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Tag: police patrol

  • “Not on my post, you don’t”

    Thinking about lobbies and public housing and policing….

    Take the Jackie Robinson Homes, “an 8-story building with 189 apartments housing some 440 residents.” Last year there was an issue with kids raising hell. Residents were scared.

    So lets say there are 600 people living there in the Jackie Robinson Home (since many live off lease). Put a cop there. What else are police doing that is more important? To hell with whatever patrol structure currently exists. To hell with the desk jobs and even specialized units. Three cops can work 14-hours, six-days a week. One officer working less than 40 hours a week can still be responsible for one building. And you’ve still got the entire NYPD as backup. A police officer out of car — with a name and face, a human being — this is how you build relationships and solve crimes while practicing aggressive order-maintenance community policing.

    From DNAinfo:

    A tenant of the Jackie Robinson Houses provided DNAinfo with video Tuesday showing the indoor bicycle riding and other rowdy conduct that residents said has been routine at 111 E. 128th St. since October 2014.

    …

    The commanding officer of the building’s police service area only found out about the teens’ behavior Tuesday [December 2015, a year later] and no residents had previously filed any formal complaints, an NYPD source told the Daily News.

    Presumably, three months later, this has been resolved by now. But why should it take a formal complaint for a housing cop to know about a year-long problem in a building they patrol? Why isn’t there a cop who can say, “this is my building and I know what is going on and who is doing it”?

    Police officers need — and for the most part want to assume — geographic ownership. I was happy one night to be “Sheriff of Orangeville” (thanks for that term, D.W.). Oh, yes, there was a new sheriff in town, and Orangeville was quite that night. (The rest of 334 post was OK, too.) Mostly I had to be happy with the area around Hopkins hospital. But whichever post I policed, it was “my” post that night. I cared. And also… I didn’t want the hassle and paperwork and hospital details that come with serious crime.

    Progress and “sector policing” put the nail in the coffin of Baltimore post integrity (@ThanksBatts). Basically, instead of one cop patrolling one post you have five cops patrolling five posts. A cop can’t care or take ownership of a whole police sector of ten or twenty thousand people. But a cop can almost handle two square miles and 3,000 people. So now crime is up and there isn’t a single officer who says, “This is my corner and you drinking and selling drugs here is disrespectful to me, personally.”

    Well, back in NYC, there’s a housing bureau cop for every 200 residents in public housing. About 500,000 residents in 328 developmentsand 2,553 buildings buildings. You don’t need a NYPD mobile command post with loud generator and overly-bright lighting after somebody gets killed. If there are 2,700 police officers in the Housing Bureau, then there are more officers than buildings.

    Do you see where I’m going with this?

    Why not just assign one officer to each building? Now many of the buildings are small and don’t need anybody. So you don’t put a cop there. Queensbridge is the largest public housing project remaining in America. Six cops on visible patrol 14 hours a day, six days a week. That takes about 18 cops in total. But it’s still just cop for each 450 residents. Is that too much to ask?

    Were it up to me, I’d give each patrol officer a very small chuck of the city. Of course you’d have to patrol a larger area. But you and only you are responsible for everything that happens in that for that small chunk. Everything. We’re talking an area of roughly 500 people or 1/3 of a mile of street. Those are your people. Know them. Treat them well. And when residents have a problem, they could still call 911 and a cop will show up. But they might prefer to wait till you’re on duty to talk to you, whom they know. It’s really not that crazy. And for some reason it will never happen.

  • Don’t “Come Here!”

    One cop I worked with would constantly get into foot pursuits. For the rest of us, it was kind of annoying, especially for those of us who hated running. What frustrated me was that these pursuits were entirely preventable. The problem was this officer would see a kid he wanted to stop and say, “Come here!” Naturally, not being a fool, the kid would take off running.

    If I wanted to stop somebody, I would calmly walk right up to him and grab him. If I wanted to talk to someone, I would politely ask, “Can I talk to you for a second?” and lead him away from his friends. I can’t remember these tactics ever failing.

    Here is some good tactical police advice from, of all places, Mother Jones:

    Consider why barking the command “Come here!” doesn’t really work. Thompson explains in his article,

    You have just warned the subject that he is in trouble. “Come here” means to you, “Over here, you are under my authority.” But to the subject it means, “Go away—quickly!” The words are not tactical for they have provided a warning and possibly precipitated a chase that would not have been necessary had you, instead, walked casually in his direction and once close said, “Excuse me. Could I chat with [you] momentarily?” Notice this question is polite, professional, and calm.

    And it works.

  • History of bike cops in NYC?

    History of bike cops in NYC?

    I got this query and and would be curious to learn the answer:

    I’m working on a story on the history of police riding bikes in New York City…. I’m looking to explore when the NYPD used bikes as transportation, why they did, and how their utilization has changed over time as policing strategies/ideologies have shifted.

    Let’s see how good this new-fangled media thing really is.

    Feel free to comment or email Noah Kazis directly.

    Anybody?

    Ferris?

    Pic credit: Shorpy.

  • Fewer Cops in San Fran

    The usual. State and federal tax cuts. Local budget cuts. Union workers get screwed. The full story is here.

    Because of the city’s ongoing budget woes, no police academy classes are scheduled for next year, which means that instead of the 1,861 sworn officers who were working for the department in July 2010, retirements and resignations will drop that number to 1,745 by June 2012
    …
    “I can’t say that the crime rate will rise because we lose officers … but all creative ideas will be on the table,” [Interim Chief Jeff Godown] said.
    …
    The department could even be forced to eliminate its popular community policing foot beats and “put the officers back in cars to answer radio calls.”

    Well that’s not very creative. Why is foot patrol (and mounted) always the first thing to go? Partly because most cops don’t take foot patrol seriously. It’s just “hug a thug.” And horses area bit for show (but what a show!).

