was separate from the activities of their fellow officers. 

And, as with all innovations, support from the top leadership in the department was key 

to success in stage 2 and progress on to stage 3 of community policing. 

Stage 2 community-oriented policing activities 

In addition to fielding community-oriented policing officers in schools, shopping malls, 

downtown areas, and residential neighborhoods, all the participating departments 

recognized that increasing the visibility of police presence and arrests can at best bring 

about a temporary decline in an area’s crime rate. For long-term crime reduction and 

for addressing problems that compromise quality of life, it is essential to foster ongoing 

and active participation of people who live and work in the area. 

Chiefs and sheriffs in a number of departments inaugurated forums in which police 

officers and citizens could come together and learn about each others’ views and 

concerns. Several departments began to offer “Citizens’ Academies,” in-class 

presentations from officers representing different units in the department and ride-alongs with patrol officers. One police chief initiated annual “Block Parties” at the Police 

Department, providing a chance for residents and businesses to meet local law 

enforcement officers and emergency services personnel. 

0 

Several departments created mini-stations in store fronts, first floor apartments, and 

shopping malls. The officers who used these mini-stations were uniformly appreciative 

of their convenience for completing paper work, especially sheriffs deputies working in 

areas remote from their central department or substations. 

All the departments tried to increase positive contacts between officers and people 

engaged in routine daily activities. Previously, officers had contact with criminals and 

victims, but they did not know most people in the neighborhoods they were assigned to 

police. Typical activities included pulling over to people engaging in routine activities, 

rolling down their window and engaging them in conversation, walking and talking the 

beat, and patrolling on bike. One sheriff required officers who wanted to take on 

community policing assignments in contract towns or remote communities to live in the 

a iv/Executive Summary/LlNC/September 2001 

.. 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
community. As a resident whose family has been using local public and private 

services, officers commonly have become part of the community in which they live, 

know a majority of people who live in the same town or village, hear about concerns on 

a day-to-day basis, personally volunteer for various civic responsibilities, and are in a 

position to officially organize community efforts to address concerns. 

Increasing citizens’ involvement in defining problems and priorities 

Increasing face-to-face communication with residents and business people began the 

process of learning what concerns were on individual people’s minds. However, the 

officers realized that more systematic methods were needed to find out how general 

these concerns were among people living or working in the areas they were policing. 

A variety of more or less successful ways of gathering this information were tried. 

These included conducting town meetings, forming citizen advisory boards, shifting 

responsibilities for neighborhood watch to community policing officers, reshaping the 

role of posses, conducting surveys, working with researchers, and developing 

departments’ use of computers and the internet to engage citizens’ interest in 

cooperative policing. 

Coordinating with other groups 

In Stage 3 of community policing, a priority develops for police to work with other 

groups to address specific legal concerns. Neighborhood clean-ups organized by joint 

efforts of community policing officers and local residents were among the most common 

projects carried out by the participating departments. Officers of all ranks and 

residents of all ages and backgrounds worked side by side to rid streets, vacant lots, 

pocket parks, playgrounds, and fields of moldy mattresses, torn tires, broken furniture 

parts, and other litter. 

0 

One department produced and published a Nuisance Abatement Guide. The guide 

describes steps landlords and property owners can legally take to prevent drug dealers 

or other offenders from moving into their housing units, steps to take for solving 

problems that are occurring, specific information relevant for problems involving illegal 

drugs, and laws and codes that can be used by landlords and other property owners to 

take actions against people creating community problems, and a list of contacts and 

their telephone numbers in state, city, and county departments for advice and 

cooperation in problem solving. 

In another city, groups of youth who complete neighborhood improvement projects such 

as painting fences or cleaning out streams are rewarded with COPS dollar certificates. 

Endorsed by local merchants, COPS dollars can be redeemed at restaurants and other 

businesses popular with community youth. As a result, adolescents in formerly blighted 

v/Executive SummarylLlNClSeptember 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
areas who previously hung out and got into trouble are now helping adult residents 

maintain an attractive environment. 

In many communities, businesses have been providing paint for graffiti removal and for 

assisting elderly residents keep up the appearance of their homes. To persuade 

residents in a deteriorated neighborhood to improve their properties, the COP-on-theBlock officer in one city held a community meeting and invited real estate agents to 

attend. Once the agents explained the increase in home values that were realized from 

fixing broken porches, cleaning up yards, and planting trees and gardens, the 

neighborhood literally began to bloom. 

Other types of cooperative projects were developed with faith organizations, non-profit 

service organizations, other criminal justice agencies, and schools. 

Police focus on cross-agency community-wide coalitions 

In Stage 4 community policing, a priority develops for collaborating on long-term 

programs to prevent crime and delinquency. In several cities and counties these 

coalitions emerged out of the successful outcomes of short-term cooperative projects. 

For example, in one city code abatement projects benefitted the police department by 

reducing complaints about deteriorated properties. The city benefitted from an increase 

in fines collected. And the citizens enjoyed an increase in property values and 

neighborhood pride. The city subsequently hired a “code officer” whose job was 

devoted to working with the police, other agencies, and community residents on an 

ongoing basis to monitor and when necessary take action in regard to property owners 

responsible for blight. Similar results arose from projects involving abandoned vehicle 

abatement in many of the participating cities and counties. 

Two participating law enforcement departments made extraordinary progress in 

collaborating with schools and other youth-serving agencies. Both departments 

cooperated with their school and other community organizations to spell out in a youth 

guidebook in simple terms the laws that apply to juveniles and the services that are 

available to help them meet legal expectations. Both departments worked hand in 

hand with their communities to learn where, when, and why students were most likely to 

get into trouble. And both departments found very creative ways to redirect youth from 

these pitfalls. 

The report also provides a detailed case study of cooperation among police, sheriffs 

office, and courts in a jointly-funded Juvenile Court Deputy. This deputy’s office is in 

the court’s reception area, where he can increase security for the building and quickly 

coordinate all activities with court staff. The assignment allows him to remind attorneys 

and other practitioners about interagency and community meetings. He also is 

vi/Executive Summary/LiNC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
positioned to discuss informally with arriving kids where they were when they got into 

trouble, with whom, who supplied them with alcoholic beverages (if that is the case), 

and what they need to do in the future to stay out of trouble. He makes sure kids who 

have been brought in to detention during the previous night are added to the court 

calendar, checks on whether kids are receiving services they need and, if not, figures 

out what can be done to make sure they do. Not relying exclusively on his own skills 

to solve problems, he constantly and consistently considers others within and outside 

the sheriffs department who have the authority and know-how to bring about long-term 

solutions. 

He and other officers in departments that reach Stage 4 of community policing are 

actively encouraged to "think outside the box," come up with innovative methods for 

preventing crime, discuss them within the department including with supervisors and 

top administrators, and suggest how the ideas could be put into action. 

Characteristics of this department and other departments that helped promote 

developing an advanced level of community-oriented policing included a long history of 

continual self-scrutiny and increasing professionalism, open doors and open 

communication among rank and file, supervisors' trust in officers to know and to apply 

departmental priorities, open minds for promising ideas for accomplishing the police 

mission, viewing routine tasks and functions as opportunities for carrying out basic 

mandates and creating change for the better, assignment according to individual 

strengths and talents, and job performance evaluation with a focus on career e development. 

Strategic planning 

In Stage 5 community policing, police activities are developed as part of citylcounty 

strategic planning. The department formally places high priority on participating in 

sustained, integrated community-based approaches for engineering more productive 

and economically-sound use of neighborhoods and redirecting situations and group 

activities that presented a high potential for harm to people or property. 

The report presents a detailed case study in which the city's leaders saw an opportunity 

to increase its attractiveness as a place for major industries and businesses. 

Community-oriented policing was to be used as a stimulus for creating attractive and 

active shopping areas and a system of strong services in residential neighborhoods for 

families with diverse backgrounds and income levels. A concerted public-private 

venture was developed to obtain funds for home and neighborhood improvements and 

economic development and to sponsor events for promoting neighborhood pride. 

Community-policing officers who had initially focused on coordinated intensive 

supervision of repeat offenders who were terrorizing neighborhoods moved on to 

longer-term measures designed to break the generational cycle of crime. 

vii/Executive SummarylLINCISeptember 2001 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
One of the remarkable developments was the growth in the number of officers who 

were bringing about long-term solutions by improving the lives of formerly chronic 

offenders. Some major efforts included transforming previously run-down high-crime 

apartment complexes into crime-free housing, assuring mentally-ill street people had 

necessary services for regulating medication and re-establishing more healthful ways 

of living, and a city-wide effort to relocate families living in cramped, stressful housing 

for transients into long-term affordable housing. 

0 

Another major effort was educating youth about expectations for behavior and the 

consequences of delinquency, and providing immediate consequences for delinquency 

coupled with an opportunity for delinquents to redeem themselves. Core elements of 

this approach were a Youth Guidebook, the assignment of officers to high schools and 

junior highs, and a close working relationship with juvenile justice system and other 

youth-serving agencies. Community policing officers became an integral part of the 

teams of school administrators and other youth services providers who were tracking 

truancies, school absences, and other signs of failure to thrive, trying to figure out what 

was going wrong in the lives of the children, and coming up with a plan to assist them. 

Findings and recommendations 

Major advances in implementing community-oriented policing have taken place in 

small- and medium-size cities and rural counties. Four years of experience with e heartland departments in this study suggests the following: 

w Large cities have just as much or more to learn about community policing 

from small- and medium-size cities and rural counties as the converse. 

Officers in participating departments have grappled with and successfully 

addressed problems that are identical to those facing officers in large 

cities. 

w As with any innovation in policing, if the Chief or Sheriff is not committed 

to change, the change is not likely to occur. However, for sustaining 

community policing, elected city or county officials must also be 

convinced of the need for change from the onset and be kept personally 

apprized,of the benefits on an ongoing basis. 

rn Launching community-oriented policing services with a small cadre of 

officers can ultimately result in as large an impact on a department’s 

mode of policing as restructuring the entire department at the start. 

w While formulas for limited problem-solving projects can be taught to 

officers in classrooms, experiential on-the-job learning is much more 

valuable in the long-run for first-line officers and supervisors - and for 

viii/Executive Summary/LINC/September 2001 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
the communities they are policing. Exchanges of officers between law 

enforcement departments have provided an excellent resource for this 

type of learning. 

rn There is no one right way of implementing community policing. 

Approaches can be as diverse as the communities in which they are 

implemented and the teams of officers, staff in other agencies, and 

community members who develop and carry them out. A very important 

role that the federal government can play is to enable interchanges so 

that community policing teams can share ideas, concepts, goals, and 

experiences and shape these to meet the realities of their own 

neighborhoods. 

ix/Execu t ive S um ma r y/L I N C/Septem ber 200 1 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands 

Table of Contents 

Executive Summary ............................... ................................................................. 

Table of Contents ..................................................................................................... 

Ac know I edg ments.. .................................................................................................. 

Introduction ............................................................................................................... 

Background and Methods for the Research in this Rep0 .................................... 

Five Stages in the Development of Community-oriented Policing Services ....... 

Initial interpretations of “community-oriented policing services’’ ............ 

Stage 1: Priority on Rapid Response and Reactive Services ................... 

Stage 2: Focus on Local Crime Concerns in Geographically-defined 

Areas ................................................................................................................ 

Stage 3: Focus on Short-term Project Coordination to Address Specific 

Community Legal Concerns ........................................................................... 

Stage 4: Longer-term Collaboration with Coalitions for Crime and 

Delinquency Prevention .................................................................................. 

Stage 5: Police Activities Developed as Part of CitylCounty Strategic 

Planning ............................................................................................................ 

Overcoming Common Problems and Pitfalls in Community Policing ................... 

Bottom-line Findings and Recommendations ......................................................... 

Endnotes ..................................................................................................................... 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Acknowledgments 

The research on which this report is based was made possible by the contributions of 

over 200 professionals and community members in California, Idaho and South Dakota, 

as well as by key staff in the US Department of Justice and colleagues who directly 

cooperated in this study or who provided insights from their own studies of community 

policing. I especially would like to thank the administrators, officers, and civilian staff in 

the law enforcement departments in the following cities and counties who took part in 

our study and the staff in other agencies and key community members who 

collaborated with them for developing community policing and approaches for reducing 

violence against women and girls. Many titles and positions of named persons 

changed during or after the years the research was conducted. 

EurekaIHumboldt County, California 

Hoopa Tribal Administrators and Community Members Merv George, Jr., Chairman, 

Hoopa Valley Tribal Council; Leonard Masten, Director; Sergeant Tony Mattz, 

Sergeant Jude Hostlert, Deputy J.L. “Red” Marler, and Dispatcher Lenaire Alverez, 

Hoopa Valley Department of Public Safety; Sara Burcell, Director, Hoopa Child Welfare; 

and also tribal members John Robbins and Cindy Sylvia. 

Yurok Tribal Administrators and Community Members:; Susan Masten, Chair, 

Yurok Tribe; Gary Markussen, Vice-Chairperson; Carol Melendy, Yurok Tribal Council 

Social Services Director, and her and her assistant Linda Crawford and clerical 

assistant, Casey, as well as Yurok Eider Bertha Peters. 

@ 

Eureka Police Department: Arnold Millsap, Chief of Police; Captain Dave Douglas, 

Captain William F. Honsal, Sergeants Jim (Butch) Manos and Dennis Berry; Patrol Sgt. 

Leonard Johnson, YouthlEthnic Liaison Officer John Turner, Investigators Lynne 

Soderberg, Neil Hubbard and James Armstrong, Officers Jeff Daniel, Steve Dunn, 

Kevin Lawson, Bill Nova, Robert Metaxas, Boyce Johnson, Crime Analyst, Marsha 

Allen, Crime Prevention Officer, Mary Kirby, Assistant to the Chief, and Shirley 

Kerrigan, Coordinator of Citizen Services. . 

Humboldt County Office of the Sheriff: Sheriff Dennis Lewis 

Schools: Louis Bucher, Superintendent of Schools, Humboldt County: Dr. James 

Scott, Superintendent, Eureka Schools: Dr. Larry Nicoll, Vice Principal, Eureka High 

School; Robert Steffen, Principal, Catherine Zane Junior High; Mr. Pat Faeth, Principal, 

Zoe Barnum Continuation High School, and Jim Sanders, Principal, Alice Birney 

Elementary School. 

0 xi/Acknowledgments/COPS.. ./LINC/Septem ber 200 1 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Other cooperating EurekalHumboldt agencies Councilwoman Connie Miller; David 

Tyson, Interim City Manager; Asst. Chief Ralph Altizer, Eureka Fire Department; John 

Franks, Director, Humboldt County Department of Social Services; David Lehman, 

Jennifer Roberts and Mark Sousa, Humboldt County Department of Probation; 

Antoinette Martin, Chair, Juvenile Justice Committee, Humboldt County Commission on 

Crime; Patty Berg, Chair, Humboldt County Crime Commission Working with Law 

Enforcement; Bonnie McGregor, Executive Director of Humboldt County Victim 

Services; Sheri Johnson, Domestic Violence Coordinator, County of Humboldt 

Department of Health; Terry Farmer, District Attorney for Humboldt County and Bill 

Rodstrom, Domestic Violence Project Coordinator, Office of the District Attorney, 

County of Humboldt. . I 

PocatellolBannock County, Idaho 

Pocatello Police Department: V. Lynn Harris, Chief of Police; Captain Michael 

Stayner; Captain Kirk Nelson, Lt. Garry Pritchett; Lt. Steve Findley, Lt. Jay Lusk, Lt. 

Dave Phelps; Lt. Bruce Wheatley, Sergeant Rick Capell, Corporal Moe Canfield, Officer 

Kirk Howe, School Resource Officers John Webster and Rory Olsen; Kim Ellis, Liaison, 

Neighborhood Watch Inc.; Donna Monroe, Assistant to the Chief of Police; Shauna 

Huerta, Manager, Record Division; Vicki Allen, Chair, Gretchen Vanek, and Mickie 

Adler, Citizens Advisory Board. 

Bannock County Sheriffs Office: Sheriff Lorin Neilsen, Chief DeputyNndersheriff 

Tom Canfield, Deputy Chiefs Jim Dalley, Jerry Hickman, and Mike Sanders, Lt. Kevin 

Fonnesbeck, Lt. of Detention Sylvia Hayball, Sergeant Tom Foltz, Detective Toni 

Vollmer, Deputy Dan Argyle, Deputy Alison Kitzmiller, and Deputy Howard Manwaring 

0 

Schools: Dr. David Peck, Superintendent of Schools, Pocatello Public Schools; John 

McCarthy, Principal, and Vice Principal Don Cotant, Pocatello High School; Frank 

Thomas, Principal, Irving Junior High School; Charles Wegner, Principal, Jefferson 

Elementary School; John Rauker, Co-chair, Bannock Youth at Risk, School District 25: 

and other principals and administrators, counselors, teachers, parents and students 

who attended the meetings on preventing school violence at Pocatello High School and 

Bonneville School. 

Other PocatellolBannock County Agencies and Organizations: Chubbuck Chief of 

' Police Jerry Rowland; Mayor Gregory Anderson and (former) Mayor Peter Angstadt, 

City of Pocatello and Rick Parker, Director of Information Systems: Child Protection 

Investigator Lisa Redford, Bannock County Department of Health and Welfare; Harry 

Neuhardt, President, Chamber of Commerce; Si1 Martinez, Special Agent, Union Pacific 

Railroad; Catherine Scott, Executive Director, Pocatello YWCA; Vernon Alvarez, Chief 

of Police and Captains Clem Hidalgo and Don Davis, Fort.Hall Police Department 

(Shoshone-Bannock Tribal Law Enforcement): Counselors and other staff associated 

with Bannock Youth Foundation; Juvenile Magistrate Judge Bryan Murray; members of 

xii/Acknowledgments/COPS. ../LINC/September 2001 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
the Children's Advocacy Network; members of the juvenile judiciary committee 

convened by Judge Murray and composed of representatives from probation, the office 

of the district attorney, the office of the public defender, the court clerks and police and 

sheriffs departments. 

Rapid CitylPennington County, South Dakota 

Rapid City Police Department: Thomas L. Hennies, Chief of Police; Dr. Dick Talley, 

Chief of Staff; Captain Craig Tieszin; Captain Doug Noyes; Captain Chris Grant; Lt. 

Community Officers Sgt. Kevin Miller, Officer Doug Thrash, Detective Fred Eisenbraun, 

Officer Mike Lang, Officer Brent Gromer and Officer Tony Harrison; School Liaison 

Steve Oberman; Community Service Officers Gary Larson and Carole Boswell; John 

Beardsley, Computer Operations Manager; Ron Estes, Crime Analyst; Chaplains Bruce 

Cain and Timothy Steinert; and Administrative Assistant to the Chief Vicky Jaco. 

Frederick Brown; Det. Sgt. Tim Amos; Investigator Pete Rag none; COP-on-the-Block / 

/ 

Pennington County Sheriff's Department: Don Holloway, Sheriff; Domestic Violence 

Investigator Larry Kent, and Deputy Terry McLane 

Schools: Pam Teaney-Thomas, Director of Prevention Programs, Rapid City Area 

School District; Wes Storm, Principal, and Vice Principal Doug Foly, West Junior High 

School; 

Other Rapid CitylPennington County Agencies and Organizations: Mayor Ed 

McLaughlin, Rapid City Mayor's Ofice; Frank O'Grady, Alderman; Karen Bulman, 

Ward Four, Rapid City Common Council; City Ordinance Inspector Umit Spensor; Rev 

Timothy W. Steinert, Woodhaven Church; Karen R. Waltman, General Manager, 

Rushmore Mall; Robert P. DeMersseman, President, Rapid City Area Economic 

Development Partnership; James F. McKeon, President, Rapid City Area Chamber of 

Commerce; Lila Doud, President, West Boulevard Neighborhood Association; L. J. 

Bulman, President, North Rapid Civic Association: Doug Wells, Executive Director, 

Pennington County Housing Authority; Chris Smith, Executive Director of Working 

Against Violence, Inc. (WAVI); Melanie Flatt, Executive Director, and Alys 

Lasler-Ratigan, Girls Incorporated of Rapid City, Inc. Alys played a major role in 

arranging, developing methods, and carrying out focus groups with residents in Rapid 

City. 

ReddinglShasta County, California 

a 

Redding Police Department 

Robert Blankenship, Chief of Police; Captain Chuck Byard, Administrative Services 

Division Commander; Captain Gary Dirks, Investigations Division Commander; 

Lieutenant Leonard Moty, Field Operations Watch Commander and primary contact for 

our partnership; Rick Blankenship and Dennis Kessinger, Crime Analysts; Sergeant 

0 xiii/Acknowledgments/COPS ... /LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Dan Kupsky, Training Manager; and Investigator Tracy Hall. Members of the 

Neighborhood Policing Unit (NPU) include Sergeants Dave Mundy and Rich Nance, 

Corporal Steve Moravec, Investigator Roger Moore, and Officers Kirk Brenner, Patty 

Dikes, Pat Fogarty, Randy Gilstrap, Linda Gisske, Scott Mayberry, John Thulin, Rob 

Wilson, Bill Forrest, Steve Davis, Jay Guterding and Walt Bullington.. 

@ 

Shasta County Office of the Sheriff: Sheriff Jim Pope; Undersheriff Larry Schaller; 

Support Manager Janey Myers; Captain Rick Burnett, Lieutenants Harry Bishop, Herb 

Davidson, Arlin Markham, Bradd McDannold, Sergeants Tom Bosenko, Greg Wrigley, 

Detective John Hubbard, and Deputy Sheriffs Cliff Blankenship, Jose (Joe) Gonzalez, 

Joe Moffett and Pat Sandbloom; and Community Service Officer Carol Zacher. 

Schools: Dr. Carol Whitmer, Education Department, Simpson College; Frank Adelman, 

Principal, Sequoia Middle School; Lorraine Hashey, Principal, Juniper Elementary 

School; and Dr. William Par, Principal, Cypress Elementary School. 

Other cooperating ReddinglShasta agencies and organizations: Mayor David 

Kehoe, City of Redding; Michael Warren, City Manager; Deputy District Attorney John 

Loomis; Karen Bennett, McConnell Foundation; David McGeorge, former Mayor; Holly 

Hetzel, Director of the Shasta County District Attorney's Drug Endangered Children 

Program; Mary Stegall, Shasta County Women's Refuge, Deputy Chief Lou Rizzo, 

Shasta County Probation Department and Deputy Probation Officer II Patti Field. 

Karuk Tribe of California: Alvis Johnson, Chairman; Suzanne Burcell, Chief of Staff; 

Karuk Tribal Staff Trista Perry, Maggie Peters, Angel Morton, and Joe Snap. Also, the 

community officer serving the Happy Camp area of the Karuk Tribe, Deputy Melum, 

Siskiyou Sheriffs Department (Charles Byrd, Sheriff). 

0 

Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice: Information requested by 

the collaborating tribes and law enforcement departments was provided on an ongoing 

basis by Ada Pecos Melton, Director, American Indian and Alaska Native Desk and her 

successor, Noreena Henry; Catherine Pierce, Violence Against Women Grants Office, 

and Jan M. Chaiken, Director, Bureau of Justice Statistics. 

Researchers: Many other researchers formally or informally provided skilled technical 

assistance, ideas, and insights during the course of this project. In particular I would 

like to thank Joel Garner, Lorraine Green Mazerolle, and Bill Geller for the time they ' 

devoted to working with the law enforcement departments named above and providing 

findings and observations as part of this process. I also appreciate the assistance 

provided by Dr. Heather Johnston Nicholson and Faedra Weiss at Girls Incorporated 

National Resource Center for generously sharing scenarios about violence involving 

girls which initially were incorporated in LlNC focus group methods. 

0 xiv/Acknowledgments/COPS ... /LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Reviewers: Two anonymous reviewers provided detailed suggestions for revising the 

penultimate draft of this report. Their recommendations for changes and additional 0 materials are incorporated in this document. 

This study was made possible by Grant 95-IJ-CX-0047 from the National Institute of 

Justice: Jeremy Travis, Director, provided the vision for the locally-initiated policing 

research collaborations that formed the foundation for this study. Sally Hillsman, 

Deputy Director, provided important insights and guidance at every stage of our 

research. Advice and administrative support were provided throughout the research by 

our project monitors, Dr. Phyllis McDonald and Brett Chapman. Joe Brann, Director, 

COPS Office, transferred funds to NIJ for this and many other studies designed to 

document and facilitate the development of community policing; Joe personally 

stimulated enthusiasm and encouragement for community policing in our study sites 

and throughout the nation. 

i 

Marcia R. Chaiken, Ph.D. 

LlNC 

August 2001 

0 xv/Acknowledgments/COPS.. ./LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands’ 

Marcia R. Chaiken, Ph.D. 

LlNC 

September, 2001 

i 

INTRODUCTION 

Faced with communities that had been racked with violent crime and drug wars during 

the previous decade, in 1994 the Federal government enacted the Crime Act. It 

provided resources for crime prevention and for increasing the numbers of police on 

America’s streets and back roads. The Crime Act also incorporated the principle that to 

reduce crime, more effective policing was needed as well as more officers. The Act 

provided federal funds to law-enforcement agencies to stimulate them to implement 

community-oriented policing services or COPS. This form of policing had been gaining 

in popularity, but in 1994 in most departments it was still in an early or exploratory stage 

of development. 

