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 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. Police attended community meetings in the past, Williams says, but "often, a very limited amount of time was dedicated to interaction with police representatives." At the CPD-sponsored community meetings, sergeants in charge of the respective neighborhood attend and interact with those they're sworn to protect. "When a resident of one of those neighborhoods tells an officer who works that area about a problem, they [already] know about it," Williams says. Learning from the Locals Sgt. Jim Synnott, a 30-year CPD veteran with a distinctive New England accent and a kindly demeanor, addressed the five Cantabrigians who attended a Dec. 12 community meeting at the Tobin School. Speaking animatedly and pacing in the front of the room, Synnott eschewed the political science rhetoric of community policing and talked tough and simple, at times imploring the crowd to help police officers perform their jobs effectively. "The new partnership is getting people to share the burden," Synnott said, raising the tone of his voice. "What we need to do is sit down, put our heads together and come up with solutions," he said. Eighteen Cantabrigians met with CPD representatives at another community meeting at the Agassiz School in West Cambridge to do just that the night before the community meeting at the Tobin School. A longtime Cambridge resident present at the meeting expressed his frustration with the fact that juveniles have repeatedly broken into his cars which he keeps parked in the driveway of his home. The man suggested that immediately after apprehending young offenders for such crimes, police officers should drive the offenders to their homes and tell their parents what their children have been doing. Several residents also complained about people breaking Cambridge's biking laws by riding their bicycles on city sidewalks. The residents said many of the offenders appeared to be college students. A CPD officer on the panel responded that 10,000 brochures had been sent to colleges detailing the "do's and don'ts" of Cambridge biking laws which require bicycle riders to obey the same laws as motor vehicle operators. A police official admitted that college students are "a very rule-resistant population." Here To Stay Williams says community policing would not be a viable philosophy if Cambridge was in the midst of a crime wave. Crime, however, is dropping in nearly every category, mimicking a national trend. Violent crime in the city declined more than 24 percent in the past two years and total crime was down just under 20 percent, according to statistics in a report released by the CPD. Community policing initiatives are credited with contributing to significant decreases in violent crime nationwide. Cities from New York to Durham, North Carolina have all instituted community policing programs to battle crime. Last week, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority added cops to the subway beats in the name of community policing. But community policing does have its critics who charge that police officers become, in the words of one critic, "like social workers," instead of focusing their energies on solving crimes. Critics are also cautious about the effects of more direct contact between police and citizens, arguing that the chances for favorable treatment of some citizens over others increases with community policing. But community policing in Cambridge is here to stay according to many CPD officers. At the Tobin school meeting, Synnott had a message for the Cantabrigians he protects and for community policing's critics. "Join us or not, community policing is here," Synnott said. "It's gonna be here in the future. Jump on it." The Theoretical Approach The community policing style of police work follows the "broken windows" theory of law enforcement, a term coined by UCLA political scientist James Q. Wilson. As in repairing a crumbling building, the act of engaging people to repair their community gives them pride in their surroundings, Wilson contends. Naturally, citizens want to maintain a high standard of living. Wilson says the task of the police officer to engage the community he or she works in is just as important as fighting existing crime itself. Instead of remaining in a police cruiser, Cambridge officers often patrol neighborhoods on foot. "People like to see a policeman because it allows them to come up and establish a relationship," Watson says. The idea of a relationship between police officers and citizens is not new and is in some ways a return to a means of policing that is as old as most American police departments. As cities grew and crime became more mobile, "policing evolved," Williams says. "There was a dramatic increase in calls for service. Crime became mobile so we had to go mobile," William says. Pinned to one wall of the community relations office at Cambridge Police Headquarters is a series of statements made in 1849 by Sir Robert Peele referring to the London Metropolitan Police's "bobby on the beat" system. "Police should strive to maintain relationships with the public so that the police in reality are the people and the people in reality are the police," the poster reads.
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