So Cambridge stepped up its effort to gain ashare of federal crime-fighting dollars. Itmounted an extensive lobbying campaign, targetinglawmakers who held sway in Congress.

It worked, and Cambridge was given severalmillion dollars to revolutionize its policing.

City Manager Robert W. Healy channeled themoney toward one purpose: to reshape police workby organizing the Cambridge Police Departmentaround simple principles. He wanted to put copsback on the street, to allow them leeway to solveproblems and to build trust between citizens andlaw enforcement officers.

Hiring Watson, a 33-year veteran of the ChicagoPolice Department, was the capstone of the effort.

"The department had a whole series of programsthat they were running under the banner ofcommunity policing," Watson recalls. "We focusedthem all together so that all of our resources aredirected in the same area."

Two-and-a-half years later, Watson says, "Weare doing quite a bit more programs than other lawenforcement agencies all across this country."

The centerpiece of Cambridge's communitypolicing is direct contact between officers andthe citizens.

When it restructured community policing, CPDassigned one lieutenant and one sergeant to eachof the city's 13 zones.

The purpose, according to Lyons, is to givecitizens a "face and a name" to go with their lawenforcement officers.

No Names or Faces

But lieutenants do not regularly walk the beat,and sergeants are usually found in their radiocars. The presence of a patrol officer, who wouldostensibly have the most direct contact withresidents, is conspicuously absent.

On November 19, 1997, state lawmakers approveda bill that would prove to be a thorn in Watson'sside. It required police commissioners to seekunion approval before undertaking large-scalerestructuring.

At issue was what is called "geographicassigning," where departments assign specificofficers to regularly patrol specificneighborhoods for extended periods of time, in thestyle of cops walking their beats.

Though police unions were vocal supporters ofthe bill, city officials statewide said inpublished reports that they feared for publicsafety, and geographic scheduling quickly becamean issue of the past.

CPD administrators clamed the bill would hampertheir efforts to combat crime in specific areas,by not giving supervisors the flexibility toadjust to changing crime conditions.