Not only were more officers to be put on the streets, but they were to be given the skills 

and strategies to work collaboratively with other local agencies, private organizations 

and groups of citizens to bring about fundamental community changes for reducing 

crime. During the three years after the Crime Act passed, the rate of local police 

department employment grew three times faster than in previous years, and from June 

30, 1994 to June 30, 1997, 80% of police departments serving municipalities with 

populations of 25,000 or more had trained at least some of their officers to carry out 

community policing2. Sheriffs’ departments employment increased less rapidly between 

1993 and 1997, and a smaller proportion had trained officers in community policing 

techniques (55% trained in-service officers in 1997), yet over 80% of sheriffs’ 

departments reported meeting with community groups during the year ending June 30, 

19973. By mid-1999, 86% of all US. residents were being served by law enforcement 

departments that had implemented some form of community p~licing.~ 

0 

During this same period a broad-based shift occurred in all parts of the country - rates 

of violent crime and delinquency began to decline rapidly. Researchers disagree and 

will long argue about the role the Crime Act, and community-oriented policing services 

in particular, played in this reduction of crime and delinquency. However, this study 

shows that even in cities or counties where implementation of community-oriented 

policing was limited to a small number of officers, visible changes in communities’ ability 

to deal with crime and delinquency occurred. All departments described in this report at 

1 /COPS: Innovations in Policing in American HeartlandsiLINCISeptember 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
the very least shifted away from their traditional modes of operation so as to assign 

officers to schools; and school staff and students in all these schools reported fewer 

fights, quicker response to fights when they did occur, and feeling safer. As a result, 

school administrators became avid proponents of community-oriented policing. 

-~ ~ 

“The [community-oriented policing services] officer is part of a team effort in dealing with 

students holistically. The officer supports us in dealing with juveniles’ [delinquency]. The 

kids feel safer; they like the attention to their safety. They can ask questions about 

problems that are happening off campus and get an immediate response. The officer is 

part of the education team and provides education for kids about juvenile law. An officer’s 

participation in parent conferences sends a very strong message about better choices and 

informs parents about collaborations to support them at home, in school, and off campus. 

Fights can be dealt with as a law enforcement matter; students can be taken off in 

handcuffs. The presence of an officer establishes a vision of authority - that police are 

there to protect and serve and let students get an education. Officers have helped students 

form action plans that meet their needs - such as plans to prevent gang activity between 

groups from different parts of the Asian community. We’re lucky to have the officers we 

have.” - Principal, Redding School 

Moreover, in cities and counties where a growing number of officers took on 

community-oriented policing activities, fundamental changes occurred: 

Visibly cleaner and more attractive residential neighborhoods 

a 

Transformation of commercial districts from areas of urban decay and 

frequent incidents of disorderly conduct to attractive downtown blocks 

A higher quality of life for residents who are among the least affluent 

People including business owners, educators, and residents who say they 

feel safer 

Officers who take deep satisfaction in solving difficult community problems 

and openly grapple with new and effective ways for ongoing 

improvements. 

A growing recognition among many residents of the innovative roles and 

leadership officers can provide. 

Based on research in a consortium of four small- and medium-size cities in America’s 

heartland and the four rural counties that surround them, this report describes the 

development of community-oriented policing in the communities policed by these eight 

a 2/COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
departments. 

Before community-oriented policing was implemented, these departments primarily 

emphasized traditional forms of policing; almost all officers were devoted to responding 

to crimes, one-by-one, after they occurred. (We call this Stage I in the development of 

community-oriented policing within a law enforcement agency.) Four years later, one of 

the departments participating in this study, Redding (California) Police Department, 

reached what we call Stage 5: many officers at all ranks were working with teams of 

citizens and staff in other agencies on an ongoing basis; together they were 

successfully changing crime-producing conditions in neighborhoods to conditions that 

promoted economic growth and high quality of life. The other participating departments 

too made fundamental, but perhaps not as sweeping, changes in policing5. 

0 

i 

Because many of the changes made from Stage 2 through Stage 5 were innovative and 

brought improvements in their communities, this report was written to bring you the 

information you might need to understand or imitate these kinds of shifts toward 

community-oriented policing services. The report is written for city and county officials, 

law enforcement administrators and officers, and citizen groups who are considering 

implementing community-oriented policing services. The report provides descriptions of 

many different types of community-oriented policing activities that departments were 

able to implement at different stages of development. The report also provides 

information about factors and strategies that help move departments to function at 

progressively higher stages of community-oriented policing services. 

The report is intended to be equally useful for officers and decision makers in large 

cities as well as small and medium-size cities and rural counties that are similar to the 

departments that participated in this study. Many problems and negative conditions 

identified and addressed by COPS officers in this report are the same as those 

addressed by officers in major metropolitan areas. Many of the barriers city, county, 

and policing administrators had to overcome to promote community-oriented policing 

services are also the same. And many of the creative ways officers developed to 

address problems and conditions can serve as a basis for stimulating similar 

approaches in other places, independent of the size of the city in which they are 

located. 

0 3/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
BACKGROUND AND METHODS FOR THE RESEARCH IN THIS REPORT * In addition to greatly increasing the numbers of officers carrying out community-oriented 

policing services, a relatively small percent of the 1994 Crime Act funds were 

transferred each year from the federal COPS office to the National Institute of Justice 

(NIJ) to carry out a program of research for evaluating changes in policing that had 

been expected to be stimulated through the COPS grants (and for assisting 

departments to carry out research integral to these changes). Although the funds 

transferred to NIJ were minimal in comparison to the funds that directly or indirectly 

went to law-enforcement agencies (figures here), they provided a major increase in 

resources available for research, compared to funds previously available for federallysponsored policing research. This enabled scores of researchers to work with lawenforcement departments in every region of the country in a spectrum of diverse 

communities to document changes that were occurring and, at times, to facilitate 

implementation through their analysis and findings. 

i 

This report provides the findings of one of these research efforts, the results of a grant 

to LINC. Findings are drawn primarily from experiences in developing COPS among 

only a few of the agencies that received COPS funds. The departments described in 

this report were part of consortium of law-enforcement agencies and researchers, 

sponsored by NIJ to develop and carry-out an agenda of locally-initiated policing 

research and an exchange of promising practices. 

The primary eight departments who participated with LINC researchers in this study 

were four police departments serving small to medium-size cities (Eureka and Redding, 

California; Pocatello, Idaho; and Rapid City, South Dakota) and four Sheriffs Offices 

responsible for policing surrounding counties (respectively Humboldt, Shasta, Bannock, 

and Pennington Counties). The characteristics of these departments and areas they 

serve are provided in Table 1. How these departments were selected, and specifics 

about the research and exchange activities carried out by these agencies, along with 

some nearby Indian tribal agencies and Sheriffs who were vital for the study, are 

detailed in another report6. 

0 

The findings presented in this report were derived from comparative case studies 

involving an iterative process of collecting and comparing data on community-policing 

activities carried out over five years by participating police departments. Data obtained 

during site visits were summarized after each site visit, presented to the department in 

the form of “mini-reports” on their community policing practices and progress, and after 

verification and approval from the chief or sheriff (approval was always given), provided 

to the other participating departments for future (or immediate on-line internet) 

discussion about similarities and differences in their community-policing approaches. 

The methods used to collect data included the following: 

a 4/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Table 1. Characteristics of participating departments and areas served 

-~ ~ 

Largest 

industries 

Tourism, 

military, 

ranching, 

farming 

Form of Mayor/ Board of 5 

Government 

Board of 5 

commissioners 

~~ 

Population' 

Square 

miles 

N Sworn 

Law Enf. 

N Sworn 

Patrol 

Officers 

officers3 

83,000 

est. 1995 

2783 

48 (FT) 

(1996) 

NA4 

57,000 

est. 

1995 

30 

95 

(1 995) 

515 

(1 995) 

66,000 49,000 164,500 

est. 1995 est. 1995 est. 1994 

1113 34 3850' 

3774 uninc 

107 84 148 

(1 999) (1 994) 

19 55 4g6 61 50 

N initial 

COPS 

neighborhoods 

1 town 

COPS 

officers 

primary 

duties 

Patroll 

Problemsolving at 

officer 

discretion 

State I South Dakota I Idaho I California 

Redding Humboldt 

County 

Bannock Eureka 

County 

Pennington 

County 

Lakota 

Sioux 

Rapid 

w 

Lakota 

Sioux 

County 

Original 

settlers 

Shoshone 

Bannock 

Indian 

bands 

Yurok 

Hoopa 

Yurok 

Hoopa 

Date 

countylcity 

created 

1876 1893 1887 1853 1850 

University Lumber 

High tech 

Railroad 

Agriculture, 

tourism, 

timber 

services 

Council 

(511 

Manager 

Board of 5 

Supervisors 

Mayor/ 1 FnciI 1 Supervisors council (5) 

wards) 

80,000 

est. 

1994 

126,900 

est. 1995 

28,576 

1995 

59.04 3573 17.71 

~ 

96 

(1 994) 

76 

(1 996) 

50 

(1 994) 

40 

6+ 

mall+ 

downtown 

0 3 towns 4 zones + 

downtown 

footbeat 

area 

1 area 

(others 

added 

progressively) 

Reduce 

crime; 

Problem 

solving; 

outreach 

back up 

patrol 

Patroll 

weekly 

hours 

outreach 

pro b I e m - 

solving 

2-4 

Problemsolving/ 

crime 

prevention 

expected 

from ALL 

officers 

Patrol; 

rapid 

response 

to all calls 

Patrol; at 

least one 

ongoing 

problem 

solving 

project 

-- Patrol; 

outreach 

nuisance 

abatement 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Table 1. Characteristics of participating departments and areas served 

(Continued) 

1999 

status of 

COP areas 

School 

COPS 

Reduced Increase Increase City-wide Reduced Increase I- Reduced 

(informal) (beats) 

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 

1. Rounded 

2.lncludes City of Shasta Lake policed by Sheriff 

3. Includes administrators and supervisors 

4. Approximately 190 part-time deputies could be deployed by the sheriff 

5. An addition 22 reserve officers were also available as well as 12 cadets. 

6. Includes I1 officers assigned to Shasta Lake 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Initial meetings and in depth discussions with CEOs about plans for and 

bamers to community policing. The chiefs of police’ of participating 

departments met for two days in Washington, DC in January 1996, and 

the sheriffs met in January 1997. They compared strategies, tactics, initial 

problems and successes while the researchers asked questions about 

details and took notes. 

w Periodic Interviews (over five years) with a broad spectrum of lawenforcement officers and civilian employees in participating departments, 

administrators and other staff in departments with whom they were 

cooperating to carry out community policing, city and county officials, and 

residents and business people in areas in which community policing was 

taking place. (See the Acknowledgment section for the names of the 

study’s primary respondents.) To enable comparisons across cities and 

counties and across time, structured but open-ended protocols were used 

in these interviews. 

1 

Reviews and extrapolation of data from pre-exisfing documents, including 

annual reports of counties and cities; reports of community police officers 

to supervisors and neighborhood groups; results from surveys of citizen 

satisfaction with police services conducted by city governments, individual 

police departments, and community police officers; strategic plans 

developed by participating law-enforcement departments; and policy and 

practical directives from top- and mid-level administrators to officers and 

civilian staff. 

w Observations at departmental meetings, including formal meetings 

between community police officers and their supervisors, roll-calls, and 

informal discussions in ‘break’ rooms and in hallways (while officers were 

waiting to see watch-commanders). 

w Observations at meetings between la w-enforcement officers and staff 

from a wide-range of other city and county and community-based 

agencies and citizen groups. These included meeting attended by officers 

(at times, the chief or sheriff) with school staff, juvenile courts staff, code 

enforcement officers, women’s shelters and other victim service providers, 

neighborhood watch groups, special task forces, clergy, county boards of 

supervisors, city councils, child advocates/service providers, ethnic 

liaisons, citizen patrol groups, and may others described in this report. 

To enable comparisons across cities and counties and across time, 

structured protocols were also used to record these observations. 

Ride-a-longs with teams of officers from different departments. As part of 

our project, officers from consortium departments visited other 

a !j/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LlNC/September 2G01 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
participating departments for the purpose of sharing best practices in 

community policing. Researchers accompanied officers during these 

exchanges and (once again using structured protocols) recorded relevant 

information about community policing discussed by visitors and host. 

officers. 

Shadowing individual officers and recording their activities. Before 

community policing was implemented, observation of activities carried out 

by individual field officers could for the most part be carried out during 

ride-a-longs in patrol cars. After community policing was implemented, 

researchers accompanied officers and collected information about their 

activities outside their patrol cars as well. 

The places and conditions under which the study departments operated varied 

considerably, as did the places where community-oriented policing efforts were 

launched. They included low-income housing complexes such as urban apartment 

buildings and rural trailer parks, well-to-do residential areas, downtown shopping areas 

and suburban malls, schools, small communities in isolated mountain areas, extensive 

lands on Indian reservations, and ethnic enclaves of homes and businesses on the 

fringe of central cities. 

G/COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
FIVE STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNITY-ORIENTED POLICING 

@ SERVICES 

All the departments carried out some form of community policing activities to which they 

justifiably point with pride. Some departments’ efforts were confined to a limited 

number of discrete approaches that helped solve problems of concern to residents in 

specific neighborhoods, other departments developed broader innovations 

incorporating fundamental changes in policies and practices that some scholars say are 

integral to advances in community policing. To help readers understand the differences 

in ways departments developed community policing and to enable the reader to 

compare the approaches described in this report with community policing in their own 

cities and counties, practices and policies are described as elements of five progressive 

stages of departmental focus and priorities: 

rn Stage I : Police activities were primarily driven by demands made by 

individuals who called to request emergency police response or other nonemergency services. The department placed highest priority on rapid 

response to all requests for crime-related services, whether or not they 

were actually emergencies. Community crime prevention activities were 

separate from regular patrol and carried out by civilians or officers with 

special assignments. 

rn Stage 2: Police activities were concentrated on reducing high rates of 

particular crimes and misdemeanors in specific neighborhoods. 

Neighborhood outreach and targeted response to specific types of 

offenses became a departmental priority. 

Stage 3: Police activities were shaped in meetings with neighborhood 

groups: the department placed a relatively high priority on collaboration on 

short-term projects addressing specific local concerns 

Stage 4: Police activities were planned as part of cross-agency/ 

community-wide coalition plans of action; the department placed a high 

priority on collaboration for long-term programs to prevent crime and 

delinquency . 

rn Stage 5: Police activities were developed as part of citykounty strategic 

planning; The department placed high priority on participating sustained, 

integrated community-based approaches for engineering more productive 

and economically-sound use of neighborhoods and redirecting situations 

and group activities that presented a high potential for harm to people or 

property. Officers carrying out community oriented activities were integral 

to patrol units and throughout the department; many officers actively 

discussed ways to work with communities to prevent and reduce crime. 

0 7/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
The stage achieved by each department during the period of the study varied. This 

report describes the activities undertaken in each stage, the efforts that were necessary 

to consolidate the gains in each stage and move on to the next, and the factors that 

appeared to foster progress to more advanced stages. Departments at any one stage 

of development tend to feel that they have “full-fledged” community-oriented policing. 

This report will help understand the possibilities that lie ahead at each stage of 

development and the efforts that will need to be undertaken to move on to the next 

stage. 

0 

As those who have implemented community-oriented policing already know, it is not a 

simple process that you can learn from a book, a brochure, or a research report. It is a 

demanding enterprise that has to be tailored to your specific community and is subject 

to various setbacks and dead-ends. Even the dead-ends are described here as 

guidance for other departments, either so they can be avoided or because they might 

not actually be dead-ends in other locales. Yet, on the whole, most of the activities 

begun in Stage 2 were considered valuable and were continued into successive stages, 

and the same with Stages 3 and 4. For this reason, the activities that are described in 

each of the stages should be of interest to agencies or researchers who have not yet 

experienced them. 

Initially, there were extremely diverse interpretations of “community-oriented 

policing services” as a philosophy. 

The meaning of “community-oriented policing services” was the topic of a decade of 

debate among academic policy-analysts and researchers for almost a decade before 

the federal COPS office was established pursuant to the Crime Act. While some 

viewed “community-oriented policing services” as an essential change in police 

management or practice, others viewed the concept as a return to an older, less 

“professional” form of policing. A third camp proclaimed “community-oriented policing 

services” to be empty rhetoric’. The most general view that emerged out of these 

differences was that “community-oriented policing services” was as a philosophy rather 

than a specific mode of policing. 

0 

After the 1994 Crime Act, as major federal funds for police hiring supplements were 

switched from relatively broad crime-related formula allocations to states, administered 

by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), to direct grants to local agencies, 

administered by the COPS office, administrators and grant-writers in the departments 

participating in this study formally embraced the idea of the “COPS philosophy.” 

For some this was not a far reach. Most of the participating departments in California 

had been introduced to COPPS (Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving) 

well before they received their initial funds. This is the status that we call Stage 1. 

In Stage 1, the chiefs and sheriffs by-and-large saw the primary component as 

responsiveness to community concerns, a philosophy that most generally saw as 

a 8/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINClSeptember 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
“nothing new, something we’ve always done.” The sheriffs, as elected officials, could 

state as a matter of fact that if they weren’t out in the community, listening and 

responding, they could not have been elected to their jobs. As they considered if and 

how to implement community-oriented policing services in practice, the value of policing 

innovation promoted by federal agencies and researchers was viewed as a tradeoff 

against the important value of immediate response to individual calls for police 

services. 

0 

S/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Stage 1: Police priorities were driven by individual callers, and value was placed 

on rapid response to all reports of crimes and incidents that appeared to be 

crime-related. Reactive services were driven by community concerns about 

crime and high demands for police services 

Before community-oriented policing services efforts were initiated , most people living in 

communities covered by the LlNC study viewed crime as a major problem and viewed 

rapid police response to individual calls as a top priority for police. For example, in 

Eureka, while a 1993 citizen survey conducted by the City Manager’s Office showed 

that 91 % of the 150 surveyed residents rated the overall quality of life in the city as 

“good” or “very good”: 

78% said that crime was one of the 3 biggest problems facing Eureka in 

the next five years 

rn 62% said that Eureka has a serious or very serious problem with drugs 

I 98% said that police services were very important or important for the 

quality of life in Eureka 

I Under 25% opposed increased taxes for better police services 

Citizens demands for police services in the study cities were very high in comparison to 

demands in large cities. Fifty-two percent (52%) of those who responded to the survey 

in Eureka had called the Department at least once during the past year. (By contrast, a 

citizen survey in a larger city - Portland, Oregon - found that 32% of respondents 

had contact with their police in 1994, 34% in 1996, and 30% in 1998’. This survey also 

counted contacts that had been initiated by the police.) 

0 

The police force is largely a reactive one 

due to the high crime rate and the large 

number of calls for service ranging from 

problems with sick raccoons and 

abandoned cars to assaulting behavior and 

homicides. Identifying the difference 

between what a “Police Problem” is versus 

what a “Community Problem” is, is still 

unclear in both the police and citizens 

minds. There is a need to establish a 

police-community partnership seeking 

community solutions for community 

problems. (Chief Amie Millsap memo to 

the City Manager shortly before his 

appointment as chief, May 27, 1993.) 

Rapid City citizens too placed a relatively 

high demands on their police. In a 1993 

survey of residents who were registered 

voters, close to half (45.1 %) reported at least 

one contact in the past year with police. 

Under one percent of these contacts (.6%) 

involved an arrest of the person who had the 

police contact, and only 15% of these 

contacts were a result of being a victim of a 

crime’’. 

Remarkably, citizens surveyed clearly 

differentiated between and placed higher 

priority on law enforcement services than 

other services that within a couple of years 

lO/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
became cornerstones of COPS in later stages. In Eureka in 1993, while 75% of those 

surveyed said that police services were “very important” for the quality of life in Eureka, 

well under half considered as very important, park maintenance (15%), recreation 

programs (23%), senior resources (33%), traffic control (41 %), street lighting (42%), 

street cleaning (19%), and street repair (37%). While citizens indicated that they did 

not consider these services as important as “police services,” in fact many calls for 

services involved non-crime related matters. 

0 

In Rapid City, South Dakota, there was also an overall incompatibility between citizens’ 

reasons for making demands for police services and their perception of the importance 

of police activities. While most contacts with the police were not crime-related, on the 

whole survey respondents ranked police activities involving criminal incidents as much 

more important than activities involving public-order offenses such as liquor law 

violations, loud parties, juvenile curfew violations, and panhandling vagrants”. 

i 

Over the following years a redefinition of the importance of different types of police 

activities took place. As later stages of community-oriented policing took hold, police 

officers and community members alike began to realize the importance of demands that 

citizens were actually already making -these involved public order rather than 

felonious crime: providing supervised recreation for children, safe parks, removing 

abandoned cars, and productive activities for seniors. All of these were paramount 

concerns in the relatively high crime areas designated for Eureka’s Neighborhood 

Oriented Policing (NOP) Units. And Rapid City police, as well as officers in other study 

departments, began to organize efforts to alleviate problems that generated high 0 demands for service in specific neighborhoods and other locations. 

1 l/COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

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Stage 2: COPS were launched in geographically-defined neighborhoods, schools, 

shopping malls, downtown business areas, and far-flung isolated communities 

with high demands for service ; officers were mandated to reach out to 

occupants and to focus response on local crime concerns. 

Similar to the development of community policing in large cities [footnote here in final 

draft], the law enforcement departments in the LlNC consortium began COPS efforts as 

focused responses to particular crime-related concerns in specific urban residential and 

commercial neighborhoods. Although the actual numbers of incidents demanding 

police response were obviously lower than in large cities, the types of crimes and 

criminals, the rates of crimes per resident, and the numbers of crimes per officer were 

as high or in some cases higher than central cities in major metropolitan areas. For 

example: [Rape rates go here in final draft]. Also as in large cities, rates of crime vary 

from neighborhood to neighborhood. Analysis of where crimes rates and demands for 

services were highest provided a major basis for initial decisions about beginning COPS 

A variety of strategies were used for initiating assignment to specific 

residential neighborhoods within the cities 

According to scholars who have conducted policing research in large cities, the ideal 

strategy for implementing COPS is to involve the entire department and assign officers 

for carrying out problem solving approaches in all areas of the city. The majority of 

departments in the LlNC study considered this plan neither ideal nor feasible in an 

environment where radical change of any kind is viewed suspiciously and often with 

hostility - especially when promoted and funded by the federal government. Except 

for the Pocatello Police Department, which essentially delayed any major change in the 

way police were assigned to neighborhoods, the departments began COPS on a much 

more limited basis. Each selected a subset of specific residential neighborhoods and 

selected a subset of specific officers for launching COPS. Dubbing its COPS effort with 

a different name, each department adopted a different strategy for initial 

implementation. 

0 

Eureka (California) Police Department assigned four teams of two Neighborhood 

Oriented Policing (NOP) officers to four contiguous neighborhoods with mixed 

residential and business use. Maps prepared by the department analyst had 

demonstrated that these areas had the highest rates of crime and calls for service. The 

officers were charged with responding to crime and other neighborhood demands as 

well as carrying out projects to reduce crime. Supervised by one sergeant, the effort 

was also closely monitored and developed by a captain who was a strong proponent of 

community-oriented policing services, as was the chief of police. The chief, who had 

laid out a the need for a plan for NOP prior to being appointed to his position, actively 

participated in many of the crime prevention projects. 

0 12ICOPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

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Redding (California) Police Department also focused on neighborhoods with 

relatively high rates of crime; however rather than assignments to a number of specific 

neighborhoods, designated officers were given full-time assignments to a special 

Neighborhood Policing Unit headed by a sergeant and supervised by a lieutenant. The 

chief of police, who had actively participated in state-wide planning for community 

policing, realized that a central tenet of COPS was to stimulate officers to “think out of 

the box - beyond the dots.” He saw his role as strategic planning rather than direct 

supervision or participation. The unit was given a general plan that was roughly a 

“weed-and-seed” strategy; together the first-line officers were to concentrate on 

reducing the most serious crimes in neighborhoods, beginning with the neighborhood 

with the highest rate of crime, build the capacity of the community to cooperatively keep 

crimes in check, designate one member of the team as their ongoing contact, and then 

move on to the area with the next highest crime rate and repeat the process. A general 

focus on preventing juvenile delinquency was also part of their mandate. Other than 

being assigned to conduct patrol in the NPU area and an informal understanding that 

they would volunteer to respond to calls in other areas during down time, how they were 

to accomplish this mission was pretty much up to the first-line officers and their 

sergeant. 

Rapid City (South Dakota) Police 

Department began with the most 

ambitious goal among this group of four. 

It wanted to establish 25 Cop-of-the- 

“Over the next five years the Rapid City Police 

Department has a goal of establishing twentyfive community oriented policing Cop-of-theBlock programs in Rapid City. As an estimate, 

The Cop-of-the-Block program was designed by and carried out under the direct 

supervision of Chief of Staff Dr. Dick Talley, who, as a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice, was 

well versed in the theory and research on community policing. Realizing that 

maintaining a long-term COPS effort is dependent on support of influential citizens, he 

not only assigned officers to carry out problem solving in neighborhoods with relatively 

high rates of crime, but also selected a middle-class neighborhood where residents 

were already organized for civic action. The chief of police was representative of many 

law enforcement administrators who viewed COPS as “something we’ve always done.” 

However, he viewed his appointment of a Ph.D. Chief of Staff as a major and innovative 

decision, and he was fully supportive of Talley’s decision to implement the initial Cop-ofthe-Block Program. 

Pocatello (Idaho) Police Department was the last of our four municipal departments 

13/COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

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to implement COPS involving residential neighborhoods. As of early 1999 the entire city 

of Pocatello is divided into five COPS areas. After considering different divisions, the 

senior staff decided to match the initial COPS areas to the traditional beat structure, 

which had been originally defined by major geographical barriers: the river, train tracks, 

and main thoroughfares. Plans are to review this geographical configuration at the end 

of the first year to see if any adjustments are needed. 

