That's not to say Chicago has the only promising approach. Fort Worth, Texas, boasts active community patrols, Boston puts probation officers on the street with police teams, Seattle brings the police and other city departments together in storefront centers, and New York and Houston move police trailers around to crime hot spots, Skogan says. Some smaller cities such as Cincinnati, Madison, Wis., Salt Lake City, and Santa Ana, Calif., use approaches similar to Chicago's. But so far no other city is using the team approach on the same large scale as Chicago. Chicago has set up a system to push city offices to help.
Beat officers fill out service forms when residents spot a problem.
The police fax the forms every evening to City Hall, where they are distributed to the proper departments. If the department doesn't respond, a city computer flags the complaint until it gets finished. People in the Northwest Austin neighborhood on Chicago's West Side find the strategy is working, says Irma Ford, an activist with the Northwest Austin Council. When a woman was raped in an abandoned building, residents and the police worked with the building department to get the empty structure torn down. In addition to tackling the big problems, local residents work with the police to end annoyances that can start to bring a neighborhood down, whether it's abandoned cars, broken streetlights, or rowdy bars.