Five mornings a week, a special needs van operated by the Cambridge Public Schools arrives at the Callahan home just off Blanchard Road to take Peggy Callahan's five-year-old grandson to the Fitzgerald School.

Although the van is not a traditional yellow school bus, Massachusetts state law requires drivers to treat it as such and stop on both sides of the road when the van flashes its red warning lights.

But most drivers "blatantly ignore [the van]" and speed by it, Callahan says.

Early in the Fall, Callahan attended a community meeting given by the Cambridge Police Department (CPD) to voice her concerns.

Promptly, the CPD assigned a police cruiser to patrol the road in the morning and in the afternoon.

The CPD sponsored community meeting was part of its four-year-old community policing initiative which is fundamentally changing the way Cambridge law enforcement officers perform their jobs.

Far from a single initiative, community policing in Cambridge is the comprehensive philosophy of the future of Cambridge law enforcement.

A New Way of Doing Things

The city received a grant to implement community policing from the state in 1993. Then-police commissioner Perry Anderson began the task of "formalizing" the philosophy, Williams says.

For two and a half years, the city government, police department and citizens groups laid the groundwork for community policing by "establishing liaisons," instituting small programs, and "organizing local outreaches," says CPD Lt. Steven Williams, Cambridge's community policing coordinator.

In 1996, the City Council hired CPD Commissioner Ronnie Watson, a 33-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department, in part to further strengthen the community policing program.

"I was brought on to do community policing," Watson said.

Watson proceeded to centralize neighborhood outreach and institute what Williams calls "geographical accountability."

The department's five patrol sectors and its patrol beats were reorganized by the guidelines of Cambridge's 13 residential neighborhoods.

Police lieutenants were placed in charge of outreach to each sector, and a sergeant was assigned to each neighborhood.

Watson then proposed a series of quarterly community meetings with police for each neighborhood.