0 

Each area is assigned a COPS team headed by a lieutenant and consisting of 15 to 21 

officers, including supervisors and patrol officers from all shifts, detectives, dispatchers, 

records staff, and school resource officers (SROs). Since officers working different 

shifts are assigned to the same COPS team, loose-leaf notebooks have been set up for 

each team to share information relevant to ongoing problem-solving taking place in the 

beat to which the team is assigned. 

i 

In addition to their team assignment, the team members also maintain their affiliation 

with more traditional functionally-defined units. Even officers assigned to the 

Community Services unit - established before the COPS teams were formed -- belong 

to COPS teams. 

All four municipal police departments assigned officers to carry out COPS 

in downtown business areas; some assigned officers to shopping malls. 

Assignment of officers to focus on solving problems in downtown business areas was 

the least controversial and had the most favorable response, both immediate and longterm, in all four cities. Highly visible problems that made these areas prime targets for 

COPS were virtually the same across cities; historic buildings were deteriorated and 

often painted with graffiti, vagrants wandered the streets accosting shoppers and 

tourists verbally and occasionally physically; juveniles claimed sidewalks and roads for 

activities such as skateboarding that often endangered passers-by as well as 

themselves; seedy motels and abandoned buildings gave the areas a down-and-out 

undesirable appearance as well as attracting criminal pursuits. 

0 

The strategies with minor variations were very much the same: assign one or two 

officers to intensely patrol the area, provide a substation or store front where the 

officers could fill out reports, increase officers’ face-to-face contacts with business 

owners and others using the area, and organize efforts to clean the place up and 

relocate groups and individuals who increased fear of crime and threatened the 

economic viability of the area. 

One variation on the downtown assignments was assignments to shopping malls. The 

motivation for placing COPS in malls varied from city to city. For example, Eureka had 

an increase in gang activity in a mall including a shooting. Redding had a rash of 

burglaries from cars parked by shoppers. Rapid City saw placement of COPS in the 

area’s largest shopping mall as an anchor point for COPS in the neighborhood 

14/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
surrounding the mall and an opportunity for crime prevention outreach to the many 

people from the city and region who shopped there. Although motivated by different 

reasons, the strategy for implementation was quite similar to COPS in downtown areas: 

increase visibility and face-to-face interactions between the police, business owners, 

and the public and organized the business owners to prevent crime - in this case 

primarily shoplifting. 

e 

The strategies used by Sheriffs for selecting areas for launching COPS 

were shaped by the realities of extensive territories policed by relatively 

few officers 

Compared to municipal police departments, territory that is under sheriffs’ departments 

jurisdiction typically ranges from quite a bit larger to extraordinarily more extensive. 

(See Table 1 for the characteristics of sheriffs’ departments in the LlNC consortium.) 

Sheriffs’ jurisdictions typically include small incorporated cities and towns that contract 

for their policing services as well as pockets of relatively densely populated 

unincorporated areas in far-flung reaches of their counties; these include trailer parks, 

settlements of religious and other sects seeking isolation from main steam America, 

and, in the California departments that participated in this study, towns on Indian 

reservations. 

The Sheriff of Shasta County, for example, polices 3850 square miles. In 1994, when 

consideration of COPS was under way, the Sheriff had 49 sworn patrol officers 

available to cover this territory - over 78.5 square miles per officer, and of course no 

single officer is on duty every day and night. Obviously, the comprehensive form of 

COPS assignments suggested by scholars of big-city policing was unthinkable. The 

ways the sheriffs in the LlNC consortium adapted to this reality differed remarkably. 

Shasta County’s Sheriff selected three widely-distant towns within the county for 

concentrated COPS activities. Although his officers had extremely large territories to 

police, including vast tracks of mountainous terrains, the Sheriff, who had participated 

in California state-level planning for COPPS, was convinced of the value of “getting 

officers out of their cars and rattling door knobs.” Each of the three towns selected for 

COPPS was assigned an officer who was required to live in the area. 

As most neighborhoods selected by municipal police, the selected Shasta areas had 

generated relatively high-rates of demand for services. Some of these demands were 

related to crimes similar to those found in central cities areas including homicides. As in 

the counties policed by the other Sheriffs, other demands were based on problems that 

can be seen as an outgrowth of their geographical isolation: illegal methamphetamine 

labs set up by offenders who moved into hidden cabins, mentally-ill residents who came 

to the area seeking social isolation, groups of troublesome adolescents who truly had 

“no place to go, nothing to do,” inmigration of fringe groups who opposed mainstream 

American society and law, and elderly retired residents who settled in the area because 

1 5KOPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

i 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
of the natural beauty and inexpensive housing - but had become extremely fearful of 

local crime. Natural disasters too came with the territory including wild fires that burned 

through wide tracts of land taking numerous homes in a matter of hours. As the most 

accessible public officials, the officers assigned to these areas were required to 

address this full spectrum of concerns. 

Pennington County (South Dakota) and Humboldt County (California) had limited 

geographically-defined COPS efforts. In addition to wide expanses to police, both 

departments were struggling with very limited budgets. However, the Pennington 

County Sheriff took his cue from the Rapid City Police Department and assigned an 

officer to carry out community policing in a small town located in the Black Hills during 

the summer months when the population swells with tourists. 

The Humboldt County (California) Sheriffs Department was actually under intense 

outside pressure to implement COPS. The Humboldt County Board of Commissions 

established The Humboldt County Crime Commission Working with Law Enforcement 

in 1994. The commission was charged with responsibility, “To assist law enforcement 

and the community of Humboldt County in developing preventive strategies which will 

empower communities to create safe, crime free neighborhoods”‘*. This mandate 

meshed well with a primary focus of the Sheriff - empowering the Hoopa Tribe, in 

particular the tribal police serving Hoopa Valley, the tribal reservation within Humboldt 

County, to assume greater responsibility for law enforcement on their own lands. 

Operationally, the strategy was the converse of those in the other study counties - 

sheriffs deputies already assigned to police Hoopa Valley were to play a less intensive 

role. Conceptually, however, the strategy was the same - officers were to assist the 

community to define pressing problems and work together to solve them. 

0 

In Bannock County, no special assignments were made by area. However, the 

Sheriff and Undersheriff made it clear that innovative forms of community 

policing throughout the county were an integral part of the job. Although Bannock 

County when measured by square miles is the smallest area policed by a Sheriff in the 

LlNC consortium, the social distance between areas within the county are extreme. 

They include separatist groups some of which do not recognize the authority of the US 

government, farming towns settled primarily by members of the Church of Latter Day 

Saints, upscale suburbs of vacation homes of residents from Salt Lake and other urban 

areas, trailer parks that are inhabited by people living in abject poverty, others with 

extensive criminal records; and picturesque tourist towns. As Humboldt County 

(California), Bannock County encompasses tribal lands; however, unlike Humboldt with 

major responsibility for policing on the reservation, the Bannock deputies are 

responsible only for crimes committed by non-Indians. In practice, deputies must work 

out jurisdictional issues with tribal law enforcement officers on a daily basis. Rather 

than selecting one or two of these varied areas for COPS, the Sheriff and Undersheriff 

expect deputies to interact with and find ways to address concerns of members of all 

these diverse communities. The Sheriff, however agreed with one special assignment 

16/COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

.. ., . . . .. .. 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
that became the corner-stone of COPS in almost all departments: officers in schools. 

The strategy of placing COPS officers in schools was adopted by municipal 

police and sheriffs alike. 

For several of the departments in the LlNC consortium, basing officers in schools was 

far from a new approach. The Pennington County Sheriff had dedicated officers in 

schools for a decade before community-oriented policing became a federal focus. The 

Rapid City Police Chief, who had established a very close working relationship with the 

Sheriff, also provided schools with officers well before school crime was a national 

concern. A primary focus, then as now, was on working with school staff to identify 

children who were involved in crimes as victims as well as participating in delinquent 

acts, and use available resources for helping the youth. One of the first of the Sheriffs 

school officers was an American Indian who was able to gain the trust of Indian youth 

who came to school with telltale signs of abuse. 

i 

Although most of the departments did not have as long a history in basing officers in 

schools, all had a previous association with schools through their crime prevention 

efforts. Most had provided DARE programs, or DARE-like programs designed for drug 

prevention; some had added GREAT (Gang Resistance Education and Training) to the 

programs in which officers were involved. Although a series of evaluations have 

questioned the effectiveness of DARE and other prevention programs [add footnote in 

final draff] police provide in schools, the programs had opened school doors for police 

to play a more substantial role in solving youth problems in school-based COPS e approaches. 

As in assignments of officers to neighborhoods other COPS areas, the reasons and 

strategies for placing officers in school differed from department to department and 

ranged from focused patrol to a city wide strategy for more effective youth 

development. For examples, Rapid City Police Department and Pennington County 

saw school officers assignments as an approach that worked well in the past to unearth 

and address cases of abuse and neglect as well as to more quickly respond to conflicts 

between s t ude n ts . 

Pocatello Police Department schools officers were seen as needed for efficient 

response to increasing calls for service involving student and staff safety. Initially the 

community was divided about whether or not police officers should be based in schools. 

Many were concerned that the presence of uniformed officers would be interpreted as 

indicating more violence than actually was occurring in the schools. Several 

proponents of bringing police services into schools volunteered to carry out a study of 

the number of times police were called by the schools to deal with incidents involving 

students or non-students who created problems on the school grounds. Their findings 

showed that officers were spending an increasing number of hours driving to schools - 

primarily those serving adolescents - in response to a proliferating volume of calls. 

a 17ICOPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
This convinced the city administration and the Chief that placing officers in high schools 

and junior high schools was a justifiable cost saving measure. 

Eureka had experienced a rise in youth violence and gang involvement; some activity 

was due to youth who had been indoctrinated into gangs in large California cities and 

had at least temporarily moved into the area; other youth will simply imitating actual 

gang members. Other forms of youth conflict appeared to be a result of cultural and 

language misunderstanding between adolescents who belonged to a spectrum of 

ethnic groups rapidly increasing the rich diversity in the city. Independent of the 

motivation for youth violence, weapons use was resulting in an increase in lethal or 

close to fatal incidents in and around schools. The initial challenge to the youth 

officedethnic liaison assigned to the school experiencing the most conflict was to find 

ways to work with the students and staff to reduce the violence. Similar reasons and 

approaches also provided a basis for placing efforts in Shasta County schools. 

e 

Redding Police Department’s and Bannock County Sheriffs mandate for officers 

working with schools was part and parcel of a boarder COPS strategy. As in other cities 

and counties part of the mandate was seen as more efficient response to incidents 

involving students or outside troublemakers. However, the primary motivation was to 

work with the schools, families, and other community organizations to reduce behavior 

harmful to wholesome adolescent development and to provide students with new 

opportunities in the non-school hours for increasing their long-term potential as well as 

ongoing contribution to their communities. 

Giving officers time, direction, discretion, and motivation for carrying out 

community-oriented policing services 

One key to successfully launching COPS efforts in all departments appeared to be 

selection of officers and supervisors initially assigned. For the most part they shared 

the following characteristics and skills: 

They were mature, experienced officers who still enjoyed chasing down 

and locking up “bad guys;” but they also realized the futility of increasing 

community safety by taking action offepder by offender. 

They had the whole-hearted respect and trust of their fellow officers and 

fully realized that any smack of elitism in their new assignments would 

endanger this desirable perception. 

They had previously demonstrated informal leadership skills, innovative 

thinking, and a willingness to listen to and consider ideas of people from 

different walks-of-life. 

They were committed to their community and most felt that there was no 

18/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American HeartlandslLINCISeptember 2001 

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better place in the world to live or work. 

Their chief or sheriff trusted them to consider the impact of actions they 

took on the department as a whole. 

In most departments, top-level administrators were involved in selecting officers first 

assigned to COPS duties. In Bannock County, where all officers were encouraged to 

carry out COPS, the Sheriffs deputies who emerged as exemplary COPS officers also 

were found to have these characteristics. 

In departments where community policing progressed furthest through the stages 

described in this report, an increasing number of officers with similar characteristics 

were attracted to apply for and carry out COPS innovations. In departments that stalled 

in their advancement of COPS, some of the officers with these characteristics who were 

first appointed to COPS grew frustrated and impatient about their inability to exercise 

these skills; they worked hard to help shift the department toward more proactive 

community efforts. 

Discretion and direction given to the officers was as important as officer 

characteristics in the advancement of community-oriented policing. The types 

and amount of discretion and direction given to COPS officers varied considerably 

among departments. The most explicit direction among our study sites was provided in 

Rapid City, where the program was headed by Chief of Staff Dick Talley. Individual 

officers were assigned to specific Cop-of-the Block areas; each was given a twelvepage manual of instructions for carrying their assignments and allowed two to four 

hours each week for COPS. During other hours they were to carry out regular patrol 

duties - not necessarily in the area in which they were assigned as a Cop-of-the Block. 

Talley met the officers on a weekly basis to review their COPS progress. For all other 

assignments, they were a part of regular patrol and answered to their sergeant, 

0 

In Bannock County with the least structured approach, all officers were encouraged to 

take on COPS projects. Those who did so were rewarded by “atta-boys”, by the Sheriff 

publically giving officers credits for their projects, and by evaluations and promotions 

that showed that innovative methods of community policing were not only expected, but 

were the means of advancing in the department. Officers were encouraged to find out 

about effective advances being made by other departments whenever they had a 

chance to visit - and to come up with a plan for why and how similar approaches could 

be carried out in Bannock County. The Sheriff and Undersheriff took great delight in 

supporting a spectrum of efforts by providing the officers time and training to carry them 

out, small amounts of departmental funds for equipment and supplies, and, if 

necessary, the Sheriff presented and justified the approaches to the county 

commissioners. 

Redding Police Department managed their COPS approaches with maximum balance 

0 1 WC0PS:lnnovations in Policing in American HeartlandsiLINCISeptember 2001 

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between officers’ discretion and administrative direction. This balance was in part due 

to the management skills of the (MBA) lieutenant who provided oversight for the NPU, 

the determination of the Chief to support but not micro-manage the Unit, the 

extraordinary people skills of the Sergeant who directly supervised the officers in the 

unit, the deep trust between the three, and the roles each played. 

0 

The lieutenant worked closely with the sergeant to stimulate ideas and to stimulate the 

officers to generate ideas that appeared to be worth while (and not likely to cause any 

counterproductive uproar in the community). Before fielding the NPU the whole unit 

traveled together to other cities in California carrying out COPS to learn about the nittygritty details of implementation. This not only generated many ideas for implementation 

in Redding - any potential approach that both the lieutenant and sergeant thought 

worthwhile for Redding was actively encouraged - but created a team approach rather 

than just individual initiatives. 

Once back home, the lieutenant deftly handled bureaucratic procedure to obtain 

resources needed for projects. The sergeant coached his officers through complexities 

of dealing with staff in other agencies and community members. At times the lieutenant 

needed to stand firm when the chief was concerned about ramifications; in rare 

instances, the chief overruled him, placed specific approaches on the back burner or 

simply said ‘no’. 

Gaining the support of other officers and staff, especially those not initially 

directly involved with community-oriented policing, turned out to be key for 

making Stage.2 community policing actually work. From the onset, virtually all 

chiefs and sheriffs were concerned about COPS officers becoming an elitist group, 

resented by officers not selected for these special assignments. To counteract this 

possibility, the heads of the departments formally and informally structured supervision 

and reporting so that the COPS officers were part of “regular” patrol. As such, COPS 

officers formally were available to be in their cars conducting surveillance of specific 

areas and dispatched to 91 1 and other calls for police service. The problem lay in 

trying to convince administrators, supervisors, and other officers that other activities 

were equally as important as traditional patrol and response. 

Some chiefs and sheriffs tried to assure that first line officers and supervisors 

understood the purposes and goals of COPS by assigning materials to read as part of 

mandatory ongoing training. One sheriff strongly recommended that his officers read 

Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities. j4. 

Although a few officers who actually read the book thought the ideas had merit; other 

apparently “read enough” and reported that they did not find the book convincing. 

In Redding, all officers were required to read the California Department of Justice 

brochure on community policing and problem solving issued by the State Attorney 

General Office’s and developed by a committee of law enforcement department 

2O/COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

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 administration^'^; after reading, officers completed and submitted a training card. The 

pamphlet was also incorporated into training in other California Departments. Many 

officers in the California departments in the LlNC consortium reportedly found this 

report informative. However, more than a few of the officers still dlid not agreed with the 

value of community-oriented policing. 

Disagreement among rank and file about the value of community-oriented poking 

directly effected the COPS officers in two primary ways. Patrol supervisors who 

considered community-oriented policing to be a waste of time simply assigned COPS 

officers to places, times, or tasks that virtually made it impossible to spend any 

concerted time in community outreach or projects. Nor were dispatchers instructed to 

consider officers engaging in COPS activities as temporarily “out of service” for 

response. As a result, for example, an officer who had just started a discussion with 

business owners who were concerned about apparent drug distribution among students 

in the alley behind their buildings was dispatched to an address miles away to take a 

report from a man whose wife had decided to leave him three weeks before and had 

taken some of “his” possessions. 

I 

Fellow officers who disagreed with the concept used subtle and not so subtle informal 

ways to demean community-oriented policing activities. These included complaints 

about officers‘ failure to carry their own weight, constant biting sarcastic remarks (as 

opposed to typical good natured kidding) about the appropriateness of COPS activities, 

and shutting officers out of discussions about “real” police work. Since typically law 

enforcement officers look primarily to each other for comradery and validation of a job 

well done, these disparaging comments prevented COPS officers from taking pride in 

carrying out nontraditional activities. 

0 

Some departments tried to cope with these forms of dissension by formal methods. For 

example, in Rapid City, Cops-on-the-Block officers formally submitted requests to the 

patrol supervisor for time off regular patrol to carry out COPS; the Chief of Staff 

reviewed requests and responses to requests to assure that time was being permitted 

for COPS. However, formal methods did not alleviate the subtler forms of subversion. 

In one law enforcement department where two of the top administrators widely 

disagreed on the value of COPS, the proponent formally was charged with leading the 

effort; however since both were vying for a higher position, many officers were 

concerned about overtly endorsing COPS until they knew whether the proponent or 

opponent would attain the higher position. 

In Pocatello, bringing officers on board for community policing presented a special 

problem since the entire department shifted to COPS assignments. Reorganization 

was preceded by formal training in Problem Oriented Policing for the entire department 

by a consultant who introduced the officers and administrators to the SARA model of 

problem-identification and resolution [footnote in final draft]. Some officers took to the 

model and tried to apply it in their jobs; others thought the method was not useful. But 

the greatest resistence among officers seemed to be based in the rigidity of geographic 

a 21 /COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

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and team assignments rather than the view of policing as problem solving. 

Recognizing that mandatory COPS team assignments would not necessary be viewed 

as a positive development among most Pocatello patrol officers, the senior staff 

proposed an initial three-month “experimental” team assignment, followed by a 

departmental-wide review of the new structure and assignments. According to both the 

top- and mid-level supervisors and the field officers, most found the team assignments 

“not too bad.” 

@ 

To sweeten the process of assignment to teams, officers (based on seniority) bid for 

their preferred COPS team as well as the shift they preferred. Since preferences are 

diverse - for example, some want to be in their own home area while others want areas 

where there are lots of problems to be addressed - most officers seem to wind up in 

COPS areas where they would prefer to be. A common complaint that persists is 

“feeling confined” to one area. But a more frequent concern - one that seems to 

reflect officers’ growing acceptance of proactive policing and community problemsolving - is “being run from place to place” to respond to non-emergency calls relayed 

by dispatchers and therefore not having enough time to concentrate on community 

problems. 

This concern was somewhat alleviated in Pocatello by 1) conducting a manpower 

study, 2) adjusting the numbers of officers assigned to each shift to better reflect 

workload patterns, and 3) overlapping two shifts at the time determined to be peak 

workload hours (2 pm to 5 pm). The shift overlap during these hours makes more 

manpower available to respond to calls and potentially could free officers to meet with 

community groups and carry out problem-solving activities. However, even after these 

steps the problem still was evident. 

0 

Overcoming resistance to community-oriented policing promotes success 

in Stage 2 and progress toward Stage 3 

The approach that overcame most resistance from the troops and supervisors alike 

consisted of strong leadership from the top together with a willingness among first-line 

and supervisory COPS officers to pull more than their weight yet credit others for 

successfu I efforts. 

COPS received leadership from the top Two examples of strong leadership at 

the top are the actions taken to stimulate COPS by Chief of Police Bob Blankenship in 

Redding and Sheriff Lorin Neilsen in Bannock County. These two CEOS had very 

different styles of leadership. In leading his department, Blankenship relies on his chain 

of command. Strategic planning and major operational decisions are for the most part 

made by the “top brass” and implemented by rank and file. The Chief likens his role to 

that of an orchestra conductor. “I don’t play the instruments. I have excellent 

musicians that can play the instruments. I set the overall tone and give general 

22/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American HeartlandslLINCISeptember 2001 

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instructions when needed. ‘A little quieter in the brass section. A little louder in the 

strings.’ ’I 0 

Neilsen, on the other hand, involves many of his officers at all ranks in thinking about 

strategy and operations. He keeps an open door, and officers feel free to approach him 

- in fact they not uncommonly follow him around the department - to brainstorm 

about ideas they have for new departmental approaches or changes in ongoing 

operations. However, officers also realize that although they are free to suggest, the 

final decision is his, and they know that his decisions are not arbitrary but often made in 

careful deliberation with the Undersheriff. 

Both Blankenship and Neilson have earned a reputation for good leadership among the 

vast majority of their officers. Both came up the ranks in their departments and were 

respected for their fairness and integrity by officers who knew them from their earliest 

years in law enforcement, as well as younger officers and city and county officials. Both 

had a “buck stops here” policy when it came to taking personal responsibility if 

operations backfired, both have a track record of quietly but firmly going to bat for their 

officers when city or county budget or political considerations threatened cuts in 

equipment or other resources that were needed for their officers to function safely and 

effectively, and both are always searching for new ways to improve the quality of their 

policing. 

In a major sense the process of making departmental decisions about implementing 

COPS strategies were not very different from other decisions. Blankenship involved his 

commanding officers and administrators, as well as his departmental analyst in 

designing an overall strategy. Neilsen involved many of his officers at different ranks in 

considering what types of approaches could be used. However launching COPS 

involved some special steps: 

0 

Both paid particular attention at the outset in selecting COPS 

administrators, first-line supervisors, and field officers that were the best 

of the best in terms of people skills, management skills, adaptability, and 

a vocation for community service as well as law enforcement. However, 

they also made clear from the onset that all other officers who had an 

interest in carrying out COPS assignments would eventually have the 

opportunity. 

Both paved the way within the department as well as outside by explaining 

the potential for COPS to benefit all without over-promising what could be 

accomplished. 

Both sent officers to places where community-oriented policing had 

progressed and arranged for them to spend time with officers of their own 

rank who were already deeply involved in COPS. These emissaries often 

“caught fire” and were anxious to get back to their own cities and counties 

2YCOPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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and try some of the innovative procedures they learned first-hand. 

Once COPS was started, both stepped back as much as possible and let 

their officers develop their own day-to-day activities. They both asked for 

reports on activities and each “kept their nose to the wind” for any 

possible problems. Both had deep personal interest in the approaches 

being developed but by stepping back gave their officers carrying out 

community-oriented policing the degree of independence needed for them 

to create innovative approaches and at the same time did not appear to 

be showing favoritism to officers selected for COPS. 

Both made sure that the first line officers who developed and carried out 

community-oriented policing projects were the ones who received the 

credit and favorable publicity. As the results of COPS began to make 

front-page news, the officers most involved with the particular approach 

were the ones interviewed and featured. At the same time, they promoted 

recognition of officers who, with less fanfare, were solving cases and 

literally putting themselves in the line of fire. 

I 

W 

Both encouraged officers who were not formally assigned to COPS duties 

to carry out their own community policing projects - and they backed up 

this encouragement by taking on their own. For just one example, Chief 

Blankenship in keeping with the department’s strategy for preventing 

delinquency, became a recognizable spokesman on TV for gently 

reminding parents’ to supervise their children. “It’s 10 o’clock - do you 

know where your children are?” . 

w As COPS advanced, more and more agencies and community groups 

began to claim ownership for ideas and successes. Realizing that this 

was a beneficial development, both the Chief and Sheriff encouraged 

them to do so. 

Leadership at the top is always important. A maxim in policing is, “If the Chief doesn’t 

buy it, it’s not going to happen.” In order to bring along officers who were not initially 

involved, and some outright hostile to COPS, also required leadership from the first-line 

officers and supervisors first selected to initiate COPS. 

COPS first- line supervisors also provided strong leadership. As discussed 

above, in departments in which COPS made most progress, officers and supervisors 

who carried out the first COPS activities were selected for their previously 

demonstrated leadership skills. These included sergeants, corporals, and field training 

officers, and who not only “thought beyond the dots” themselves but had a history of 

stimulating other officers to also do so in the following ways. 

They coached officers rather than simply issuing commands. They often 

0 24COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

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e 

They reported to other 

supervisors on ongoing 

intelligence gathered by 

were the first to see a clear and creative solution to a problem in which a 

first line COPS officer was involved. But rather than laying out the 

solution, but asking key questions, they led the officer through a process 

of considering alternative approaches until the officer either came up with 

the same solution or another solution that was equally innovative and 

potentially as likely to reduce the problem. As important, they also began 

coaching officers not initially involved in COPS through the same type of 

problem solving analysis, in hallway conversations, in break rooms, and 

when ever opportunities presented themselves for doing so. 

“There’s always a dispatcher or officer who 

doesn’t get community policing, who’s going to try 

to pull NPU officers out of classrooms or 

They reported on COPS efforts in roll call and always gave credit to 

officers who were not formally involved in COPS but who provided even 

the smallest degree of support for COPS efforts. 

