Bob Forster is having trouble sleeping, thanks to an incessant banging noise emanating from the Cambridge Waterworks project blocks from his West Cambridge home.

Loud noise after 10 p.m. and before 7 a.m. is illegal in the city, but that doesn't seem to faze the workers.

Forster decided to tell someone about it.

So he became one of a handful of Cantabrigians who attended the March 18 neighborhood community meeting hosted by the Cambridge Police Department (CPD).

When Sgt. William Lyons asked the residents if they had any questions for him, Forster spoke up.

"I'm looking for a little help," he said. "My neighbors and I have put up with construction noise at four or five in the morning for months now."

Lyons and the CPD officials at the meeting promised they'd look into the matter.

And so began another chapter in the tale of Cambridge's community policing initiative, now five years old.

But the program's most pressing problems are not open-and-shut cases of noise pollution.

While the CPD has monetary backing from the federal government and a far-reaching mission statement, its community policing program is facing a conundrum.

The idea of cops walking the beat-- a central tenet of community policing--is not being implemented, and patrol officers themselves are the major obstacle.

The current contract, negotiated by the Cambridge Patrol Officers' Association, allows officers to "bid" for certain neighborhoods, choosing their assignments on the basis of seniority and experience. Since officers can switch neighborhoods several times a year, most do not establish relationships with the community members.

Foundations

When the city hired Ronnie L. Watson to be itschief of police in 1996, the idea of communitypolicing was in place. It was up to Watson to putit into practice.

In 1993, city officials were impressed with thesuccess of Lowell, an industrial city in northernMassachusetts marked by high crime rates.

One of the first cities in the state to trycommunity policing, Lowell saw violent crime dropby nearly 25 percent by 1995, a decline thatoccurred before other cities nationwide began toget statistically safer.