COPS officers that were 

important for the Success 

of other departmental 

operations; they made 

clear that the COPS 

officers were supporting 

They listened carefully and considerately to officers who resisted the 

departmental focus on COPS and rather than arguing COPS theory or 

philosophy, gave “seeing is believing’’ real examples from other cities or 

counties where COPS approaches had made a significant impact on 

types of problems ongoing in their own areas. 

community meetings for a call they think is more 

important. I tell them that if they have a problem 

with an NPU officer saying that they are not clear 

for calls, to take it up with me. If they can’t find 

another officer -- to radio me. I’ll take the call.” 

Sergeant Dave Munday, Redding Police 

Department 

If and when other officers or staff consciously or unconsciously tried to 

sabotage COPS activities by demanding that officers pay attention to ‘real 

policing’ such as response to cold case calls, the supervisors went to bat 

for their officers and assumed full responsibility for officers not meeting 

such demands. 

First-line COPS officers went out of their way to provide support for other 

operations In the cities and counties where COPS advanced, rather than being 

nominally a part of patrol or so much a part of patrol that they had little time for COPS, 

the officers struck a careful balance between law enforcement priorities and other 

@ 25/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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priorities for community policing. Whenever time allowed, they took calls as they came 

over the radio. Whenever they observed or community members gave them 

information related to crime or local criminals, at the first opportunity they asked for a 

rendezvous, and parking their car head to tail with the car of another officer, rolled down 

their window and passed on the information. 

COPS officers in these cities and counties are almost all assigned to day shifts to allow 

them to meet with community members. They began briefing patrol officers who 

policed the area at night about illegal activities residents had reported were taking place 

after dark and worked out appropriate responses. And when they had clearly 

established a pattern of wrong doing, they cooperated in planning and carrying out 

evidence collection and arrests. Even some of the most resistant officers were 

converted to COPS when they realized that COPS “weeded” as well as “seeded”. 

COPS officers brought other officers into projects at times when activities 

were very enjoyable and the results very satisfying. Many of the projects carried 

out by COPS officers took weeks of planning and preparation. They invited other 

officers to join in after all activities were organized and the other officers just had to 

show up, participate in community events, and share the appreciation of the community 

and city leaders. As COPS progressed, some of the officers were initially most 

resistant to COPS had “war stories” about their participation and accomplishments. 

“It [COPS] wasn’t what I thought of real police work. But I got a 

charge out of some of the stuff we’ve done. It’s fun and it gets stuff 

done that the city or someone should have done years ago. Like 

clearing the tramps out of that park I told you about and cleaning it up 

so that families with kids can enjoy it.” - Formerly skeptical officer 

Typical projects carried out by COPS officers in Stage 2 

Some of the first projects COPS officers took on helped to establish their credibility 

among other officers. In response to chronic problems reflected in calls for service by 

community members, they focused on ‘bad guys’ and other trouble makers. 

COPS in schools School-based COPS officers in almost all the departments in the 

LlNC consortium initially were involved in deterring violence and other crimes in and 

around schools by highly visible preventive patrol. The presence of a black-and-white 

patrol car and a uniformed officer reportedly prevented youth coming onto campus who 

didn’t belong there; and those who still wandered on campus with some vague excuse 

(“we’re just here to shoot hoops, man”) when confronted by an officer almost always 

chose to leave quickly and quietly. The high visibility of the officer in the halls and 

outside the building also sent a powerful message to students attending schools who 

were prone to violent episodes for various reasons, including ethnic and racial tensions, 

actually or “wannabe” gang affiliations, fights over dating relationships, or simply 

26/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

”. 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
uncontrolled adolescent hormonal reactions. 

In Eureka, for just one of many examples, a growing number of assaults involving youth 

(including drive-by shootings near one school) were essentially eliminated after the 

police department appointed an experienced officer to serve as a school-based 

youth/ethnic liaison officer. The officer himself was born outside the United States. 

During school breaks and before and after school hours, the officer patrols the streets 

surrounding the school and stays in radio contact with school staff monitoring school 

property and nearby areas. If and when school staff notice a push-and-shove incident, 

they immediately call for the officer before the incident escalates. 

a 

He, in turn, monitors the school periphery and surrounding streets for offenders who 

have warrants for previous crimes, who are known to have gang affiliation or are 

suspects in drug distribution or other types of cases, or who are on probation or parole. 

If the campus is quiet, he typically provides a first response to incidents involving such 

people and, if there is cause, radios another officer to carry out an arrest. He calls for 

patrol response to such incidents if the students are changing classes or at other times 

when the campus is roiling with activity. During periods of maximum activity he is often 

surrounded by students who have questions related to incidents that have taken place 

off campus or who simply seem to feel safer when they “hang out” in his vicinity. As 

discussed below, his functions and the roles played by school officers from other 

departments came to involve far more than preventive patrol. 

Redding Police Department, as part of the overall COPS strategy of reducing 

delinquency and promoting wholesome childhood development, immediately went 

beyond deterrent patrol in schools. Together with the school board they allocated funds 

for an officer dedicated to reducing truancy. In addition to following up on cases 

involving chronic truancy, the officer became the single point of contact for all patrol 

officers who found unsupervised children wandering around the streets or hanging 

around malls during school hours. Whether or not the children offered an excuse that 

appeared valid for being out of school, other officers relayed the information to him for 

verification. 

27kOPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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The Redding officer pulled up next to a young adolescent boy riding a skateboard and 

rolled down his window. "Come over here, son." The youth approached looking apprehensive. 

"Do you live around here?" "Down the street." 

"Why aren't you in school today?" "My mom said I should stay home because I have a 

doctor's appointment." "Are you sick?" "No, I have to get shots or something." "What time is 

your appointment?" Not til this afternoon but my mom said I should stay home." "Is your mom at 

home now?" "No, she's at work but she said I should stay home until she came and got me." 

"Well, son. If your mom told you to stay home, you should stay home. Not riding 

around the streets." Now I'm going to take your name and address and phone number for 

Officer G----. Do you know who he is?" "Yes, but I'm not skipping school; my mom told me to 

stay home." "Well Office G- will call your mom. Not because you're skate-boarding when she 

told you to stay home. But to figure out way that maybe next time you have to see a doctor 

whether she can pick you up at school instead. Ok?" "Ok!". 

the youth returned home safely. 

The officer paged the school officer, relayed the particulars to him, and made sure that 

COPS in shopping malls As in schools, one of the first functions of COPS officers 

assigned to malls was also deterrence through preventive patrol both inside and outside 

the mall buildings. Rapid City was one of the first departments in the LlNC consortium 

to establish a presence in a mall. In September 1995, a Rapid City Police substation 

was established in a former customer service center in the Rushmore Mall. The mall 

covers 850,000 square feet and includes I20 stores serving over 20 

surrounding counties. The substation was formed in response to a departmental 

analysis of the location of incidents occurring in the city and concern on the part of 

businesses owners and shoppers about disturbances and other incidents involving 

groups of teens and young adults. According to the mall manager, the first reaction to 

the highly visible presence of police officers was concern -- "if the police are here, 

something bad must have happened." Within a few months of providing COPS, the 

police were considered a integral part of the scene and often called on for advice from 

business owners as well as shoppers and residents living in the neighborhood 

surrounding the mall. As a result of the outreach conducted by the officers, the local 

AARP chapter volunteered their services to help out in the substation. 

COPS in downtown areas As COPS officers began more focused policing in 

downtown areas, they were confronted with many of the same types of chronic 

problems that disgruntled business owners and residents had complained about for 

years: Most of the areas suffered from a number of badly neglected commercial 

buildings, graffiti and litter, and chronically inebriated transients and mentally-ill 

homeless people who appeared threatening to tourists and middle-class residents alike. 

Downtown hotels included both reconstructed historic buildings attempting to appeal to 

affluent tourists and cheap motels that attracted marginal residents, drug dealers, and 

drifters involved in other criminal pursuits. Unlike COPS in schools and malls, where 

increased visibility of a police presence appeared to be sufficient to reduce crime and 

convince fellow officers that COPS was about catching bad guys, the problems 

confronting COPS officers in the downtown areas were too entrenched to respond 

28/COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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quickly to deterrent patrol. 

However, in each of the cities and in some contract towns, graffiti removal became a 

quick remedy for making a visible impact on the area. 

location of the graffiti, noted whether gang symbols were part of the graffiti, if relevant 

notified the gang unit, obtained permission for repainting from business owners whose 

buildings had been defaced, and arranged for repainting by officer or civilian volunteers 

with paint provided by the city or county or commercial donors. These efforts literally 

changed the faces of cities and towns. 

COPS officers noted the 

Code abatement remedies also were common first steps taken by COPS officers 

assigned to downtown areas and also, as described below, specific neighborhoods. In 

partnership with city and county code officers, they began to deliver letters to owners of 

the deteriorated buildings telling them to literally clean up their acts or be assessed 

fines for civil ordinance infractions. Some of the owners were absentee landlords who 

responded by firing onsite managers and hiring managers who brought the buildings up 

to code. Most, however, were not convinced until the economic ramifications of fines 

for not repairing their buildings were greater than allowing them to deteriorate. More 

than a few quit ownership; and in the cases of the most deteriorated buildings beyond 

repair, the city or county bulldozed the building, creating an empty lot available for new 

construction. As the worst buildings disappeared, so did the drug dealers and other 

offenders who frequented them. And within a relatively short period of time, the 

downtown areas began to look like quaint historic districts that were attractive for 

tourists and residents alike. Still chronic problems involving disorderly people rather 

than disorderly buildings remained to be addressed as COPS advanced. 

COPS in residential neighborhoods The initial forms of COPS carried out in 

neighborhoods depended on the types of neighborhoods involved in first assignments. 

Officers who were assigned to middle-class areas primarily were involved in addressing 

vehicular problems; often these involved chronic concerns about drivers speeding down 

streets where young children played. Other problems, especially in middle-class 

isolated rural areas, involved residents’ suspicions about out-of-area cars. Such 

suspicions were not without foundation. Rural areas policed by more than one sheriff in 

the LlNC consortium had experienced one or more horrific homicides by murderers who 

had left an interstate highway intent on burglary but went on to kill their victims. And a 

number of sightings had resulted in the arrest of sex offenders on conditional release. 

As already described, most departments located their COPS officers in neighborhoods 

where crime was high. Whether isolated trailer parks in the fringes of the cities or far 

flung reaches of the counties or tracts of small homes or public housing complexes 

within the cities, the problems that were present were very much the same. In addition 

to the same type of blight addressed in downtown areas through graffiti removal and 

code abatement procedures, the officers also found themselves dealing with 

other constant problems, including groups of unsupervised juveniles who vandalized 

public and private property; houses used to manufacture and sell drugs, whose clientele 

29/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

-. 

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terrorized the neighborhood; substandard housing - some without running water or 

heat - rented to essentially homeless families with children who could not afford better 

shelter; and extremely deteriorated housing with yards full of junk that were scattered 

among carefully tended homes and gardens. 

a 

Some of the more flagrant problems could immediately be addressed by the COPS 

officers gathering information themselves and passing the information on to drug units 

or city code officers. For example, in the first Redding (COPPSI) area; the NPU 

officers intensified enforcement of traffic violators, not infrequently visitors to houses 

harboring drug dealers, and intensified night-time enforcement to control theft, 

delinquents who often gathered in an area park. They also intensified surveillance of 

residences identified as drug houses and worked with their narcotics officers to arrest 

I 

vandalism, harassment of residents, and other criminal acts committed by teenage I 

During our first #-month period pn one small COPPS area], we made almost 500 arrests. [In 

subsequent months] compared to the same period last year. .. total calls for services declined 

5.9%, assaults declined 14.8%, disturbance calls declined 28.2% vandalism declined 

30.4% ... Chief of Police, Redding 

drug distributors. The results were remarkable. 

However, in Redding as in the other cities and counties, the more lasting results were 

brought about by reaching out to the people who lived and worked in the area and 

eliciting their cooperation in addressing problems they identified as a group as high a 

priority. 

Community outreach and problem identification 

All departments in the LlNC consortium recognized that while simply increasing the 

visibility of a police presence and arrests can bring about major changes in reported 

crime in an area, the ongoing and active cooperation of people who live and work in an 

area is essential for long-term crime reduction and for addressing problems that 

compromise quality of life. A spectrum of outreach efforts described next were 

launched to build bridges between the department and the community. 

Meeting, greeting, and learning events. Chiefs and sheriffs in a number of 

departments inaugurated a spectrum of forums in which police officers and citizens 

could come together and learn about each others’ views and concerns. Several 

departments, such as Pocatello Police Department, began to offer “Citizens’ 

Academies.” The academies include in-class presentations from officers representing 

different units in the department and ride-a-longs with patrol officers. However, most 

officers involved appeared to view the academy training as an opportunity to teach 

citizens about the realities of and limitations on policing rather than a chance to learn 

30/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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more about citizens concerns. And citizens who had completed the course said that 

they did have more of an understanding of why the police could not address many 

community concerns. 

Other events also were more conducive to enhancing the image of the department than 

trying to learn about community concerns. For example, Eureka’s Police Chief initiated 

annual “Block Parties” at the Police Department providing a chance for residents and 

businesses to meet local law enforcement officers and emergency services personnel. 

The first Block Party held in 1993. Funding was provided by businesses, civic 

associations and private individuals. Tours of department, games, a police rap and 

rock band (from another department) food booths, crime prevention displays, and child 

finger printing demonstrations.) While a good time was had by most, the event did not 

lend itself to learning about community problems. 

Other events were purposely geared to balance opportunities to increase positive 

experiences with law enforcement officers and at the same time address important 

concerns. For example, in Shasta County, the Sheriffs Cultural Awareness Council 

was initiated in 1992 to alleviate mounting tensions between diverse racial and ethnic 

groups and to increase communications with the Office. Representatives of ethnic 

groups including Indian, African-American, Jewish, Japanese, German, and Filipino 

communities meet every three months with the Sheriff and his top level administrators 

to exchange information and to plan activities for bridging differences. Attendance by 

captains is mandatory. One of the first Council activities consisted of training for 

deputies by Council members about the customs of each group they represent. For the 

past three years, the Council has organized a public festival in a mall during which 

dances from a spectrum of cultures are performed and arts and crafts exhibited. Other 

relevant groups, such as the Sheriffs Citizen patrol organizations, provide information 

about their activities and recruitment in booths staffed by their volunteer members. 

Establishing mini-stations in COPS areas Scholars in policing research have 

been lamenting the closing of neighborhood-based police station houses and 

recommending reestablishing local stations as a key component of a return to local 

policing in communities.’6 Several of the departments heeded this advice and created 

mini-stations in store fronts, first floor apartments, and as noted above, shopping malls. 

The officers who used these mini-stations were uniformly appreciative of their 

convenience for completing paper work, especially sheriffs deputies carrying out COPS 

’ functions in areas remote from their central department or substations. However, the 

extent to which these stations helped increase community outreach varied from 

community to community. Some of the considerations in this variation appeared to be 

these. 

Visibility of officers in the mini-station. The interior of some of the ministations could not be seen from street level. Passers-by or citizens in 

distress could not immediately tell whether an officer was available. They 

had to knock or ring a bell and wait. Some appeared upset when they 

31/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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received no response. On the other hand, mini-stations with interior 

visibility from the street or parking lot or mall corridors seemed to have a 

stream of visitors whenever an officer could be seen. 

Types of activities in the ministation initiated by officers. Some officers 

exclusively used the mini-station for report preparation and departmental 

coordination. Other officers, used the space for community meetings, oneon-one conferences with youth or adults who were in difficulty, and other 

outreach activities. 

rn Types of use by auxiliary organizations. A few of the departments 

encouraged Neighborhood Watch captains, Citizen Patrol directors, social 

service agencies, and neighborhood groups to leave literature at the ministation or use it for carrying out coordination activities. These uses 

increased contact between COPS officers and citizens who actively 

sought to assist the police or were seeking help from police and other city 

and county agencies. 

Mini-stations that attracted local residents and business people to visit and participate in 

COPS activities were highly valued by the community and officers. Any suggestion that 

the mini-station might be closed resulted in vocal opposition. Mini-stations with minimal 

activity were abandoned when budgets became tight - and their abandonment was 

scarcely noted in the community. 

Increasing positive contacts between officers and people engaged in 

routine daily activities 

Virtually all COPS officers in the LlNC consortium departments realized that other than 

criminals and victims they simply did not know most people in the neighborhoods and 

other areas they were assigned to police. They had little or no idea of who were the 

local leaders that could be called on to help direct neighborhood projects. Most people 

who saw them drive by either averted their eyes and studiously ignored them or gave 

them a ‘one finger salute.’ Aside from the officers who taught DARE or other classes in 

school and those who were specifically asked to attend a Neighborhood Watch 

meeting, they spent most of the time when they were responding to calls driving around 

literally looking for trouble. To get to know the people who lived or worked in their 

neighborhoods they carried out the following activities: 

Pulling over to people engaging in routine activities, rolling down their 

window and engaging them in conversation. At first the usual response was 

‘what’s wrong?’ Gradually people began to recognize the officer, come over to 

chat, tell them what was happening in the neighborhood, ask advice about 

problems, and invite them to neighborhood events. Many took this opportunity to 

express appreciation for officers’ attention to drug houses and unruly youth. 

e 32;COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Within a couple of months, most people smiled and waved (with all fingers) when 

the car rolled by and some waved the officer over to chat or provide intelligence 

about some previously arrested offender who was back in the neighborhood. 

Walking and talking the beat. Officers assigned to schools, malls, and 

downtown areas began to spend many more hours walking around their 

assigned areas and engaging people who were taking a break from work- related 

activities in conversation. Most school officers were assigned their own place to 

sit, typically sharing space with guidance counselors. However, except when 

they were in a staff meeting or having a private conversation with youth who 

needed direction or redirection, officers most admired by administrators, 

teachers, students and other staff spent their time in halls, cafeterias, playing 

fields and other outside congregation areas chatting with different groups about 

school teams, school activities, and activities planned by different ethnic 

communities. 

While on bicycles, our officers felt it was much easier to contact the children 

who live in the area and, in a relaxed atmosphere, discuss with them their 

concerns or fears of living in this particular neighborhood. This is vital to our 

effort since we have identified the 6 to 12 year olds as the most important 

juvenile group we must communicate with to be successful in the long run. 

Robert P. Blankenship, Chief of Police, Redding 

Officers assigned to downtown areas and malls often walked from one end of the 

area to another, approaching groups of teens hanging out, making themselves 

available to distraught shoppers who forgot where they parked their car (helping 

them contact mall security for help), and poking their heads in stores to wave at 

the store managers and sales people and listening to any concerns that they 

had. 

Patrolling on bike. COPS officers in both police departments and sheriffs 

departments were equipped for and receiving special training for using bikes to 

patrol areas. They reported that using their bikes seemed to make people feel 

more comfortable about approaching them. In Pocatello and in “contract cities” 

in Bannock County, business owners and residents alike welcomed the first 

warm days of spring when officers appeared in the downtown areas on their 

bikes. 

Although not all officers took well to the physical demands of using bikes, those 

who did realized a benefit that was in addition to increasing the numbers of 

people with whom they had positive contact. They also realized that they could 

see more and access more places where previously offenders believed 

33/COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
themselves to be hidden. For example, Redding NPU officers accessed places 

in parks where juveniles thought it safe to smoke marijuana or drink. Rapid City 

officers covered parts of a riverside bike trail where women and girls had been 

accosted. Bannock County officers suddenly appeared in hill areas where 

juveniles had secreted and tapped a keg as well as areas in trailer parks where 

drugs were being distributed. 

Connecting with kids Although officers on bikes had enhanced capabilities to 

find places where youth were engaging in harmful acts, many other adolescents 

reported thought COPS officers on bikes were “cool.” The bikes themselves 

provided a positive topic for opening conversations between officers and kids 

outside the school setting. 

Trading cards with officers’ pictures, personal information and their direct line 

telephone were developed with the youngest children in mind. However, 

adolescents in some COPS areas also liked collecting them and would approach 

officers to see if they could help them locate the card of an officer who was 

missing from their collection. 

In Eureka, officers learned that youth from Southeast Asian countries missed 

playing sports common in their native lands but for the most part unrecognized in 

the United States. They petitioned the Chief for a very small amount of 

department funds for equipment needed for the sports, established a place in a 

park to set up the equipment, and often stopped by and participated in the 

games. As discussed in later sections, COPS officers subsequently took the 

lead in coordinating community projects for providing youth with opportunities for 

building academic and social skills through other after school activities the young 

people truly enjoyed. 

Living in the community The Shasta County Sheriff took perhaps the ultimate 

step in increasing contacts between officers and people engaged in routine daily 

activities - residential requirements for some community officers. Officers who wanted 

to take on COPS assignments in some contract towns or remote communities were 

required to live in the community. 

Establishing a working relationship with residents and business owners can be very 

difficult for officers in law enforcement departments that police very large territories. 

Typically, officers patrol hundreds of miles a day, spending minutes in any given area, 

meeting only people who are in trouble, and returning at night to their home which is in 

or closer to the central city than the area they are assigned to police. For some of the 

areas in Shasta County most distant from Redding, the Sheriff has established a 

requirement for officers to live in the area which they are assigned to police. 

As a resident whose family is using both public and private services, officers commonly 

become part of the community in which they live, know a majority of people who live in 

0 341COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
the same town or village, hear about concerns on a day-to-day basis, personally 

volunteer for various civic responsibilities, and are in a position to officially organize 

community efforts to address concerns. They heard on a daily basis whether on duty or 

off about the concerns of their neighborhoods. And given that they and their families 

were effected by the same problems, they were highly motivated to organize citizen 

groups and other agencies to take action. 

Increasing citizens’ involvement in defining problems and priorities 

Increasing face-to-face communication with residents and business people began the 

process of learning what concerns were on individual people’s minds. However, the 

officers realized that more systematic methods were needed to find out how general 

these concerns were among people living or working in the areas they were policing. A 

variety of more or less successful ways of gathering this information were tried. These 

included the following. 

Conducting “town meetings.” In Humboldt County, the county commissioners 

took the lead in developing a process for obtaining citizen input. Humboldt County 

Board of Commissions established The Humboldt County Crime Commission Working 

with Law Enforcement in 1994. The commission was charged with responsibility “To 

assist law enforcement and the community of Humboldt County in developing 

preventive strategies which will empower communities to create safe, crime free 

neighborhoods””. Beginning in March 1995 the Commission held a series of “town 

meetings.” At initial meetings, information essentially flowed in one direction; 

representatives from law enforcement agencies serving the towns presented residents 

with information about specific programs they offered. However, after the Commission 

involved professionally trained and experienced group facilitators to plan and steer the 

meetings, representatives from the law enforcement agencies and residents used the 

town meetings as forums for determining the concerns of residents, prioritizing the 

concerns, and beginning to “brainstorm” about solutions’’. Priorities that emerged 

during those meetings varied from community to community. Most generally, they 

involved some crime-related issues; neighborhood drug distribution continued to be a 

serious concern as did burglary. But many high-priority concerns in all neighborhoods 

centered on the quality of life issues that were civil rather than criminal including city 

housing code violations or involved unsupervised community youth. And since law 

enforcement officers had played a passive role in unearthing these concerns many 

appeared to be less committed to actively seeking solutions than officers in other 

departments using methods they themselves had developed to learn about citizen 

concerns. 

e 

Forming citizen advisory boards Another effort that actively involved top law 

enforcement administrators and had immediate payoff for getting COPS off the ground 

but faltered in the long run was the Citizen’s Advisory Board in Pocatello. The Board 

consisted of members recruited by the Community Services Unit. Initially the Board 

e 35/COPS: In nova ti ons in Policing in American Heart lands/L I NC/Se p tem ber 200 1 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
was very active in identifying specific needs for innovative policing. Several members 

of the Board had volunteered work on the report mentioned earlier - calculating the 

amount of time officers were spending responding to incidents in and around schools. 

The number of hours they calculated reportedly provided convincting evidence that 

assignments of officers to schools could be a cost-effective allocation of resources and 

resulted in the formation of the school resource officer program. 

a 

However, after the first success in launching the COPS in schools, some of the most 

active members became discouraged with the pace of implementing other types of 

programs. They cautioned that while several of the top administrators and middle 

managers in the Pocatello PD “really get the idea,” not all officers are equally receptive 

to working with civilians. They also cautioned that many civilians are likely to volunteer 

to work with the police immediately after a highly visible crime; however, although only a 

relatively small number are likely to be committed over a long time period, a small group 

of committed volunteers can provide a solid source of support for COPS. Ultimately, 

even the most active members interpreted their recruitment and involvement as less a 

commitment on the part or the department for involving citizens than the department’s 

temporary focus on demonstrating citizen input in order to obtain federal funds. 

i 

Building on Neighborhood Watch. A much more sustained effort for 

successfully involving Pocatello citizens is an innovative form of Neighborhood Watch. 

Through the vigorous efforts of a civilian police department employee who settled in the 

area after retiring from the military, Neighborhood Watch groups began to proliferate. 

Under his direction, Neighborhood Watch was incorporated as a nonprofit organization 

- reducing the potential liability of police officers. Membership in each area reportedly 

increased after an annual fee of $5.00 was charged per household. According to 

members (interviewed for this report), the benefits of membership come from having 

the civilian employee as a liaison. He is able to provide them with information about 

types and locations of crimes that have occurred in and around their areas and in turn, 

they are organized to provide ongoing information to the department, usually 

investigations, about houses and other buildings where drug use or criminal acts 

appear to be taking place. 

a 

A more common way of building on Neighborhood Watch in the other LlNC consortium 

departments was shifting the responsibility for meeting with the groups from one or two 

officers or civilian staff in crime prevention units to the COPS officers. Rather than 

listening to the concerns of members and relaying the concerns to someone else in the 

department, the COPS officers are more likely to lead a brainstorming session with the 

members about what they can do, what the officer and other patrol officers can do, and 

e 36/COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
what can be done together. For just one of many examples, in several cities and 

counties when members voiced concerns about dangerous speeding in the area, the 

COPS officers said that they could have the area targeted for ticketing providing 

everyone agreed that if they or someone else in their family or among their friends 

received a citation, they would be very vocal about supporting the police for giving the 

ticket. In virtually all cases, the groups agreed and the members followed through. 

0 

Reshaping the role of posses Creation of posses, groups of men temporarily 

deputized by a Sheriff, is one of longest United States traditions for involving citizens in 

law enforcement. As incorporated cities replaced frontier towns, the law enforcement 

function of posses dwindled. However the tradition of the posse coming to the aid of 

the sheriff was kept very much alive in the Search and Rescue team volunteers that 

assist sheriffs serving expansive counties such as those in the LlNC consortium. And 

as COPS developed, these groups became the source for new forms of involvement for 

COPS. 

I 

For example, the Sheriff of Shasta County, California, who heads the largest sheriffs 

department in the LlNC consortium created citizen patrols as one of his first COPS 

initiatives almost eight years ago as a way of increasing voluntary community service. 

Two previous efforts laid the basis for creating the patrols. First, the Search and 

Rescue program, which is integral to many rural Sheriffs offices, was expanded from 50 

to 250; the total number of volunteers, to over 550 - providing a pool of people who 

already were committed to supporting the efforts of the sheriff on an emergency basis. 

Second, in response to an increase in drug trade in their communities in the 1980’~~ a 

few towns and villages had previously organized groups to work with the sheriffs office 

and other agencies to shut down dealing. Although, according to one of the sheriWs 

early community organizers, the collective community effort disappeared when the drug 

trade was suppressed, the collaborations established at that time were easily 

reconstituted for the more recent community patrols. 

a 

Conducting surveys As discussed above, well before COPS efforts were under 

way, a number of city and county administrations used surveys as a way of determining 

residents’ priorities and concerns. However these surveys focused on many quality of 

life issues and the information was typically summarized for the whole city. To learn 

more about citizens’ crime concerns 

Humboldt County published some 

questions in the local paper, the TimesStandard. However, to gather more 

detailed information for specific areas, 

most law enforcement departments in the 

LlNC consortium found it more effective to 

design and distribute their own 

questionnaires. 

I told the driver [of a speeding car] to pull 

over and walked up to the car. She [the 

driver] was all red and embarrassed. 

She had been at that meeting and she 

was one of the people who most wanted 

the speeding to stop. She just said ‘I 

know I deserve it and I’m not at all mad 

you stopped me; but we don’t have to tell 

the others do we?’ - COPS officer 

e 37/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
To gather more detailed information for specific areas, officers began to design and 

carry out their own surveys. The NOP supervisor in the Eureka Police Department 

developed and widely distributed a one page mail-back Community & Officer Problem 

Spots form; residents provide information to the Neighborhood Policing Unit about 

“suspicious persons,” “suspicious drug abuse and other problems” and “vehicles” and 

where the problems are occurring. Optional information provided by the respondent 

includes their name, address, and telephone number. The supervisor provides copies 

of completed forms to the NOP officers assigned to the area where the problem has 

been reported (and periodically checks back with the officers to see what action has 

been taken) . 

a 

Although Rapid City Police routinely hires a student in criminal justice to conduct a 

quality assurance survey of residents, the Cop-of-the Block officers were each asked to 

conduct a door- to-door survey of problems and concerns in their area. This 

“I didn’t know what to expect and neither did they. I had been in the area many times, 

but usually to break up a fight or arrest someone for drugs or to take a report. It was 

the first that they had an officer knock on the door just to say, ‘hello, how can I help 

you.’ Some of them took a while before they wanted to talk to me. I learned that there 

are some really good people who live in [the area] along with the really bad people, 

and they learned that police don’t just walk up and arrest someone just because they 

are a [minority member]. - Cop-of-the-Block 

accomplished two purposes. The survey provided a positive reason to introduce 

themselves to the community members. In addition, it provided a basis for calling a 

community meeting, reporting the findings, to begin to build consensus about actions 

that could be taken to resolve the problems, and to organize community groups to 

address the concerns. 

0 

Redding NPU officers mailed out surveys to residents and businesses in neighborhood 

designated as first COPPS areas but later as they added areas shifted to door-to-door 

surveys. Whether mailed or door-to-door distribution, they followed up with meetings to 

describe the COPPS philosophy and set priorities. Subsequently, they held monthly 

meetings to get feedback from the residents about progress toward solving problems 

and meeting concerns. In partnership with the schools Redding also conducted student 

surveys to find out whether or not students felt safe in their school and neighborhoods, 

what keep them from feeling safe, and their ideas for making their schools or 

neighborhoods safer (some very reasonable such as “have police patrol around school 

before it starts and when it gets out for speeder~”’~ 

Working with researchers to inform COPS The LlNC consortium was initially 

formed for the purpose of carrying out locally-initiated policing research sponsored by 

the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. As 

part of this researcher/police partnership (described in more detail in another report), 

38/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
LlNC developed structured methods for COPS officers to convene neighborhood 

groups and learn about crimes of violence being committed against women, whether 

victims were reporting these assaults to police, if not, why not, and what the women and 

girls thought they could do in partnership with the police to reduce violence. The 

officers were trained to “listen and learn; not teach or preach.” Although some were 

clearly disturbed by what they learned, several officers later led efforts to address 

issues raised. 

e 

Using new technologies Coincidental to the development of COPS was the 

development of the departments’ use of computers and the internet to engage citizens / 

“We agreed that burglaries would be a 

good starting point for the subject matter. 

We have received a lot of local praise 

and recognition regarding the site. It 

seems to be a good P.R. tool and a good 

information source for Eureka folks” 

Officer Jim Armstrong, Eureka Police 

Department. 

interest in cooperative policing. Eureka I 

Police had one of the first law enforcement 

department web sites. The site provided 

descriptions about programs including their 

“NOP” unit and information about 

opportunities for working in cooperation 

with the department. 

The site also presented crime maps. The 

first map listed the residential and 

commercial and vehicle burglaries that took 

place in Eureka in the first months of 1996. 

The maps also appeared in the local newspaper along with their home page internet 

location (URL). Within the first month they logged 800 visitors and soon received 20 to 

30 “hits” a day. The officer who functioned as the “web master” was encouraged to 

participate in an ongoing publicity campaign to publicize the site. 

0 

As more and more people began to respond to these efforts to learn about their 

concerns they became willing and able to join with the officers in carrying out projects 

for addressing these concerns. 

0 39/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Stage 3: Police focus shaped by meetings with neighborhood groups: priority for 

coordination for short-term projects addressing specific legal concerns 

Other than in Rapid City where the Chief of Staff provided clear direction for COPS, 

officers assigned to COPS typically reported walking around in a fog for a few months 

trying to figure out how to tackle issues that didn’t involve criminal pursuits. They knew 

how to deal with drug dealers and other bad guys. They knew actions to take in cases 

involving kids who were clearly delinquent. 

I But many of the concerns they heard about had more to do with gray-area issues 

involving groups of people who lived, visited or had businesses in their area. These 

included parolees, offenders on probation who had previously committed crimes in the 

neighborhood and now were back, and mentally-ill or down and out transients who, 

while feared by residents, legally were neither a threat to themselves or others; groups 

of youth who by-and-large were good kids but whose loud and frenetic activities often 

got on the nerves of adults; absentee landlords who walked the fine edge between legal 

culpability and rights of private property in permitting their properties to deteriorate, 

immigrant groups who did not understand the customs of mainstream America and 

whose native customs offended those whose families had immigrated a century before; 

members of local Indian tribes who had deep hostility for the descendants of European 

immigrants who had systematically attempted genocide and the community that still 

denied their human rights, and the European descendants who bitterly resented the 

changes taking place in their formerly all white communities. The types of issues that 

generally caused them most personal concern involved families with young children, 

independent of race of ethnicity, that were living in deep poverty under conditions that 

literally could turn their stomachs - families in which the women were often battered, 

the babies neglected, and the older children often hungry, literally freezing during 

weeks with sub-zero weather, and not infrequently victims of sexual assault. 

e 

The officers who had engaged in the most vigorous outreach activities gained the 

confidence of people in the community, including elders and spokespeople for different 

ethnic groups. This gave them the confidence to “think beyond the box” and take the 

lead in the following types of projects. 

Projects carried out in partnership with groups of neighborhood residents 

Neighborhood clean-ups organized by joint efforts of COPS officers and community 

residents were among the most common projects carried out by the departments in the 

LlNC consortium. Officers of all ranks recruited by the COPS officer and residents of all 

ages and backgrounds worked side by side to rid streets, vacant lots, pocket parks, 

playgrounds, and fields of moldy mattresses, torn tires, broken furniture parts, and 

cumulatively across cities and counties tons of other litter. Weeds and bramble that 

previously screened hiding places for derelicts and drunks were chopped down and 

cleared. The results were immediate and dramatic. Whole areas were transformed 

e 40/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
from places neighbors feared to walk to places where they began to congregate and 

socialize. 

More ambitious projects were taken on to solve youth problems and provide places for 

children to play safely. In several cities and towns, where parks had been taken over 

by bullies and grounds strewn with empty liquor bottles and cigarette butts, the parks 

were cleared, play equipment restored and intensively policed until the use shifted back 

to children and families. In a residential neighborhood in Rapid City that had no nearby park, officers and community members cleared a neglected field of trash and then 

built a playground. In Redding, in an area where youth skate-boarding on sidewalks 

and streets were endangering themselves and others, officers led the community in 

transforming a vacant lot into a challenging skate-board park. In Shasta County, in an 

isolated community where youth legitimately declared they had ‘no place to go, nothing 

to do,’ the COPPS officer located an unused barrack which the community relocated in 

an area central to the community, refurbished, and opened for the use of adolescents 

who would like a place to “hang out” with there friends. Supervised by citizen patrol 

participants, it is reportedly a welcome addition to the community. 

During these projects officers and residents of all ages and backgrounds worked sideby-side. They had an opportunity to get to know each other on a personal basis. And 

shared the satisfaction of seeing an immediate and dramatic improvement in the area. 

Residents praised the officers for their lead and hard work and officers took pride and 

developed a stake in the community. 

“I’m the police officer for this neighborhood - this 

neighborhood is like my home. I’m glad to have people visit, 

but since it’s my home, I need to keep an eye on what’s going 

on ... and if people aren’t behaving right, I ask them to leave. 

You understand that, don’t you?” - COPS officer 

interviewing a shifty-looking loiterer 

Cooperative agreements with landlords While COPS officers could take the lead in 

organization projects involving public property, privately owned property required 

different approaches. Eureka COPS officers implemented their NOP nuisance 

abatement approach. The approach, which incorporates the principles of problem 

oriented policing (POP) is coordinated with other city and county departments and 

draws on similar components previously developed in Portland, Oregon, and Oakland 

and San Diego, California. To refine their problem-solving skills, officers from Eureka 

have visited the San Diego Police Department, one of the first cities to apply the POP 

model. 

e 4l/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
The Eureka Police Department produced and published a Nuisance Abatement Guide, 

Community Solutions for Community Problems, that described steps landlords and 

property owners could legally take to prevent drug dealers or other offenders from 

moving into their housing units, the (SARA-model) for solving prpblems that were 

occurring, specific information relevant for problems involving illegal drugs, and laws 

and codes that could be used by landlords and other property owners to take actions 

against people creating community problems, and a list of 24 contacts and their 

telephone numbers in state, city, and county departments for advice and cooperation in 

problem solving. 

Cooperative COPS projects with the business community Individual members of i 

the business community also took part in many projects described above. In addition, 

COPS officers called on and received their active support for many other projects. Not 

surprisingly they appeared especially willing to cooperate in projects that resulted in 

reducing youth vandalism and promoting business. Two innovative projects carried out 

in California are the Burney Halloween egg throw and the Redding COPS-dollars 

incentive program. 

The Bumey Halloween egg throwing event was initiated by deputy sheriffsiCOPPS 

officers to redirect the destructive egging of stores, houses and public buildings by 

community youth on Halloween. The deputies who are assigned to work in that part of 

the county (and required to live there) pulled a number of community organizations 

together to clear a tract in a nearby forested area, bus kids to the site, provide helmets, 

divide them into teams, and provide them with dozens of eggs to pelt each other. The 

egg toss is followed by a bonfire and refreshments including hot dogs and hamburgers. 

All funds and materials, including eggs, are provided by local businesses and fraternal 

organizations. Since the event became an annual option for the youth, reports of 

Halloween crime and vandalism were dramatically reduced, homeowners in Burney 

(including the deputy sheriffs) and business owners no longer have to spend the week 

after Halloween scrubbing dried egg off their buildings. And, at the site where the egg 

toss is held, the trees and other plants appear to be thriving. 

a 

Redding Neighborhood Police Unit “COPS dollars” were an incentive for youth to 

contribute rather than vandalize. Groups of youth who complete neighborhood 

improvement projects such as painting fences or cleaning out streams are rewarded 

with COPS dollar certificates. Endorsed by local merchants, COPS dollars can be 

redeemed at restaurants and other businesses popular with community youth. As a 

result, boys in formerly blighted areas who use to hang out and get into trouble and now 

helping adult residents maintain an attractive environs. 

Local businesses have also been persuaded by COPS officers to provide materials and 

incentives for improving neighborhoods. In many communities, businesses have been 

providing paint for graffiti removal and for assisting elderly residents keep up the 

appearance of their homes. In Rapid City, to persuade residents in a deteriorated 

42COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
neighborhood to improve their properties, the COP-on-the-Block officer held a 

community meeting and invited real estate agents to attend. Once the agents 

explained the increase in home values that were realized from fixing broken porches, 

cleaning up yards, and planting trees and gardens, the neighborhood literally began to 

bloom. 

a 

Cooperative COPS projects with faith organizations Previous to implementing 

COPS most departments in the LlNC consortium had strong ties to faith communities. 

Many officers were active participants and lay leaders in local religious congregations. 

Many departments had volunteer clergy programs. For exampie, in Rapid City, a 

number of clergy did ride-a-longs for several hours each month conducting outreach to 

arrestees and their families and counseling officers who were coping with personally or 

professionally stressful events. As COPS progressed, clergy were called on to 

participate or take the lead in projects to address community problems as COPS 

officers became aware of them. 

For one example, In Redding, a COPS officer worked with one church to productively 

employ vagrants in exchange for meals and services. The project was reported on by 

the local paper and became a source of pride for all involved. 

Salvage: Police, church clean up ’hood 

Neighborhood Police Unit officers have joined forces with a church pastor to cleanup the 

Parkview neighborhood and to provide free lunches. 

... homeless people arrive regularly at the church to pick up trash. At noon, they shed their 

orange vests and tools provided by the Redding Police Department and head inside the 

gray church building for lunch. ... Supervised by D.C. Wright, a former transient who works 

for the church, the cleanup crew has covered the entire neighborhood - ridding it of nearly 

all discarded items on streets and alleys. Candace L. Brown, Page 1. Feb. 27, 1996 

Rapid City Police called on their clergy to address one important barrier to domestic 

violence victims suffering silently. As an outcome of the locally-initiated policing 

research methods (described above) designed to learn more about violence against 

women, the Rapid City Police Department officers found that one reason victims were 

not reporting being battered was based on their perception that clergy placed a higher 

priority on family loyalty and preservation than on their own personal safety. Beginning 

with the clergy attending a meeting of the Rapid City ministerial union, officers 

conducted an outreach to almost all clergy serving local congregations to come 

together and address this problem. As a result, many clergy were trained along side 

police officers for domestic violence response. And most, although not all, clergy 

coordinated a “super-Sunday” victim outreach preaching from their own pulpits that 

women who were victims of domestic violence should seek help and not remain silent. 

, 

431COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Cooperative COPS projects with nonprofit service organizations In the past, most 

of the departments in the LlNC consortium had established firm ties with fraternal 

community service organizations; as COPS innovative projects proliferated they, as in 

the past, supported the efforts of officers providing small sums of money and turning 

out to lend a hand. Many of the departments also had ties to organizations serving 

boys in the community such as Boy Scouts; several departments sponsored their own 

Boy Scout Explorer Posts and officers, former boy scouts themselves, led the Posts. 

a 

However, for many departments, cooperative projects with nonprofit organizations 

serving girls and women was new. The primary exception was in Rapid City and 

Pennington County, where the police and sheriffs departments had at various times 

cooperated with Girls Clubs of Rapid City. COPS projects presented opportunities for 

strengthening this relationship and in other areas of the country forging new alliances. 

One such partnership was formed between the Pocatello Police Department and the 

YWCA. Funds created by the Violence Against Women Act and provided through the 

state grants administered by the Office of Justice Programs was used to create teams 

of police officers and volunteer advocates who responded to incidents of domestic 

violence. The involvement of these volunteers was applauded by officers who 

appreciated the immediate intervention and follow-up provided by the advocates. 

According to the YWCA Executive Director who recruited and trained the volunteers, 

the team effort led to a significant increase in the number of women victims who 

received services. And based on observations and reports from officers, the team 

approach resulted in an increased understanding by officers of battered women and the 

need for referrals to multiple agencies. However, once the federal grant disappeared, 

there were no funds to maintain the professional staff who coordinated and trained the 

volunteers. Much to the dismay of the volunteers, the officers and the professional 

service providers, the effort came to a halt, as did many of the innovative projects. 

0 

Project Cooperative projects that were generally most enduring and held most potential 

for developing into longer term and sustained programs were those formed with field 

staff in other public agencies and educational institutions with a steady stream of 

funding. 

Cooperative COPS projects involving other criminal justice agencies Although 

criminal justice agencies are often envisioned as parts of a system, in practice 

cooperation is not commonplace. The focus on community services helped bring these 

agencies together. In Humboldt County, the probation department was one of the first 

agencies to attempt to refocus from management of individual offenders all over the 

county to community-based supervision of offenders living in the same areas. One of 

the communities that was most vulnerable to crime by repeat offenders, in many cases 

was the Hoopa Valley community on the Hoopa tribes reservation. 

a 44/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
.because many tribal members distrust “outsiders”, 

particularly law enforcement, our role was one of set 

designerhcene painter, and maybe, to receive credit for 

part of the “play”. ..the meeting was productive - people 

formed committees and future meetings will include 

progress reports on specific issues - over 180 people 

LlNC in 1996 by the Humboldt Valley Department of 

Probation 

attended. - Hoopa Valley Team. 1995. Report provided to 

Enough trust had been established between the county criminal justice agencies and 

the Hoopa community to continue the effort - and to eventually win the right for the 

tribal police to be trained along with the Sheriffs deputies and cross-deputized. And 

the alliance among the Hoopa-based agencies and the criminal justice agencies 

eventually carried forward into longer term plans for addressing chronic problems - 

including domestic violence. While the Sheriff made a major role in this development, 

the emerging emphasis on community-focused services on the part of the Humboldt 

County district Attorney and especially the Humboldt County Probation Department was 

the driving force in the formation of the team. 

concerted effort of community 

probation and policing would 

benefit all. An alliance to reach 

out to the Hoopa community 

was formed between county 

criminal justice system 

Hoopa tribal lands that were 

largely staffed by Indians. 

agencies and agencies on the 

Eureka Police Department COPS efforts too greatly benefitted from the developing 

stress on community probation and the number of long term problems jointly addressed 

by officers in both agencies multiplied. As in the now famous Boston effort, officers in 

the Eureka Police and the Humboldt County Probation worked shoulder to shoulder to 

address the precipitous rise in youth violence including drive-by shootings that the city, 

as many others in the country, had experienced. Together team identified the most 

serious offenders, warned youth in areas experiencing the most violence about 

consequences of subsequent incidents, and took immediate and coordinated action 

including home visits and frequent curfew checks when incidents occurred. As in other 

45/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
cities in which this form of coordinated community police/probation community action 

took place, most youth responded the way youth naturally do when given clear rules 

and clear consequences -the violence diminished. A few who persisted to be violent 

offenders were removed from the community. 

Cooperative projects with schools Although several of the departments in the LlNC 

consortium continued to view the primary function of their school-based COPS officers 

as delinquency and violence deterrence through onsite patrol, many officers formed 

partnerships with schools administrators and guidance counselors to reduce truancy 

and other problems that harmed the development of children and adolescents. For 

reduction, COPS officers and principals together visited homes of children who were 

chronically absent. Often, the appearance of the principal and a uniformed officer was 

a sufficiently strong message to parents of the seriousness of their child skipping school 

and immediately resulted in more regular attendance. But in a number of cases, the 

home visits revealed serious problems that warranted connecting the family with 

community service providers; these problems included mothers’ ultimately diagnosed 

as being clinically depressed, previously unreported domestic violence, and extreme 

cases of child neglect. 

example, in Redding, in addition to the officer who devoted full time to truancy I 

In such cases the principal, officer, and guidance counselors worked together to 

create a larger team of service providers to bolster the families ability to provide the 

care and support the students and their families needed. 

II Sometimes the parents were not even home, food was inadequate, living conditions were II unsanitary and illegal drugs were present. Robert P. Blankenship, Chief of Police, Redding 

In California, one forum for addressing complex problems affecting student attendance 

is through meetings of multidisciplinary student attendance review boards (SARBS) at 

which a team of educators, social service providers, child advocates, and other 

representatives from youth services meet with parents or guardians and individual 

students who have been chronically absent. The objective of the team is to come up 

with a formal plan to put the student back on a track to complete his or her education. 

The addition of the school-based COPS officers to these teams have added a 

component of legal authority to this process. Moreover, in Eureka, at the suggestion of 

the youth/ethnic liaison officer, SARB meetings were relocated from the schools to the 

police department; since this change, there reportedly has been a significant reduction 

of parents and students who fail to show up for SARB meetings scheduled to discuss 

their case. 

Other problems COPS officers identified as a cause of truancy were more 

commonplace but also difficult to address. For example a recurrent problem which 

came to the attention of school-based officers was head lice. School staff were 

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 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
convinced that certain groups of neglectful families were to blame for not following 

specific instructions about steps to take get rid of the lice. Some suggested that the 

children be removed from their homes. School officers who had frequent contacts with 

families as part of their community policing efforts were not convinced that these were 

really cases of neglect. Communication between officers in the LlNC consortium 

(described in another report) helped confirm this impression. The school officers 

realized that the problem was not confined to a specific population in their own city. 

On the contrary this was problem experienced by many different groups of children 

across the country. Some suspected that the instructions provided to families were not 

effective solutions. LlNC was asked to find out if research provided any insights. 

Findings of epidemiologic research confirmed the officers’ suspicions. Strains of lice 

had developed that are resistant to medications schools recommended for use. Other 

research showed that more effective medications were highly toxic and not advisable to 

use. Once provided to the officers who requested the information, the findings guided 

the officers to seek problem-solving measures without long-term negative 

consequences for the health and mental-health of the children and their families. 

In addition to addressing violence that had escalated in public places, in Eureka, the 

police and probation joined the school administration and other youth serving agencies 

to address problems of violence, weapons use, chronic truancy, a growing number of 

“wannabe gang” misbehavior, and other forms of delinquency occurring in and around 

schools. One of the first efforts was the collaborative production of two brief but cogent 

pamphlets to address parental fears about their children becoming involved in gangs. 

One pamphlet, How to Discourage your Children from Joining Gangs, provided 

common sense advice about steps a parent could take - most involved developing 

good parenting skills that have long fostered positive childhood development. The 

second provided more information about large city California gangs and neo-Nazi 

groups whose behavior was being imitated by Humboldt youth, the consequences of 

this gang like behavior, and a list of a spectrum of resources available for these young 

people and their concerned parents. 

Realizing that misbehavior, such ‘gang’ conflict or fights over girlfriends or boyfriends, 

that occurred during the school hours often had implications for misconduct that 

followed in the before- and after-school or weekend hours and vice versa, Eureka 

started cross-agency weekly meetings very early on Monday mornings to review 

incidents of delinquency that had occurred and the status of students who were 

involved. The team quickly realized that, for most youth, a “talk” with a police officer 

and school counselor and in relevant cases, also a probation officer, was adequate to 

prevent continued misbehavior. However, they also found that some students were 

dealing with learning disabilities, disruptions at home, and a complex of problems that 

required coordinated community services. The effort had obvious results. Expulsion 

offences which had quadrupled between 1990 and 1994, were reduced by more than 

half by 1995; and expulsions for assaults in particular were more than five times less 

frequent. 

47/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Stage 4: Police focus formed within cross-agencylcommunity-wide coalitions; 

priority for collaboration for longer-term programs to prevent crime and 

delinquency 

Knowledge of the law can help you better understand your rights, more easily meet 

your reponsibilities and make your life more meanin@l- Youth Guidebook: A 

Student & Parent Guide to Juvenile Laws and Juvenile Services in Shasta County 

In virtually all departments in the LlNC consortium, individual COPS officers were more 

or less encouraged to develop and carry out short-term projects in partnership with 

groups of citizens and with staff in other organizations who laterally were in analogous 

positions (for example first-line police officers with first-line probation officers), forming 

citizen and cross-agency coalitions for carrying out longer term and more complex 

COPS approaches appeared to take place when the following factors were in place. 

The Chief or Sheriff was convinced that the long-term benefits outweighed 

the costs in fiscal terms as well as in public relations benefits. 

Primary decision-makers in collaborating organizations were also 

convinced that their investment of resources also would have long-term 

fiscal as well as other more immediate benefits 

Citizen and civilian participation were grounded in ongoing positive social 

incentives as opposed to negative reactions to a highly publicized crime. 

The relationship between key decision-makers was one of mutual respect 

as opposed to intense personal or partisan dislike. 

In several cities and counties, these factors were realized in part as outcomes of shortterm projects. For example, in Rapid City code abatement projects reportedly were 

found to benefit the Police Department in reduction of complaints involving specific 

properties, the city in terms of an increase in fines collected, the citizens in terms of an 

increase in property values and neighborhood pride, and an enhancement of an already 

good relationship between the city council and police department. As a result, the city 

hired a “code officer” whose job was devoted to working with the police, other agencies, 

and community residents on an ongoing basis to monitor and when necessary take 

action in regard to property owners responsible for blight. 

48/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Graffiti removal too has become collaborative standard operating procedure in Rapid 

involving the Police Department, in particular the Gang Task Force (who identify types 

of graffiti), the Criminal Investigation Unit (who keep records of vandalism), and the 

Cop-of-the-Block officers who take photographs and then obliterate the graffiti, 

community organizations who paint over the obliterated graffiti on public property, and 

when graffiti is on commercial property, business owners who either repaint or provide 

paint for community groups. The officer designated to coordinate the effort was 

appointed by the commander of the Rapid City Gang Task Force (with the approval of 

the Chief of Police) and works in close coordination with the Rapid City Department of 

Parks and the Coordinator for the Rapid City Volunteers. 

0 

I 

Very similar results accrued from projects involving abandoned vehicle abatement in 

many of the LlNC consortium cities and counties. These approaches generally began 

as short term projects taken on by one or two committed volunteers or paraprofessionals and have become part of standard operations. In Shasta County, for just 

one example, vehicle abatement is now carried out by a paid (non-sworn) community 

service officers. After a brief training about abatement laws and procedures to follow in 

having the vehicles removed from public and private lands, the abandoned vehicle 

abatement project directors have achieved remarkable results in the numbers of 

unsightly discarded cars and trucks they have had towed away at the owners’ expense. 

Abandoned automobiles are no longer a common sight in Shasta County an 

improvement much appreciated by many in the county. 

In addition to projects addressing quality of life issues that have become continuing 

long-term COPS approaches, several cities and counties in the LlNC consortium have 

built on initial projects and instituted long-term COPS approaches for dealing with 

complex crime-related community issues. They have devoted time and resources to 

cementing relationships with a spectrum of agencies to reduce crime and delinquency 

and support opportunities for residents to improve their lives. The factors that seems to 

be most important in sustaining such programs go well beyond the factors mentioned 

above that promote the initial implementation of long-term programs. These are 

described in the two next examples. 

0 

Factors that help sustain longer-term COPS approaches: two examples of 

COPS approaches for reducing the costs of delinquency and failure to 

thrive 

While school-based officers are enthusiastically welcomed additions in virtually all cities 

and counties where LlNC consortium departments are based, two departments, the 

Bannock County Sheriff and the Redding Police Department, have made extraordinary 

progress in collaborating with schools and other youth serving agencies to implement 

relatively comprehensive long-term COPS approaches for reducing delinquency and 

promoting wholesome adolescent development. The basic principles that have guided 

their approaches are essentially the same. 

0 49/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
H Collaborate with community organizations to speak with one voice and 

provide adolescents with clear rules, clear rewards for following the rules 

and clear consequences for breaking the rules. Together, provide 

immediate rewards and consequences that have been promised. 

Coordinate with community organizations to provide a series of safety 

nets and support for adolescents who are having difficulty following rules 

and achieving normal stages of development 

Both agencies cooperated with their school and other community organization to spell 

out in a youth guidebook in simple terms the laws that apply to juveniles and services 

available to help them meet legal expectations. 

Both departments worked hand in hand with their communities to learn where, when, 

and why students were most likely to get into trouble. And both departments found very 

creative ways to redirect youth from these pitfalls. Given the differences in the size of 

the departments, the communities they were policing, and the resources available to 

them, although the principles and intents were the same, aside from publishing clear 

rules and resources, their practices were not at all the same. As in earlier stages of 

COPS, Redding Police Department used approaches that relied on teams of COPS 

officers working together with the community to solve youth problems and promote 

healthy development. While in Bannock County individual deputies took the lead for 

the department in a spectrum of sustained collaborative efforts - calling on other 0 deputies and the Sheriff himself when needed. 

An exemplary approach for cementing COPS relationships 

In the Bannock County (Idaho) Sheriffs Office, Deputy Howard Manwaring, among 

other officers, was given the green light by the sheriff to develop a position and role for 

collaborating with other agencies in addressing an issue in which he personally had 

deep interest and commitment: reducing youth problems and delinquency. Given this 

goal, the Deputy works closely and productively with other deputies, Pocatello police, 

the courts, probation, schools and other youth serving agencies - as well as the kids 

and their families. As described below, his activities encompass a range of delinquency 

prevention approaches including coordinating on a day- to- day basis with the juvenile 

court, schools, and juvenile probation to make sure that youth who have committed 

delinquent acts receive prompt attention and consequences for their actions, directing 

diversions programs for first-time juvenile offenders and their parents for clarifying 

expectations for and responsibilities of youth , and directing the “Sheriffs Camp” that 

provides a frequently first opportunity for adolescents to face and meet challenges with 

the support of officers and other adult mentors. The factors that foster his ability to do 

so - both departmental and extramural - are essentially the same as those that help 

promote productive COPS approaches by other officers in the Bannock County Sheriffs 

0 SO/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Department and by officers in the other partner departments. 

Extramural factors that promote community change for the better through 

community-oriented policing 

Fiscal arrangements in which two or more agencies provide support for 

officers. Manwaring’s position, Juvenile Court Deputy, is funded by the courts as well 

as the Sheriff. As in positions jointly supported by police/sheriffs and schools, this 

arrangement seems to: 

Diminish “turf” issues between the participating agencies, such as 

access to records 

a Increase implementation of “seamless” services such as, in 

Manwaring’s case, literally following kids from arrest to detention to 

adjudication to disposition; and as a result 

a Prevent people from “falling through cracks in the system.” 

Physical arrangements which increase officers’ ability to continually 

communicate with people being served and staff in other agencies providing 

related services. All of our partner departments have realized the need to get officers 

out of their cars and into the community. However, most still spend a large fraction of 

time in areas accessible only to other officers. Manwaring’s “office,” shared by a 

member of the court staff, is in the court’s reception area with a glass partition 

overlooking the security gate; he can see everyone entering and leaving through the 

front door. In addition to increasing security for the building, this arrangement allows 

him to quickly coordinate all activities planned for that day with the court staff, remind 

attorneys and other practitioners about interagency and community meetings, and 

discuss informally with the kids arriving for court, where they were when they got into 

trouble, with whom, who supplied them with alcoholic beverages (if that is the case), 

and what they need to do in the future to stay out of trouble. 

a 

Assignment of important responsibilities rather than mundane tasks. 

Before Manwaring was assigned to his positions, there were reportedly long delays - 

at times months - between kids being arrested, detained, adjudicated, and sanctioned. 

The process was thought to be neither fair nor effective. Manwaring was assigned the 

responsibility for working with Judge Brian Murray to correct this situation. Manwaring 

and Judge Murray created a job for him that included routine tasks, so as to assure that 

kids’ are given immediate consequences for breaking the law. Rather than a supervisor 

assigning a series of record keeping, scheduling, court room preparation, and other 

tasks which officers normally abhor - these routine activities always get placed by 

Manwaring on his own daily “to do list” but in the context of his larger and more 

51/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
important responsibilities. For a specific example, on a daily basis Manwaring checks 

the status of kids who are in detention and their status vis a vis the courts. Rather than 

just getting “body counts,” Manwaring makes sure kids who have been brought in 

during the previous night are added to the court calendar for that day. He also checks 

on whether specific kids are receiving services they need and, if not, what can be done 

to make sure they do. Sometimes this is as simple as arranging for a guardian to pick 

up a youngster who was scheduled to be released but is still detained. At other times 

follow-up involves more complex steps such as those needed to place a juvenile in a 

treatment facility. 

a 

Partners other than police or sheriff deputies When Manwaring gets in his I 

car to respond to an incident involving a youth, his partner is commonly a probation 

officer. The time riding to a school or other area is productively spent reviewing what 

each knows about the incident and the young person and how best to deal with the 

child and others at the scene. The exchanges are evidence of the respect each has for 

their partner’s position, yet the good-natured bantering between Manwaring and the 

more experienced probation staff also make clear the comfort level they have 

established. The pay-off of their coordination is the response from school staff, others 

in the community, and the children themselves. Their combined presence most 

immediately appears to dispel hostility that is common during an arrest process and 

allays concerns about delinquent youth suddenly becoming uncontrollably violent or 

fleeing. These partnerships also send a strong signal to the kids, their families, and 

others in the community that actions are being taken not simply as punishment but in 

the best interest of the juvenile. 

Regular and active participation in frequent cross-agency meetings for 

coordinating ongoing activities. Manwaring attends weekly meetings convened by 

Judge Murray including SROs, school administrators, student representatives, 

Pocatello police officers, juvenile probation, a representative from the DA’s office, court 

staff, and representatives from the Department of Health and Welfare. During these 

meeting those in attendance provide an update on their actions involving youth and the 

rationale for these actions, alert each other about any issues that are interfering with 

their ability to provide effective expedient services and decide how to deal with these 

issues, and to assess whether or not previously established practices or policies are 

having the intended impact. For example, a new high school was built in Bannock 

County and the building but not the grounds around it was annexed by the city. The 

Pocatello PD assigned to be the SRO in the new high school alerted the group that 

these jurisdictional arrangements prevented him from taking action when he saw kids 

breaking the law outside the high school building. Manwaring immediately suggested 

that he take the matter up with Sheriff Nielsen and see if the SRO could be deputized 

by the Sheriffs Department. Later that day, as I was meeting with the Chief Deputy, 

Sheriff Nielsen stopped in to tell him about the jurisdictional barrier and Manwaring’s 

recommended solution. Before the end of the day the details had been worked out. 

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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Readily available resources for implementing “task force” solutions to 

individual or community problems. Rather than exclusively drawing on his own 

considerable skills to solve problems involving individuals or community groups, 

Manwaring constantly and consistently considers others within and outside the Sheriffs 

department who have the authority and know-how to bring about long term solutions 

and arranges for team effort. Example include: 

a 

1) a quick hallway conference involving a delinquent child’s probation officer and 

the family attorney to figure out how to convince the child’s mother to attend 

parenting classes (the mother did attend after she was convinced by the attorney 

that the move was to help her). i 

2) several phone calls to help organize a joint effort including the regional drug 

task force and gang task force to take down a house from which, Manwaring 

heard, a growing number of kids were obtaining drugs and to deal with the group 

responsible for selling drugs. 

3) strategic planning (during Judge Murray’s weekly meeting) to address 

problems involving kids, kegs, and parties up in the hills. The strategy that was 

quickly decided on included a)at the students’ suggestion, widely publicizing new 

laws requiring a lengthy suspension of driver’s licenses of minors who have 

violated liquor laws, including articles in the school newspaper and Manwaring 

and the SRO’s talking to the students at school assemblies; b)more strictly 

enforcing and prosecuting laws that prevent businesses from selling alcohol to 

minors (2nd infractions can be charged as and prosecuted as felonies) - 

Manwaring is sending letters to all businesses that kids in court say are places 

where they purchased alcohol; c)more follow-up by detectives in cases of adults 

who have reportedly bought alcohol for minors more than once; and d)possibly 

obtaining funds available from the state to pay for overtime for officers who will 

“look for keggers.” 

The development of critical support network of people who continually 

focus on process and outcome (what’s working for whom) rather than formal 

procedure. 

professionals both inside and outside the sheriffs department who are able to set aside 

their egos, assess whether courses of action they have implemented are achieving 

valuable goals, and make mid-course correction when needed. 

Manwaring has developed his own support group - a network of 

For one example, the procedures Judge Murray has established in juvenile court 

appear to impress young offenders that they are accountable for their own actionsboth actions that led to their breaking laws and better consequential actions they can 

take immediately (for example, having court cost fees waived for appearing in 

appropriate attire) and in the future. When however, a youth appeared who did not 

have the basic skills for following the court procedures, Manwaring and members of the 

53/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
court and probation staff immediately conferred with Judge Murray and decided on a 

different course of action to help him understand the consequences of what he did and 

could not do. 

On the other hand, since Bannock County is a place where law enforcement 

officers often interact with the residents as part of their private lives in off-duty hours - 

in church, during sports activities, and in other settings (as do officers in all our partner 

departments), Manwaring is not uncommonly pressured by family members of juveniles 

to take actions resulting in young offenders avoiding accountability. In such 

circumstances, the support network once again plays an important role. 

Departmental characteristics promoting community change for the better 

through community-oriented policing 

A long history of continual self-scrutiny and increasing professionalism A 

relatively short time ago (20 years or so) according to long-term staff, the Bannock 

County sheriffs department was frequently operating more as a posse with 

questionable tactics than as a professional law enforcement agency. As in some of our 

other partner departments, a new breed of officers, including present-day senior 

administrators, joined the department with the strong belief in the mission to protect and 

serve. They had the determination to work for change and stamina to slowly recruit 

like-minded officers and discourage officers with less integrity from staying. Given 

limited positions to fill, especially positions outside the jail, they look for ways to bring in 

new staff who can professionalize duties that still lack good outcomes. 

It was clear to the Sheriff and senior staff, as well as other officers, that the juvenile 

justice system was failing kids in many ways. Manwaring had the credentials and 

professional experience in past work with Judge Murray that made senior staff 

optimistic that he could help refine the process involving kids from time of arrest 

through adjudication. 

Open doors and open communication between rank and file While the 

relationship Manwaring has developed with Judge Murray is highly visible and one key 

factor, less obvious but as important is the constant communication and rapid response 

he, as other officers, receives in the Sheriff‘s department on a daily basis. In a single 

day, for a few examples, these included 1)calling on and arranging with detectives to 

carry out targeted enforcement involving a place that kids coming to court had identified 

as a common site for underage drinking and other delinquent activity; 2)calling on and 

arranging with the jail custody staff to carry out activities as part of the “Short Stop” 

diversion program’ planned for that night; and 3)calling on the Sheriff who arranged for 

‘Short Stop is a diversion program for delinquents and their parents designed to 

strengthen family attachment - a factor that growing body of research has shown to be 

e 54/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

key in 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
the Pocatello PD SRO to be deputized as discussed in the task’force meeting. Each of 

these discussions took under ten minutes of Manwaring’s time, including time spent in 

locating and contacting supervisors, discussing the problem to be addressed, 

discussing a possible strategy to implemented, answering questions about the problem 

and strategy, and receiving a decision and any steps Manwaring needed to take next. 

0 

Supervisors’ trust in officers to know and to apply departmental priorities 

- to protect and serve As officers in all law enforcement departments, through out 

the day, Manwaring is contacted by dispatchers to respond to immediate calls from 

service - in Manwaring’s typically services involving juveniles such as arrest and 

transport. However, unlike officers in many departments, officers in Bannock County 

have been given the discretion to prioritize calls and, in discussion with the dispatchers, 

make decisions about who will do what, and when. In Manwaring’s case for example, 

alternative arrangements are made for another officer to transport if Manwaring 

assesses that his time is better spent on another activity. 

The discretion granted to officers appears to be deeply rooted in supervisors’ trust that 

their officers’ process of prioritizing calls takes into account that their primary job is to 

protect and serve - and in fact, officers not infrequently referred to these priorities as 

integral to their decision making. 

For the most part, supervisors’ trust seems warranted. On the one hand, the top 

administration recognizes the steps they must to take to help maintain the integrity and 

focus of their officers - they work hard to assure that officers are fairly compensated 

for their jobs - both in terms of fiscal compensation and departmental and public 

recognition for jobs well done. However, when an individual officer corrupts 

fundamental departmental priorities, disappointment among the supervisory staff is 

deep, keenly felt and expressed, and severely reprimanded. 

0 

Open minds for promising ideaslbetter ways for accomplishing mission 

As in several of our partner departments, officers are actively encouraged to “think 

outside the box” “beyond the dots” of reactive policing, come up with innovative 

methods for preventing crime, discuss them within in the department including with 

supervisors and top administrators, and suggest how the ideas could be put into action. 

When Sergeant Tom Foltz came back from a LlNC consortium departmental exchange 

visit to ReddingEhasta County, California, he returned with a notebook full of ideas to 

discuss within the department with the other sergeants, officers including Manwaring, 

and departmental supervisors. Manwaring, as other officers, sifted through the mass of 

materials and ideas that Tom brought home and discussed with them, selected those 

that appeared useful for enhancing services involving juveniles in Bannock County, 

proposed refinements to better fit Bannock County, and brought the ideas to fruition by 

preventing delinquency. 

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 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
involving local networks. 

For one example, Sergeant Foltz brought back from Redding/Shasta County a 

compendium of resources that could readily be provided to youtH and families. As a 

result, Manwaring now has available for youth, families and other community members 

a 50-page Guide to Human Resources & Community Resources Bannock County 1999, 

compiled by the University of Idaho and Pocatello Head Start. 

a 

Routine tasks and functions seen as opportunities for carrying out basic 

mandates and creating change for the better Throughout the department, rather 

than eschewing routine activities that could be assigned to lower-ranked officers or 

civilians, assignments are taken on as vehicles for accomplishing a larger mission. The 

Sheriff teaches part of Short Stop along with Manwaring - which can send a strong 

message to young delinquents and their parents that the program is meant to be taken 

seriously and is not just a slap on the wrist. (And judging by the reaction of one parent 

who was clearly and vocally annoyed that he had to spend time attending Short Stop - 

until the Sheriff appeared, when he settled down and stopped complaining -the 

message is heard). As a means of bringing new ideas into the department, the 

Undersheriff willingly takes on transport duties to or from jurisdictions carrying out 

exemplary approaches which he can learn about while on site. Manwaring, in turn, 

uses every minute with youth whom he is transporting or accompanying to and from 

detention and the court, to learn about them, their background, and their resources, and 

the circumstances in which they got into trouble to better plan a strategy with Judge 

Murray and others on how to deal with them or problems in the community. 

Assignment according to individual strengths and talents. During a LlNC 

consortium departmental visit to Bannock County, visiting officers immediately 

recognized that Manwaring is very good at doing his job. This is no accident. It is a 

result of the administration’s willingness to assign him this position in recognition of his 

strengths including the ability to handle a myriad of details, excellent communication 

and collaboration skills, and a deep interest in youth. 

a 

Based on the reactions of youth and other officers who have attended Sheriffs camp, 

Manwaring also is very good at organizing this summer event involving officers and 

high-risk youth and followed by officer/youth periodic activities such as pizza parties 

during the school year. This again is no accident but a result of the administration 

building on Manwaring’s skills and the experience he has gained in his position as 

juvenile court deputy. 

Again, Manwaring is not an exceptional case of the right person for the right job. 

Throughout the department, officers are encouraged to recognize what skills they have 

to bring to the job and take on activities that they can do well. They have fine examples 

of doing this at the very top administrative positions. Their Undersheriff is a long term 

law enforcement officer and administrator who vocally acknowledges his strengths and 

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 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
his weaknesses - and demonstrates that one can have a successful career by making 

contributions based on his strengths and drawing on the strengths of others in areas in 0 which he is less talented. 

The result appears to be a department where many officers have a sense of 

accomplishment of a job well done and where there is minimal turnover even though, 

compared to other law enforcement agencies, the pay scale is relatively low. 

Job performance evaluation with focus on career development 

Evaluation of law enforcement officers generally focuses on outcomes of incidents and 

cases - arrests, citations, crimes cleared, and other measures of reactive policing. 

However, Bannock County officers such as Manwaring and others who are carrying out 

COPS functions cannot be properly assessed in those terms. 

Job performance of Pocatello Sheriffs officers and civilian staff is evaluated based on 

individual career development. Officers are encouraged to set goals and objectives, 

and evaluations incorporate an assessment of progress toward goals, barriers to 

achieving the goals, and ways in which the barriers can be overcome. 

The bottom line, salary, however, is not in sync with the focus on goal attainment nor 

assignment according to individual strengths and talents. As in other law enforcement 

departments and other government agencies, pay is determined by rank, and rank is 

tied to the numbers of other staff supervised. Therefore the administration is constantly 

in search for other incentives to reward officers whose greatest talents lie outside the 

sphere of supervising traditional police work. To some degree, job satisfaction is in 

itself an incentive. However, in several of this study’s departments, the top-level 

administrators would like to at least try an alternative pay scale system that rewards 

officers for effective crime prevention efforts. 

0 

All officers involved in selecting CEO, as in an employee-run company 

One factor that helps cement relationships within sheriffs’ offices is the participation in 

sheriffs’ elections by deputies and civilians in the department. The officers know - and 

so does the Sheriff - that accountability to the concerns of staff, as well as those to be 

protected and served, is assessed on a regular basis on election day. More important, 

however, is the realization among the officers that - if they want to be Sheriff one day 

or if they want their partner to be Sheriff one day - they need to establish and maintain 

good relationships within the department and with the community. This reality sets a 

tone that is antithetical to a rigid military type of promote-and-protect-from-within 

relationship that prevails in some police departments. 

For better and for worse, the department functions as family As in many 

departments, both sheriffs’ and police departments, the relationships among officers 

are highly personal as well as professional - familial in nature. As in families, “sibling 

rivalry” can work for and against accomplishing goals. A certain amount of “bad 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
mouthing” can be seen as the outcome of jealousy when one officer gets more positive 

attention than another. But on the other hand, competition for achieving departmental 

goals to get recognition is helpful in reaching the goals. And when push comes to 

shove, the officers know that the others are there for them - in the middle of a 

fourteen-hour fully packed work day, Manwaring will not forget to pick up the phone and 

call an officer battling a life-threatening disease to say, “Hi Buddy, how’s it going?” 

Except for the facts that they are not directly involved in the selection of their CEO and 

have less immediate access to the Chief in a larger department, individual COPS 

officers in Redding receive very similar supports to those described in the Bannock 

County deputy’s situation. Moreover, the Redding Police Department along with the city 

as a whole has moved toward a strategy for assuring that these supports - both 

departmental and extra-mural -will continue to be in place independent of changes in 

officers or heads of city agencies. 

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 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Stage 5: Police activities are developed as part of citylcounty strategic planning; 

The department formally places high priority on participating sustained, 

integrated community-based approaches for engineering more productive and 

economically-sound use of neighborhoods and redirecting situations and group 

activities that presented a high potential for harm to people or property 

Soon after community-oriented policing was initiated in Redding, some of the City’s 

leaders saw the potential of COPS as a strong component for increasing the economic 

vitality of the area, and the Chief developed a strategy for accomplishing this goal. In 

this Stage 5 level of community policing, the goal was to increase the attractiveness of 

Redding as place for major industries and businesses to locate by using COPS as a 

stimulus for creating attractive and active shopping areas and a system of strong 

services in residential neighborhoods for families with diverse backgrounds and income 

leve Is. 

The city council, city manager, and Chief recognized that this goal could not be 

achieved overnight. The obstacles that had to be overcome included the reluctance of 

better-off citizens to recognize the advantages to the city as a whole in identifying the 

and addressing the primary problems being faced on a daily basis by people in 

neighborhoods with the least private economic resources, the resistance of many police 

officers to see that addressing these problems were integral to ‘real police work’, and 

the lack of understanding among both police and staff in other city and county agencies 

about the changes that could be brought about through active collaboration and 

coordination. Together they addressed these obstacles and made steady progress 0 toward their primary goal. 

The City of Redding: A concerted public-private venture. 

The City of Redding under the leadership of the five-person city council and city 

manager had demonstrated a strong commitment to community-based services and 

problem solving from the early stages of the development of COPS. This was not left to 

chance. The Chief, who had been on the state-wide committee of law-enforcement 

representatives to promote COPPS, provided council members and heads of other 

agencies information about COPPS well before the department formed its NPU and 

kept them involved as plans for the NPU developed. 

In 1994, as directed by the council, the city staff conducted a survey of neighborhood 

problems that were a priority for the residents. Distributed to 29,500 by the utility 

company along with the November 1994 utility bill, the survey results indicated the 

existence of “pockets within neighborhoods” where residents uniformly complained 

about the same code enforcement problems including “junk, weed, trash, and wrecked 

or inoperable cars in front of dwelling units.”22 The Chief made sure that elected 

officials as well as heads of other agencies recognized that these problems were a real 

blight on the city; more than one council member was given a personal tour of the areas 

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 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
that were in most dire conditions. 

These problems were among some of the first addressed by the police NPU. And as 

the neighborhoods began to respond to these efforts, the city stimulated continuing 

progress by successfully seeking funds for home and neighborhood improvements and 

economic development and by sponsoring events for literally promoting neighborhood 

pride. For example, The Neighborhood Pride and Awards program offered cash 

incentives and building materials to community volunteers who successful bring the 

private properties in their neighborhood up to code. The awards are provided by city 

merchants who are publicly praised for their participation in the endeavor. 

e 

The local media including the newspaper, the Record Searchlight, was also a key 

partner in bolstering COPS, by providing front page stories about successes. To avoid 

self-aggrandizement which would not have been appreciated by their fellow officers, the 

astute NPU officers helped focus the media coverage on the community groups and 

individuals who worked in partnership with them. 

Once COPS had achieved their first recognizable success, the administrators and 

planners of the City of Redding began to advertise their police department and the 

Neighborhood Policing Unit as a corner stone of economic development and quality of 

life. For example, the authors of the “Redding Metro Report” stated with great pride 

that, “Redding was chosen as being among the nation’s best by placing eighth in the 

nation and second in the State for cities of 30,000 to 100,000 population. The 

Neighborhood Police Unit takes the best aspects of Community Oriented Policing and 

Problem Solving (COPPS) and applies them directly to the streets and neighborhoods 

of Redding”23. 

0 

The Chief, City Manager, and Council recognized that addressing external conditions of 

blight was only the first step in creating strong neighborhoods. Far more serious 

problems were caused by individuals and families who were chronically involved in 

criminal behavior - as victims, as offenders, or as both. While, as discussed above, 

officers began to focus on coordinated intensive supervision of repeat offenders who 

were terrorizing neighborhoods, they also recognized that longer-term measures were 

needed to break the generational cycle of crime. To do so they began to focus on ways 

to reduce delinquency, promote health childhood development, and support the ability 

of families to raise their children in crime free settings. 

Breaking the cycle of crime: The Redding focus on youth development. 

While the NPU’s initial activities focused on enforcement, including targeting juveniles 

who repeated committed delinquent acts, once youth violence began to subside the 

officers shifted to a comprehensive youth development strategy carried out in tandem 

with schools, local colleges, community organizations including those representing new 

Americans such as the South East Asian Community Task Force, and victims 

a GO/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
advocates. 

Each school in target areas was assigned two officers. As described above, one of the 

first problems cooperatively addressed by the officers and schools administrators was 

habitual truancy; officers and principals began paying visits to the homes of chronically 

absent children. As a result, not only did they identify and help address problems faced 

by individual children and families but they also gained a deep appreciation for the 

difficulties many families were experiencing in bringing up their children to be 

responsible adults - difficulties that included being victimized by a spectrum of pepple 

including neighborhood bullies, corrupt landlords, adult criminals who had moved into 

the same apartment complexes, and, in more than a few cases, men living in the 

households who were battering women while the children had no option except to 

watch. 

0 

Gradually officers began to grapple with these problems. They shifted from a case-bycase basis to a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. They did not try to carry out 

activities by themselves, but in collaboration with a host of other agencies. And rather 

than simply forming alliances with individual staff in other agencies in analogous lateral 

positions, they initiated formal ties between their Chief and Department and the heads 

of other agencies and their organizations. Some of the many approaches they 

implemented were original ideas created in response to needs they saw in their own 

communities; others were unabashedly taken from other departments who had been 

grabbling with similar community problems. Many approaches were congruent with 

approaches that researchers have identified as proven or promising for reducing crime a and delinquency; these included the following. 

w Providing opportunities for and rewarding youth for skill building, productive 

behavior. A hallmark of this approach is the Redding after-school program 

combining tutoring and recreational activities. The first after-school program 

was carried out by COPS officers in tandem with students in the education 

department in a local college, Simpson College. Developed with the assistance of 

community liaisons, the first program primarily involved adolescents who had 

recently arrived from Southeast Asians countries and who were struggling to learn 

English, keep up in their studies, and fit into the often rough and tumble world of 

American adolescents. The liaisons convinced the parents of the benefits for their 

children. The officers enticed the kids to complete the first hour of tutoring by 

offering to teach them US sports after they finished their academic lessons. And the 

tutors, mainly students from suburban white suburbs, gained the experience of 

working in a diverse urban school setting. 

The program was designed to be expanded to more schools, to involve tutors from 

other post-highschool educational programs, and to serve a growing number of 

children and teens at each school site. It became clear to NPU sergeants that 

continuation of the program required ongoing collaboration with faculty at the college 

61/COPS: Innovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
to assure maintaining the active involvement of the tutors - fully realizing that the 

activities with the officers need to be the reward for finishing “homework 

assignments. 

Visits to these programs revealed that the activities led by the COPS officers 

continue to be a source of great delight to a majority of the children, that the officers 

encourage children who are shy about participating, and that rather than spending 

the hours between school and the end of parents’ workdays in unsupervised 

settings where they often get into trouble, many of Redding’s youth are enjoying 

activities for strengthening their minds and bodies and strengthening their bonds to 

school and to their community - bonds repeatedly shown by research to prevent 

delinquency. 

Other programs provided by officers include more traditional youth approaches. The 

department has both a Young Marines chapter and a Boy Scout Explorer program. 

Several officers have volunteered to provide leadership for the productive activities 

carried by adolescents in both these groups. In keeping with the department’s 

willingness to learn from successes of other departments, officers are also 

implementing constructive programs involving officers and youth from other cities, 

such as Spokane’s Every Fifteen Minute program which essentially eliminated drunk 

driving fatalities among highschool seniors on prom night. And on a routine basis, 

officers search out and attend events in which young people are given an 

opportunity to shine and be applauded for their efforts. For example, officers keep 

informed about athletic events involving students at the schools to which they are 

assigned, attempt to attend as many of these games as possible during off-duty 

hours, and offer congratulations for individual achievements to students as they see 

them in school and the community. 

Educating youth about expectations for behavior and the consequences for 

delinquency; providing immediate consequences for delinquency, coupled 

with an opportunity to redeem themselves. 

the Youth Guidebook, the assignment of officers to high schools and junior highs, 

and the close working relationship with juvenile justice system and other youthserving agencies. 

Core elements of this approach are 

The Youth Guidebook published cooperatively by Redding Police Department, the 

Shasta County Sheriff and the Shasta County Probation Department explicitly spells 

out crime definitions and resources available to youth. Based on observations 

during ride-alongs, giving all students and parents copies of the handbook and using 

the handbook as a basis for in-class education on juvenile law appear to have 

curtailed two of the most common adolescent excuses for wrongdoing, “I didn’t 

know it was a crime,” and “There was nothing else to do.” In fact youngsters who 

are discovered breaking laws may try to cover up for other friends involved, but they 

know they have been justifiably “busted.” 

62lCOPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Redding PD COPS officers assigned fo schools work in close collaboration with the 

school administrators and faculty, school security guards, and juvenile probation and 

very importantly community members who live or work around the schools. This 

assures that youth are more closely monitored and more likely to be discovered 

when behaving in ways that are illegal and threaten their own well being. For 

example, on her way from one school to another, one officer noticed a group of boys 

off campus during the school day. As she drew closer, she saw that one boy had a 

cigarette tucked behind his ear. As she stopped to question the youth and bring 

them to school in her patrol car, a middle-age couple hailed her and led her over to 

a nearby low-growing evergreen in which was nestled a plastic bag of marijuana. 

Given their law enforcement training and powers to issue citations and make 

arrests, the officers assigned to schools are better positioned to provide immediate 

sanctions and other consequences for delinquent behavior than the school staff. 

For examples, youth who are caught smoking are typically presented with the 

alternatives of a citation with a $75 fine or attendance in a program designed to 

prevent continued smoking; youth who get into fights are presented with the 

alternatives of working out hostility without use of physical violence or being led 

away in handcuffs. 

In addition to officers assigned to schools, other officers, especially NPU officers 

assigned to specific neighborhoods, also incorporate the same approach of 

educating youth about laws, providing immediate consequences for infractions, and 

providing alternatives. For example, skate boarders are repeatedly reminded to use 

the park set aside for their use and warned that citations will be issued to those who 

persist in using sidewalks and streets in the down town area. These reminders are 

followed with citations to violators. 

A second problem involving skate boarders arose when someone started “tagging” 

the area set aside for skate boarding. The tagger remained unidentified and active 

in spite of ‘stake outs’ by patrol officers and the attempts of gang enforcement 

officers to figure out who might be defacing the park with unsightly graffiti - but the 

ardent skateboarders who had taken “ownership” of the area discovered the identity 

of the tagger, notified a school officer who in turn notified the NPU officer for the 

community. The officer immediately came up with appropriate consequences for 

the tagger: community service - including removing all the graffiti and keeping the 

area graffiti-free for a set period to be determined by the judge: 

Operating as part of team for catching kids in danger of falling through cracks 

in the system. Some of the children most at risk of failing to develop basic life skills 

and failing to achieve economic independence as adults are those who easily fade 

into the background at school and in the community and are in danger of being 

unnoticed until some dire incident occurs. Redding officers have become an 

integral part of the teams of school administrators and other youth services 

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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
providers who are tracking truancies, school absences, and other signs of failure to 

thrive, trying to figure out what is going wrong in the lives of these children, and 

coming up with a plan to assist them. As in other partner departments, Redding 

officers take part in the School Attendance Review Board (SARB) process involving 

chronically absent children and their parents. However the Redding PD effort goes 

well beyond that formal participation. 

Not infrequently, written requests for conferences with the parents of these children 

go unheeded. And while school administrators are willing to pay home visits on their 

own in most places in the city, they are realistically apprehensive about visiting 

homes of many chronically absent children in seedy complexes that have not yet 

been cleaned up and made crime-free. 

Home-visit teams that include a school officer not only protect the school member of 

the team but, since officers are more likely to recognize criminal activity and the 

presence of people on conditional release, also can more completely assess the 

conditions in a home that may be placing children at risk. Moreover, given other 

Redding PD approaches for assisting families in poverty, the visiting school officers 

are positioned to let parents know of channels to get help. 

Officers who respond to domestic 

violence calls also are fully aware of their 

responsibility for determining whether 

there are children present and have been 

well prepared to respond to the immediate 

needs and invoke a spectrum of longer 

term services for children who have been 

witnesses to battering and other forms of 

domestic violence. Their training for this 

response was been developed by the 

Domestic Violence Coordinating Council 

of Shasta County chaired the Shasta 

County Undersheriff and Redding Police 

Department Commander of Field 

Operations. Working with representatives 

from a spectrum of local agencies, 

organizations, and community members, 

the Police Department actively 

participated in preparing a videotape 

made available for law enforcement 

We recognize children of 

domestic violence are substantially 

impacted by living in a violent 

environment. Even though a child 

might not be physically abused, the 

trauma of witnessing the parent's 

emotional and physical abuse against 

the other parent is detrimental to the 

child's well being. 

domestic violence are in a separate 

crisis and must be addressed as 

separate individuals with special needs. 

Let it be recognized, in our society, 

every child is entitled to food, shelter, 

and a non-violent environment in which 

to live. Domestic Violence 

Coordinating Council of Shasta County 

1996 Year End Report 

Therefore, children who witness 

agencies to train their officers in the appropriate way to deal with children 

traumatized by domestic violence, a checklist for law enforcement officers who 

handle domestic violence calls that included steps to take when children are 

involved in such situations, and community contacts, including the local shelter, for 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
assuring that involved children will receive counseling and other needed services. 

Increasing the number of children living in crime-free environments by 

collaborations to improve the well-being of people causing problems as well 

as those affected One of the remarkable developments in Redding is the growing 

number of officers who are bringing about long-term solutions to problems by 

improving the lives of formerly chronic offenders. In addition to several already 

described, some major, ongoing efforts have included: 

0 

i A major undertaking that transformed previously run-down high-crime 

apartment complexes into crime-free housing 

b Systematic coordination that resulted in mentally-ill street people having 

necessary services for regulating medication and re-establishing more 

healthful ways of living 

A city-wide effort that resulted in relocating families living in cramped, 

stressful housing for transients into long-term affordable housing 

In addition to these very visible successes, more and more officers are routinely 

bringing about positive changes in the lives of residents that are not likely to come to 

public attention. For example, one patrol officer realized social isolation was the 

underlying reason one elderly resident frequently called to report essentially nonexistent 

crimes. A brief call to her on a regular basis and an occasional visit helped her 

overcome her fears and loneliness and her need to call 91 I. This outcome was 

achieved by a well implemented strategy, described next, for converting the department 

gradually to a COPS mode of policing. 

a 

Converting officers to community-oriented policing 

Many of the same factors described as fostering COPS in Bannock County were also at 

work in Redding. For example the Chief long encouraged officers to learn about 

innovations in policing by visiting other departments, attending national and state-wide 

academies, training courses, and conferences. 

However, one of the earmarks of COPS in Redding which seems to have served the 

officers, department, and city well is the way in which COPS has consciously been 

developed as part of an overall strategy for city progress not only by the city 

administrators including the Chief, but by first officers and their supervisors as well. 

When considering implementation of some approaches developed in other cities and 

counties, officers themselves learned to assess whether or not current conditions in 

Redding were conducive for implementing a similar approach, and if not, placed 

considerations on a “back burner.” . 

‘ 

65/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
For one example, during a LlNC consortium exchange of officers, Redding officers 

considered but placed on hold for a time when conditions are ripe (perhaps in the near 

future) the safe place for children in the non-school hours provided by firefighters in 

Pocatello between calls for service. The decision was made during the visit to 

Pocatello as a part of ongoing process carried out by Redding Police Department Lt. 

Leonard Moty and Sgt. Dave Mundy for assessing innovations in policing. More 

specifically they rapidly assessed what specific problems and long-term goals the 

approaches were addressing, approaches already in place in Redding for addressing 

similar problems and achieving similar goals, basic ideas and concepts integral to the 

approaches, and the feasibility of introducing these ideas and concepts in Redding in a 

manner that is consistent with overall department and city management and vision. As 

a result, although they were involved in importing relatively few specific approaches 

they observed in Idaho, they brought back fundamental ideas and concepts for shaping 

approaches that meet Redding realities in the long term. 

Other factors that help understand why COPS took root and grew in Redding include 

departmental leadership, priorities, and strategic decisions. 

Departmental leadership Police departments that have implemented the most 

advanced forms of community-oriented policing services around the country have chiefs 

of police and sheriffs who not only bought into this form of policing but actively 

promoted the involvement of their officers, civilian staff, and community members. 

Chief Blankenship is an excellent example. 

Based on discussions with the Chief, Redding officers at every rank, and community 

leaders, the Chief‘s ability to lead the department in implementing effective communityoriented policing had less to do with personality than administrative skills. In fact, the 

Chief made clear that he had to curb his natural inclination to get involved in nitty-gritty 

everyday departmental decisions. More specifically, he took these important steps to 

initiate and propel the department toward acceptance of the COPS/problem-solving 

mode of policing. 

a 

Unlike some departments that initiated COPS primarily because funds were 

available, Blankenship attended conferences and meetings to learn about COPS 

strategies in general and specific results of COPS in other cities, and, based on 

this information, assessed whether implementation of COPS could be beneficial 

for the department, the city, and specific communities within the city. 

1 Once having decided that COPS could be beneficial, the Chief set the goal high 

- converting the entire department to a “COPS mentality” - but he formed his 

course of action with realistic expectations that there would be serious resistence 

to this change and that this conversion was going to take a major effort on his 

part and the part of the top-level administrators over time. 

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The Chief “zeroed” in on the ranks where major changes in thinking and acting 

needs to take place to implement COPS - first-line supervisors and field officers 

- but at the same time he brought mid- and top-level supervisors on board by 

making clear that initiation of COPS was not an option: it was going to happen in 

Redding and there would be rewards for doing COPS well and supporting line 

officers’ ability to carry out COPS. 

Blankenship set out his priorities and strategy for bringing about a departmental 

change and then set an example for the department’s captains and lieutenants 

- top-level monitoring of COPS developments but - unless a disaster in the 

making was evident or support was needed from other top-level administrators 

- hands off. He developed a form of macro- (rather than micro-) management 

of officers working within the community to solve problems, so that when 

problems are solved the field officers who brought about change and people in 

the community who worked with them are publicly credited with the solution. 

Departmental priorities There is strong evidence that community-oriented policing and 

problem solving was been given a high priority throughout the Redding Police 

Department. Administrators and officers were encouraged to creatively and 

collaboratively address complex city concerns by formally integrating community 

problem solving into the departmental mission, by building community problem solving 

and enhancement into a “pay for performance” ongoing evaluations of officers at and 

above the rank of sergeant, and by focusing public recognition on the officers, staff in 

other agencies, and members of their communities who have carried out successful 0 approaches. 

These actions sent a strong signal both within the department and throughout the 

community that Redding police stand ready to work for community progress as well as 

to enforce laws. As a result, officers at every rank came to realize that arresting 

offenders is not the most important function of Redding PD officers, but rather, an 

important tool for assisting other agencies and community members to create a city with 

a high quality of life. 

Departmental strategy for implementing COPS Several dimensions of the 

department’s strategy for implementing COPS appear to have been instrumental in 

bringing about progress toward the goal of shifting the entire department toward COPS: 

beginning with a small number of officers assigned to a Neighborhood Policing Unit 

(NPU), initially assigning officers to the NPU who were long-term, experienced, and well 

thought of by other officers at the same rank; keeping the NPU as part of Field 

Operations/patrol, and building on NPU developments and experiences. 

= Beginning with a small NPU The expectation about the reaction of field officers 

and their first line supervisors to COPS was right on the mark. As among 

officers in our partner departments when the LlNC consortium was first formed, 

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 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
most Redding officers considered community policing to be nothing more than 

the latest academic rhetoric - a politically-motivated fad that would soon fade 

away. They were basically unconvinced that much could be accomplished by 

policing activities that did not involve traditional patrol and investigations. They 

went along with the first steps “because the chief says we have to.” 

Since Redding began with a small number of officers, they could be “packed into 

a car”; five officers and their sergeant were sent to visit and do ride-a-longs with 

officers carrying out COPS and problem solving in Sacramento and other 

California police departments. According to these officers, based on this 

experience they became less skeptical and more willing to try some of the same 

strategies and tactics for working with the community. 

I 

w The selection of long-term experienced well-liked officers who were sent to other 

cities and assigned to the NPU seems to have promoted departmental COPS in 

at least two ways. They, as other long-term officers, knew the areas of the city 

where chronic crime and other problems took place, and they were exasperated 

with the failure of traditional policing - patrol, investigations, and arrests -to 

make a dent in the problems. Once they began to “think outside the box” and to 

apply creative approaches collaboratively with other agencies and community 

members, they began to see visible changes in previously chronic problems that 

long seemed unsolvable. Given these results, they became converts to 

community-oriented policing - and because they were known to their fellow 

officers to be regular guys -when they pitched community-oriented policing, 

others listened. 

w Keeping the NPU as part of Field Operations/patrol appears to have paid off in 

several ways. First, it allowed officers initially involved in the NPU time to 

reconsider approaches that constitute real policing. In the beginning NPU 

appeared to be a special tactical “weed and seed“ patrol unit with some 

investigative functions. Early in the LlNC consortium, officers saw vigorous 

enforcement to drive criminals out of specific neighborhoods as a primary 

component - and their “real” job. The other component, the after-school 

program carried out in conjunction with Simpson College, they saw as a good 

way of keeping kids off the streets - but not necessarily activity that they should 

be doing. Until the after-school activities started to spin off other benefits 

including more willingness of the kids to work with the officers to solve chronic 

problems in their communities, several NPU officers were looking forward to the 

day when they had rid the communities of persistent offenders and could turn the 

after-school program over to “people who should really be doing this”. 

Second, as a part of patrol, the formation of the NPU was less resented than 

separate COPS units in other partner departments as a draw on resources 

needed to do “our real job - catching the bad guys.” Most officers in the 

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 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
department, including some of the NPU officers, spoke about the NPU as a 

short-term project - not a bad thing to do as long as the NPU officers pulled 

their own weight as part of patrol in responding to calls. Three years later, the 

reverse attitude was beginning to prevail; patrol officers outside the NPU were 

being co-opted to work with the NPU officers on problem-solving approaches 

and willingly joined in or initiated their own COPS activities. 

Third, NPU officers as patrol officers were considered to be on the same career 

track as other first-line officers - not a elite unit that was on a fast track to 

higher level assignments. Now, many officers and almost all officers who have 

served in the NPU have realized that the unit acts not only as a training ground 

for a new way of policing, but the unit also helps sharpen skills needed for more 

effective traditional methods of policing such as investigations. 

w Building on NPU developments and experiences. One of the central 

developments in NPU was the collaboration with other city, county, educational 

and nonprofit agencies. This collaboration was given a jump-start in the early 

stages by arranging for NPU officers to take elected and top-level officials from 

other agencies on ride-a-longs to see some of the worst areas in the city and 

point out specific problems that needed joint attention to solutions. As in other 

cities, the collaboration between police and city code enforcement was one of 

the first collaborations to make a visible and dramatic impact on the quality of life 

in the city. But over a period of four years many city and county departments 

and private organizations were at least temporarily brought into a problem 

solving approach by an increasing number of officers. 

The common understanding among some chiefs of police and many police researchers 

is that separate COPS units are not a good idea; special units confine problem solving 

to a small fraction of officers, while the vast majority continue to carry out reactive 

policing which in the long term is ineffective. However, this conclusion has been based 

on research in some of the largest cities in the US and abroad where a small special 

unit can function virtually independent from “normal” operations. The progress made in 

Redding by using the NPU to shift toward a department-wide problem-solving paradigm 

is likely to challenge the validity of this notion in small- and medium-size cities. The 

evidence of this success is reflected not only in the decreasing rates of crime in the city 

but also in the changes in the departmental culture, the growing number of exemplary 

approaches that have been implemented, and the response of the community to these 

approaches. 

Changes in departmental culture Over the years of the LlNC consortium, there was 

an observable shift in culture among officers at every level of the department. One 

major change was the softening of the “we and them” perspective on people in the 

community, especially those in neighborhoods with relatively high crime rates, and the 

“hook’m and book’m” perspective of their policing mandate. More than a few officers 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
have developed a tenacious, “can do,” long-term prevention perspective focused on 

addressing types of problems in Redding that also are concerns in virtually every 

medium-size and large city in the nation. The complex problems officers have tackled 

in collaboration with other Redding agencies, and in a growing number of areas have 

solved, include: high rates of situationally-caused domestic violence in substandard 

housing complexes; relatively high rates of juvenile delinquency in the after-school 

hours; and deteriorating use of business areas due to the high visibility of adult chronic 

alcoholicsldrug users and groups of out-of-control kids. 

By the time our partnership began, a small number of officers were pretty well 

convinced that COPS approaches had at least as much merit as more traditional 

policing approaches. In general these “converts” were NPU officers who previously had 

become disenchanted by taking offenders off the streets and seeing them back again 

or seeing them replaced by other offenders in a very short time. They were justifiably 

proud of their accomplishments which they pointed out during early partnership visits. 

But these officers were then in the minority and, while they enthusiastically discussed 

community-oriented policing with our researcher team, it did not appear to be a 

common topic of discussion among groups of Redding officers. 

Since then, there has been a visible shift in paradigm. Many officers are continually 

grappling with concerns that go way beyond individual offenders. In meetings they 

bring up complex problems such as chronic truancy and its immediate and long-term 

consequences for the city, and they brainstorm about solutions. Even more telling are 

the hallway and break-room conversations that take place about specific problems and 

solutions that involve officers throughout the department and other agencies. The 

current sergeant for the NPU has an increasingly intricate job of coordination as officers 

he supervisors take on efforts that involve a spectrum of approaches and agencies. He 

is not alone. Since former NPU supervisors have rotated back into patrol and traffic, 

they have motivated officers to take on equally complicated problem-solving 

approaches. 

Part of the changes that became more evident in the Redding Police Department are: 

the greater willingness of officers to take risks to achieve long-term objectives - not 

just personal physical risks - that form of bravery has long been demonstrated by 

Redding officers - but the risk of looking foolish in public, inept to their supervisors, or 

“too elite” in the eyes of their fellow officers. These are real risks as they practice new 

skills such as public speaking, if an innovative approach blows up - as a small number 

of worthwhile experiments always do - or if they, as individuals, are heaped with praise 

within or outside the department for the results of their efforts. 

Officers both within and outside the NPU have developed ways of countering these 

risks. Individual NPU officers who are individually lauded by community members in 

greatly improved neighborhoods always stress that the results are due to a team effort 

- not them individually. Immediate supervisors sometimes have a rapid negative 

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 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
reaction when a well-intended approach turns sour - but they spend time helping the 

officers assess what went wrong, what could be done in the future to avoid similar 

negative results, helping repair any damage including damaged community relations, 

and very importantly within the department going to bat for the officers who had the 

effort fail. And, while good-natured ribbing is still part and parcel of officer interactions, 

line officers are receiving ongoing support and encouragement from their fellow officers 

to try new approaches and carry out activities that involve these kind of risks. 

0 

Supervisors are taking the same types of risks. First-line supervisors appear 

increasingly willing to take possible flack for a low priority request for service that goes 

unanswered, to free the time of their officers for problem-solving and COPS, and to 

step in and mend fences when individual community members object to actions carried 

out with the backing and approval of a large segment of community members. Higherlevel administrators appear to be carefully weighing the possible political fallout from 

nontraditional policing approaches and put their own advancement at stake by 

frequently giving innovative officers the nod and benefit of any doubt. 

I 

Officers also appear to depend less on traditional forms of police authority and more on 

trust based on performance. At the beginning of our partnership most field officers, 

including those in the NPU, appeared most comfortable in their cars or in situations 

outside their cars when they were exercising legal authority backed up by ready access 

to weapons and other armed officers. They considered a wave to and from residents in 

the NPU neighborhoods a form of progress in community relations. They dutifully 

showed up at community activities but many didn’t appear comfortable. 

Today a growing number of officers both within and outside the NPU appear 

comfortable dealing with community members, including in situations in which 

traditional forms of police authority are not only inappropriate but are counter to the 

objectives of problem-solving strategies. They have developed relaxed ways of dealing 

with a spectrum of staff in other agencies - including for examples, school 

administrators and private security, managers of hotels, social services staff in nonprofit 

organizations, and owners of bars. Even when they enter establishments that were 

formerly hot spots of crime, it is now obvious that many staff, residents, and clients 

respect them based on past positive interactions; and although they still must exercise 

care and keep an eye out for trouble, they have many other eyes also watching too. 

a 

As of late 1999, some officers still were unconvinced about the value of COPS and 

problem-solving. But they can no longer hope that the emphasis on these approaches 

will go away. Rather than ignoring these changes, they are now openly questioning 

officers who are deeply into problem-solving about the appropriateness of these 

approaches for police officers - and getting some very cogent responses in return. 

“Look, would you want your doctor to put a band-aid on a really bad infection and hope 

it will go away? Well, when we arrest one bad guy, that’s all we’re doing. We’re putting 

a band-aid on a really bad problem.” 

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 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
OVERCOMING COMMON PROBLEMS AND PITFALLS IN COMMUNITY POLICING 

While this report focuses on positive steps taken to advance community policing, the 

departments faced, and more or less successfully overcame, mdny barriers that 

confront departments of all sizes across the country. These problems and pitfalls 

included both internal barriers (such as seasoned officers’ resistance to change in 

standard operating procedures, and first-line and mid-level supervisors’ concern about 

losing control as field officers were given more discretion) and external barriers (most 

notably, citizen apathy). Departments with administrators who incorporated community 

policing as part of an overall departmental strategy, who recognized these potential 

barriers at the very start of their initiatives and who addressed them head-on were more 

likely to reach advanced stages of community policing. In departments whose 

administrators who took a more tentative approach to community policing, progress was 

typically limited in stage, scope, and numbers of officers who bought in to the process; 

within four years, some departments’ community policing approaches began to unravel. 

i 

Addressing potential internal problems and pitfalls 

The overarching internal barrier to community policing was resistence to change - 

change in organizational structure, change in department priorities, change in amount 

of immediate supervision and discretion of officers, and change in activities officers 

considered “real policing.” While this report has already described some of the steps 

taken to win over officers throughout the ranks, two of the most important keys to 

overcoming this resistence were overall top-level managerial approaches based more 

on sound corporate practices than on military practices. 

a 

Managerial approaches 

While all the chiefs and sheriffs in the participating departments had come up through 

the ranks, some were more adept than others at switching gears from leading the 

troops to championing their departments among local officials and oversight 

committees. In the face of local tax limitations, diminishing county and city budgets, 

and decreasing rates of crime, virtually all the chiefs of police and sheriffs and their 

departments were increasingly under pressure to justify expenditures in terms of sound 

fiscal policies and results. As in many law-enforcement departments, budget-related 

negotiations (and in some departments, union negotiations) required a major chunk of 

top administrators’ time. During these negotiations, the chiefs and sheriffs who 

continued to lead their departments using the quasi-military mode of direction they had 

learned coming up through the ranks typically felt as if they were under siege by 

civilians (or, in the case of union officials, outside agitators) who simply didn’t 

understand policing. They tended to view community policing at worst as another flyby-night distraction thrust on them by local and federal officials; at best, they saw it as a 

label for a source of federal funds that allowed them to assign one or two officers to 

0 72/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
respond to projects that were outside the real work of police officers. They were witling 

to keep these assignments as long as federal funds were available and as long as they a themselves didn’t have to attend to the projects. 

Chiefs and sheriffs who directed their departments as modern corporations rather than 

military establishments were more likely to view interactions during the budget process 

with local officials as an opportunity to air their department’s accomplishments and 

productivity in creating or maintaining attractive business and residential areas; 

community policing was presented as an important part of their strategic plan to 

continue that process. Addressing many of the issues and using many of the 

techniques taught in business schools to private-sector CEOS and in management 

education for law enforcement administrators at Harvard’s Senior Management Institute 

for these chiefs and sheriffs tended to have better outcomes for their 

departments in terms of total annual budgets, monies provided by other departments 

and agencies for officers assigned to cross-cutting functions such as school resource 

officers, and local government support for positions initially created with federal funds. 

Economic motivation also played a large part in overcoming intern,al resistence to 

organizational change. By drawing the line between fiscal support for their department 

and accomplishments beyond arrests, the chief executive officers were also more likely 

to motivate officers at all ranks to shift willingly to community policing. Chief 

Blankenship in Redding and Sheriff Nielsen in Bannock County, for example, realized 

that community policing could be a cornerstone of strategic change needed in their 

departments to meet the realities and expectations of their cities and counties, 

particularly elected officials and city administrators who came from the corporate world 

or were versed in advanced public management techniques. 

a 

The CEOs in turn selected and depended on community policing administrators who 

had a firm grasp of the strategic import of community policing and of methods for 

motivating innovation among officers. Chief Blankenship appointed Lieutenant Leonard 

Moty, who previously had earned an MBA; Moty was familiar with corporate techniques 

for motivating innovation and organizational change and was always on the look-out for 

other techniques with demonstrated effectiveness. The Undersheriff in Bannock 

County, who worked closely with Sheriff Nielsen in stressing the need for officers to 

‘kerve” as well as “protect” the community, took every opportunity available to educate 

himself about modern policing administration and practices implemented by other 

departments. They were able to convince their officers of the very real connection 

between departmental budgets and salaries, client satisfaction, and community 

policing; simply stted, community policing achieved visible results that satisfied the 

voters and demonstrated to budget committees that officers were earning their pay. 

In Redding, the connection was drawn in concrete terms by being tied to individual 

salaries of officers at and above the rank of sergeant; “pay for performance” meant that 

supervisors who successfully guided field officers implementing community policing 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
approaches received higher evaluations and higher pay. In Pocatello, the connection 

was somewhat less formal - but since the Sheriff himself connected performance 

evaluations, officers were well aware of the professional and economic incentives for 

community policing. I 

Time 

Among the departments that most successfully overcame officers’ resistence to 

change, time played a vital role, When the implementation of community policing was 

part of a long-term strategy for organizational change, adequate time was allowed for 

the following processes to overcome officers’ resistence: 

rn The promotion of field officers who had developed and demonstrated skills in 

community policing. When assigned as Field Training Officers or supervising 

sergeants, these officers tutored, guided, and honed the skills of seasoned 

officers who were initially resistant to community policing. As could have been 

expected from a fundamental principle of social-psychology (that attitudes 

change after behaviors change), when formerly resistant officers began to 

practice community policing, their attitudes gradually became more favorable. 

rn Selective attrition among top- and mid-level officers. Over time, the 

implementation of community policing influenced career decisions of officers who 

had completed long-term service. After years of “chasing bad guys,” many of 

these officers had reached a stage of potential “burn out.” For some, community 

policing inaugurated an exciting new phase in their careers -they began once 

again to enjoy their jobs and accomplishments, and decided to remain on the 

force. Others found the shift to community policing distasteful and demeaning 

and decided to pursue careers outside policing while they were still young 

enough to begin new occupations. Gradually, these individual career choices 

shift the balance of resisters to adherents among mid- and top-level officers. 

D Recruitment of new officers who actively suppotf community policing. Officers at 

all ranks who proved to have the strongest community policing skills were not 

uncommonly hired from outside the department. At the top and middle ranks, 

they were drawn from other departments and selected in part because they had 

previously demonstrated skills in devising innovative methods for solving 

community problems. New recruits for field positions who became exemplary 

community police officers were mature hires who had demonstrated an ability to 

work well in the community, in one case as the manager of a large supermarket. 

The infusion of these officers also helped shift the departmental balance of 

resisters to proponents of community policing. 

In addition to being a key factor in overcoming internal resistance to community 

policing, time was also important in forming and maintaining community support. 

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 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Addressing external barriers: “citizen apathy” 

Community policing without community participation is a futile exercise. Yet more than 

a few police departments represented at recent national conferehces on community 

policing described the assignment of a patrol unit to a defined neighborhood, or the 

creation of a substation within a particular area, or the redeployment of all patrol officers 

into new discrete beat areas as the cornerstone of community policing. These forms of 

deployment were utilized effectively by some of the departments as a first step - but 

only a first in reaching out to community members and involving them in keeping their 

neighborhoods safe. The following processes worked equally well in winning over 

residents who were formerly distrustful of police or diffident about getting involved and 

in maintaining the active involvement of community members. 

Listening and learning rather than teaching and preaching 

Officers most effective in gaining and maintaining community support were good 

listeners and good consumers of information. When patrolling in cars they stopped, 

rolled down their windows, and chatted with neighbors about their concerns. When 

responding to a non-emergent call, they encouraged callers to talk about neighborhood 

issues other than the immediate cause for contacting the police. They privately often 

expressed surprise about the concerns and priorities of community members - such 

as speeding cars taking precedence over burglaries, thefts from local businesses, or 

unruly kids. However, they quickly learned that such problems could be solved more or 

less rapidly with the help of other local departments -.for example, by adding a bicycle 

lane or judiciously-placed concrete planters to slow down cars, or by creating an 

attractive supervised basketball court and play area in a formerly vacant lot that had 

been filled with refuse and weeds. By addressing these “quality of life” problems, they 

found they could win the trust and cooperation of the people in the neighborhood for 

controlling more serious crimes such as drug distribution or domestic violence. 

Leading activities rather than meetings 

A common experience among officers was that residents and business people were 

much more willing to turn out for work details in community projects than for meetings to 

discuss crime control. While it was possible to get relatively high attendance 

Immediately after a highly visible crime occurred within the community, most meetings 

convened for the purpose of preventing crimes resulted in a few people showing up - 

often just a core group with ongoing specific “gripes.” However, people turned out in 

droves when the purpose of the gathering was to improve the neighborhood - 

assembling a playground set in a local park, cleaning up a field used illegally as a 

dump, clearing weeds and debris from a river front, or renovating an abandoned shack 

or trailer to use as a teen-center. Officers also found that if they involved staff from 

other city and county agencies in these work projects, lines of friendly communication 

were established with residents. 

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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Working with community developers, liaisons, and traditional leaders 

While a few officers have natural skills in building and maintaining community 

participation, they are the exception. Yet many officers succeeded in establishing good 

working relationships with people who have the training and status needed to maintain 

active community support for problem-solving, peace-keeping, and crime control. 

These have included community-developers hired by other government agencies such 

as the federal departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Agriculture 

(especially county extension agents) and those who work for local departments of 

community development. 

0 

For communities of new Americans - especially those immigrating from countries 

where the police are rightly viewed with great suspicion - community liaisons have 

been a valuable resource in acting as organizers, translators, and interpreters. With 

their assistance, officers have come to recognize important foci that brought the 

community together in their native country and how to create similar centers for 

community cooperation, such as playing fields for other nations’ traditional sports. In 

communities of both new Americans and American Indians, officers have learned to 

greatly respect the elder leaders and draw on their advice and expertise in bringing the 

community together to further the common good. 

Co-opting young and retired residents 

As officers gained experience in involving the community, they recognized the existence 

of two readily available pools of active support and cooperation -teens and retired 

people. While many departments had already involved teens in Boy Scout Explorer 

Posts, they realized that there were many other adolescents who were looking for a way 

to make a mark on the community, whether good or bad. By working with groups 

already serving youth in community, such as Boys and Girls Clubs or Girl Scouts, or 

forming their own independent activities such as the Bannock County Sheriffs Camp, 

they turned idle youth from potentially destructive activities to activities that benefitted 

the community and gained public praise for the teens. 

a 

Retired people willingly became the ears and eyes of the community, patrolling, carrying 

out checks of people’s homes when they were away on vacation, conducting 

surveillance and recording information about houses where drug trade or other illegal 

activities were emerging, as well as organizing cookouts and other events that brought 

the residents and officers together. Others brought their career skills into mini-stations 

or police headquarters, organizing records and extracting data for analysis, providing 

public information to walk-ins, and recruiting other volunteers for community events. 

Still others took on special projects to solve problems that particularly annoyed them, 

such as ridding streets and by-ways of abandoned cars. Once organized, they 

commonly became a self-sustaining active constituency, recruiting other participants 

who retired or moved into the community. 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

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BOTTOM-LINE FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 

Major advances in implementing COPS has taken place in small- and medium-size 

cities and rural counties. Four years of experience with COPS bv heartland 

departments in the LlNC consortium suggests the following: 

Large cities have just as much to learn about COPS from small- and mediumsize cities and rural counties as the converse. Officers in the LlNC consortium 

departments have grappled with and successfully addressed problems that are 

identical to those facing officers in large cities. Large departments might 

consider adapting some of their approaches for implementation in their own 

neighborhoods. 

i 

rn As with any innovation in policing, if the Chief or Sheriff is not committed to 

change, the change is not likely to occur. However, for sustaining COPS, 

elected city or county officials must also be convinced of the need for change 

from the onset and be kept personally apprized of the benefits on an ongoing 

basis. 

rn Launching COPS with a small cadre of officers can ultimately result in as large 

an impact on a department’s mode of policing as restructuring the entire 

department for carrying out COPS - providing a strategy is in place for gradually 

converting the whole department. Rotation and promotion of officers who have 

become adept in developing COPS to successfully address community concerns 

is one way of fostering this transformation. 

While formulas for limited problem-solving projects can be taught to officers in 

classrooms, experiential on-the-job learning with guidance from officers who 

have developed their own COPS approaches is much more valuable in the longrun for first-line officers and supervisors - and for the communities they are 

policing. Exchanges of officers between law enforcement departments have 

provided an excellent resource for this type of learning. 

rn There is no one right way of implementing COPS. Approaches can be as 

diverse as the communities in which they are implemented and the teams of 

officers, staff in other agencies, and community members who develop and carry 

them out. A very important role that the federal government can play is to enable 

interchanges so that community policing teams can share ideas, concepts, 

goals, and experiences and shape these to meet the realities of their own 

neighborhoods. 

COPS has been a national experiment that has resulted in major changes. Although 

researchers will long argue about whether or not COPS played a part in reducing crime 

and delinquency, there is no doubt that COPS can and has resulted in: 

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 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
I Visibly cleaner and more attractive residential neighborhoods 

I Transformation of commercial districts from areas of urban decay and frequent 

incidents of disorderly conduct to attractive downtown blocks 

I A higher quality of life for residents who are among the least affluent 

w People including business owners, educators, and residents who say they feel 

safer 

w Officers who take deep satisfaction in solving difficult community problems and 

openly grapple with new and effective ways for ongoing improvements 

i 

w A growing recognition among many residents of the innovative roles and 

leadership law enforcement officers can provide. 

0 78/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
ENDNOTES 

1. The research for and writing of this report was funded by the National Institute of 

Justice, US Department of Justice. Grant 951JCXOO47. 

a 

2. Bureau of Justice Statistics. 1999. Local Police Departments, 7997. Washington DC: 

US Department of Justice 

3. Goldberg, Andrew L. and Brian A. Reaves. 2000. Local Police Departments, 7997. 

Washington DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, US Department of Justice 

4. Hickman, Matthew J. and Brian Reeves. 2001. Community Policing in Local Police 

Departments, 7997 and 7999. WashingtonDC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, US 

Department of Justice 

5. Stages reached by the participating departments are not explicitly mentioned in this 

report. The report was not designed to be and is in no way intended to evaluate 

individual departments. 

6. Chaiken, Marcia R. Catalytic Policing Research Partnerships. Final report for Grant 

951JCXOO47 submitted to the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. 

March 3, 2000. 

7.The Chief of Police from Rapid City, South Dakota, had (successful) surgery at the 

time of our meeting. He was represented by his Chief of Staff. 

4. Moore, Mark Harrison. 1992. “Problem-solving and community policing,” pages 99- 

158 in Michael Tonry and Norval Morris (editors) Modern Policing. Crime and Justice 

Volume 15. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

m 

9. Campbell Delong Resources Inc. 1998. Portland Police Bureau 1998 Community 

Survey. Page 16. Portland OR: City of Portland Police Bureau 

10. Lee, David. 1994. 7993 Quality Assurance Study for fhe Rapid City, Soufh Dakota 

Police Department. Rapid City: Rapid City Police Department 

1 1. Lee, David. 1994. 1993 Quality Assurance Study for the Rapid City, South Dakota 

Police Department. Rapid City: Rapid City Police Department 

12. Berg, Patty. September 29, 1995. Memorandum Eureka CA: Board of Supervisors 

of Humboldt County 

13. Talley, Richard A. 1995. Rapid City Police Department’s Cop-of-the-Block Program 

Community Policing Guidelines. Rapid City SD: Rapid Cityu Police Department 

14. Kelling, George L. and Catherine M. Coles. 1996. New York: Free Press 

79COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
15. California Department of Justice. 1993. COPPS: Definitions and Principles. 

Sacramento: Author 

16. See for example, Reiss. Albert J., Jr. 1992. “Police Organization in the Twentieth 

Century,” pages 51-98 in Michael Tonry and Norval Morris(editors) Modern Policing. 

Chicago: University of Chicago Press 

0 

17. Berg, Patty. September 29, 1995. Memorandum Eureka CA: Board of Supervisors 

of Humboldt County 

18. Methods used at these meetings are documented in Byrd, Dewell, Antoinette Martin, 

and David Lehman (undated) Building Community Climate for Change Through 

Neighborhood Meetings; The Humboldt County Experience: Creating a Climate for 

Strengthening Families and Preparing Youth. (Unpublished , Available through authors) 

19. Neighborhood Police Unit. 1995. School Survey Results. Redding, California: 

Redding Police Department 

20. Describe Public Law 280 here. 

21. Daniel E. Lungren. January 1, 1996. lnformation Bulletin No. 96-07-BCIl 

Sacramento, CA: California Depatment of Justice. (Sent to: All California Law 

Enforcement Agencies) 

22. City of Redding Planning and Community Development. January 5, 1995. Report to a the City Council C-7 70-700-400. Redding CA: Author 

23. Page 90. Draft report provided to LlNC by the city manager’s staff 

24. According to the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) the SMlP course is 

designed to give participants “a clear understanding of general management theory, 

policy development, planning processes, and organizational structure and behavior. 

Among the topics covered [are] ... diversity, political management, organizational 

strategy , perform a n ce ma nag em en t I o rg a n i za t i o n a I c h a n g e , I e ad e rs h i p , ma nag e r i a I 

problem solving, labor relations, problem-oriented policing and implementation 

strategies, process analysis, budgeting, media relations, and new policing strategies 

a n d i n n ova t i o n s . ” 

a 80/COPS:lnnovations in Policing in American Heartlands/LINC/September 2001 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Box to be added to COPS: Innovations in American Heartlands 

For more background information about community-oriented policing I 

I 

The following books and reports are recommended for the reader who wants to learn more 

about the key elements of community policing and problem-oriented policing, the history of 

community policing in the United States and elsewhere, examples of innovative community 

policing practices in various law enforcement agencies, or results of evaluations of community 

policing. NCJ numbers refer to the catalogue of the National Criminal Justice Reference 

Service - at its web site http://www.ncjrs.org you can download documents that are available 

in electronic form, order paper copies of government publications, or obtain details for how to 

purchase commercial books. 

The New Blue Line: Police Innovation in Six American Cities, by J H Skolnick and D H 

Bayley, Free Press, 1986. NCJ-101361. This book contains one of the earliest presentations 

of police departments adopting innovative policies characterized by strong police-community 

cooperation, command decentralization, more foot patrol, and the civilianization of selected 

policing operations. These approaches are described in six diverse cities: Santa Ana CA, 

Detroit MI, Houston TX, Denver CO, Oakland CAI and Newark NJ. The book analyzes the 

critical role of visionary police chiefs and shows how the "old cop" versus the "new cop" 

attitudes and police bureaucracy affected reform in each city. 

0 

Problem-Oriented Policing, by H Goldstein, McGraw-Hill Publishing, 1990. NCJ-122899. 

Herman Goldstein was one of the original thinkers who proposed that policing should move 

beyond response to individual incidents and instead focus on resolving community problems. 

This landmark book presents the concept of problem-oriented policing, which many leaders in 

law enforcement still consider a central element of community policing, and specifies the steps 

that are taken in identifying, analyzing, and resolving community problems. Goldstein describes 

the early experiences with problem-oriented policing in Madison WI, Baltimore County MD, 

Newport News VA, and the London Metropolitan Police. The book discusses a wide range of 

specific kinds of problems, such as landlord-tenant disputes, spousal abuse, shoplifting, and 

street prostitution. It concludes with a description of the structural and management changes 

needed when implementing problem-oriented policing. 

1 

If you are interested in more historical background, you will also want to read Goldstein's 

Policing a Free Society, Ballinger Publishing, 1977, NCJ-40518. 

New Policing: Confronting Complexity, by H Goldstein, National Institute of Justice, 1993. 

NCJ-145157. To illustrate the complexity of community policing, this Research-in-Brief 

examines the changes that occur in refining the police function and public expectations, 

involving citizens in the substance of policing, redefining the relationship between the police and 

the criminal justice system, searching for alternative law enforcement responses, and 

0 reformulating the police working environment. 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Modern Policing, by M Tonry and N Morris (eds.), volume 15 of Crime and Justice: A Review 

of Research, University of Chicago Press, 1992. NCJ-138798. In the third chapter of this book, 

Problem-solving and Community Policing, Mark Moore draws a distinction between 

problem-oriented policing and community policing, which he defines as establishing working 

partnerships between police and communities to reduce crime and enhance security, but he 

also describes how they are overlapping concepts: “A commitment to problem solving leads 

quite naturally to the invention of solutions that involve the broader Community.” Moore 

discusses the goals of policing, how to evaluate problem-solving and community policing, and 

criticisms of community policing such as the loss of central accountability for the actions of law 

enforcement officers. 

If you are interested in more historical background about community policing, you will also 

want to read other chapters in this book, including Police Organization in the Twentieth 

Century, by A J Reiss, Jr., and History of Urban Police, by E H Monkkonen. 

Problem-Oriented Policing: Crime-Specific Problems, Critical Issues and Making POP 

Work. Police Executive Research Forum (PERF, http://www.policeforum.org). Volume 1 by T 

0 Shelley and A C Grant, eds., 1998. NCJ-176142. Volume 2 by C S Brito and T Allan, eds., 

1999. Volume 3 by C S Brito and E E Gratto, eds., 2000. PERF annually holds an international 

conference on problem-oriented policing. These books reflect the latest knowledge shared by 

law enforcement practitioners and academicians at the conferences. They describe 

approaches for handling problems such as hate crimes, stalking, and crime in public housing. 

Community Policing, Chicago Style, by W G Skogan and S M Hartnett, Oxford University 

Press, 1997. NCJ-175951. In describing successes and limitations of community policing in 

Chicago IL, this book traces the community policing program from its inception to its application 

in the field and examines the roots of community policing and its implementation in the context 

of political, racial, and fiscal realities. The book describes some of the obstacles to making 

community policing work in practice and the details of the planning process and the eventual 

deployment of police officers. The authors conclude the community policing program resulted 

in substantial benefits for most Chicago residents. Updates on the Chicago experience are 

provided in four reports published by the National Institute of Justice: Problem Solving in 

Practice: Implementing Community Policing in Chicago, by Wesley G. Skogan, Susan M. 

Hartnett, Jill DuBois, Jennifer T. Comey, Marianne Kaiser, and Justice H. Lovig was published 

in April 2000. Public Involvement: Community Policing in Chicago by Wesley G. Skogan, 

Susan M. Hartnett, Jill DuBois, Jennifer T. Comey, Karla Twedt-Ball, and J. Erik Gudell, was 

published in September 2000. Two additional reports are slated for release in late 2001. 

The Journal of Community Policing. Published bi-annually since 1999 by the Oklahoma 

Regional Community Policing Institute, 3701 SE 1 5‘h Street, Del City OK 731 15. Contains 

articles that encourage law enforcement, community members, and educators to engage in 

cooperative efforts to increase safety in the community. 

Community Policing, Community Justice, and Restorative Justice: Exploring the Links 

for the Delivery of a Balanced Approach to Public Safety, by C G Nicholl, Office of 

Community Oriented Policing Services (http://www.usdoj.gov/cops), 1999. NCJ-181245. A 

review and assessment of community policing, with a look to a future in which community 

involvement with criminal justice is even greater than it is under community policing. 

Community Policing in America: Changing the Nature, Structure, and Function of the 

 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 
Police, by J R Greene, National Institute of Justice, 2000. NCJ-185533. In Volume 3 of 

Criminal Justice 2000, "Policies, Processes and Decisions of the Criminal Justice System." This 

chapter reviews the rise of community- and problem-oriented policing as major vehicles to 

improve the effectiveness of police efforts in communities and as means of reforming police 

organizations; included is a discussion of the historical development of various models of 

policing. The article reviews research on the impacts of community policing on communities, 

police organizations, police work, and police officers and suggests that police officers' 

conception of their roles and their attachment to police work are improving with the adoption of 

community and problem-oriented policing roles. 

I The COPS Program After 4 Years: National Evaluation by J A Roth and J F Ryan, National 

Institute of Justice, 2000. NCJ-183644. An independent process evaluation of the Community 

Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program. 

Problem-Oriented Policing: The 2000 Herman Goldstein Award Winners, National Institute 

of Justice, 2001. NCJ-185279. Includes Graffiti Prevention and Suppression and The 

Question of Independent Living in San Diego CAI Gas Thefts at Service Stations in Kansas 

City MO, Showdown at the Playground in Vancouver BC, Homeless Men's Shelter in 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg NC, and Repairing Neighborhoods with Partnerships in 

Joliet IL. See also the 1999 award winners, NCJ-182731. 

Problem-Oriented Policing: Reflections on the First 20 Years, by M S Scott, Office of 

Community Oriented Policing Services (http://www.usdoj.gov/cops), 2000. COPS reference 

number el 12k0781. Summarizes the latest views of problem solving, problem-oriented 

policing, and community-oriented policing, with reflections on the changes that occurred since 

1980 and the relationship between problem-oriented policing and the whole police mission. 

Community Policing in Local Police Departments, 1997 and 1999, by M J Hickman and B A 

Reaves, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2001. NCJ-184794. Factual information about 

nationwide patterns of change over two years, including personnel assigned to community 

policing, training, community-based activities, and computers and information systems. 

a 

Crime Mapping and Analysis by Community Organizations in Hartford, Connecticut, by 

Thomas Rich, National Institute of Justice, 2001. NCJ-185333. An assessment of how 

community organizations in Hartford used the Neighborhood Problem Solving system, a 

computer-based mapping and crime analysis technology. 

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 and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not