    Foot patrol officers can answer calls, too. And they should. I’d even be for mounted units on radio patrol. Why not? I thought we needed to be creative. Are two-person units on the table (does S.F. uses two-officers per car? I don’t know)? Have one officer per car. If I policed solo in the Eastern District, you can do it, too. And if you need to cut units, why not less car patrol? That’s always the last to go. I wonder why.

    I think I know:

    The public don’t notice if you cut a few patrol cars. So it’s a pretty useless threat to make. But if you threaten to sell the horses to the glue factory… then everybody is up in arms. So when times are tough, the P.D. can’t say, “We’re going to cut cars, response time will go up slightly. It won’t affect crime.” Instead, the police department threatens: “You’re gonna cut police funding? Then you won’t see officers walking the beat. Cut us more? We’ll go back to reactive policing and nothing else. Still not enough? We close your police station.” It actually is a real threat. But it’s not real leadership.

  • Getting rid of police horses: bad

    I’m not a horsey boy. I don’t like horses. They scare me a bit. Plus, I’ve very allergic to horses and try and stay far away (though I do like biking by the horses on Central Park South on my to work).

    Regardless of my dislike for horses, I think every big police department needs a few big four-legged creatures (elephants would be cool, too). Police horses do a lot of good, both in terms of very real crowd control:

    The added visibility of the city’s mounted officers was helpful last May when two Times Square street vendors wanted to report smoke rising from a crude car bomb on 45th Street, which ultimately failed to explode. “They looked around,” he said, “and the first thing they saw of anyone in authority was two mounted police officers, who responded and cleared the area of bystanders before the bomb squad arrived.”

    And also in terms of positive P.R.: “Nobody ever tried to pet my police car, but they line up to pet my horse.” Neither is to be laughed at. Plus, there’s a lot of history here, too.

    But because of budget cuts, many departments are getting rid of their mounted units. It’s a real shame. Especially when it’s not about cost as much as it is about priorities:

    “We had to balance it against being able to keep officers in the patrol cars, and making sure we had enough officers on hand to answer emergency calls,” said Assistant Chief Chief Bob Kanaski of San Diego.

    I refuse to believe that one morepatrol car outweighs the benefit of having oneofficer on horse. And hell, if need be, have officers on horses answer calls. You can always tie the horse to a lamppost. Why not? And think how cool it would be.

  • Cost of a Car?

    I’ve always wondered and never been able to figure out exactly how much police cars cost to operate. Somebody in motor-pool must know, but nobody has told me.

    Here’s an article in the New York Times about a fleet for OTB. No doubt cheaper than cop cars. The vehicles cost an average of $6,700 each per year. They have 87 vehicles. And no doubt they’re cheaper to run since 1) they’re not being used much (that’s the point of the article), and 2) they’re not cop cars.

    It has employed three automotive mechanics, seven drivers and a motor vehicle supervisor, who, combined, earned $500,000 a year. In addition to those salaries, the state comptroller found that gas, insurance and outside repairs cost $585,000 a year.

    By my calculations that’s $12,471 per car per year. Anybody out there know more than me?

    In my Policing Green concept, I propose that cops would walk foot for an extra $20 to $50 a shift, with that money coming from gas not burned. Maybe I’m thinking too low.

  • Balto Patrol Short Handed

    Peter Hermann reports in the Baltimore Sun.

    Top brass always says patrol is the backbone of the police department. They lie. Roughly half of the police department is assigned to the patrol. When you need officers, you take them from patrol. Backbone my ass! What kind of organization knocks out its own vertebrae?

    When officers are taken from patrol, of course patrol suffers. Fully staffed patrol would be able to better respond to calls. No doubt. Without enough officers, response time increases and patrol officer simply don’t have the time to do the job they could and want to do.

    Poaching from patrol is bad in other ways, too. It kills morale. After the department is done poaching from patrol, you get a “temporary manpower shortage.” A permanenttemporary manpower shortages. That means you can’t get a day off. Or days off get canceled. Then officers have to call in sick to reclaim the day off. You can get in serious trouble for that. But you can get in even more serious trouble if you can’t take your planned wedding anniversary cruise you’ve paid for and for which you’ve had days-off approved for 11 months in advance.

    I’m of the belief that car patrol simply doesn’t serve much purpose at all. The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment proved it… but didn’t change anything. Crime wouldn’t go down even with fully staffed car patrol.

    Better to get the police out of cars and end the charade of rapid response to every call to 911. The problem is most–not many–most calls to 911 and 311 are bullshit: calls to non-existent addresses, drug dealers reporting a shooting to force an officer to move away, kids playing on phones, and calls that absolutely should have nothing to do with police (“my daughter doesn’t want to go to school” or “my boyfriend is putting his feet in my hair”).

    The majority of what’s left is simply not time sensitive.

    In the Eastern District, drug calls are a quarter of all calls. Add drug-related calls and you’ve got about half of the 113,000 calls for service per year. Clearly car patrol hasn’t solved the drug problem. Calling 911 about yo-boys slinging on drug corner does not tell the post officer anything he or she doesn’t know.

    Serious crimes? Assaults by shooting are 0.3% of all calls for service. Same for assault by cutting. Rape calls (most of which do not involve rape) are 0.1% of all calls. Carjacking? 0.04% of all calls. Aggravated assaults? 1.4%

    By comparison, kids calling 911 and hanging up is 6% of all calls. False alarms are 8% of all calls. I wrote about it here for the academic journal Law Enforcement Executive Forum. Chapter Five of Cop in the Hood says much the same thing but in a much more interesting way.

    It would be better to get rid of 911 or at least the lie that every call for service will be dealt with promptly. As it is now, even for real issues, police normally arrive after the fact and are left to pick up the pieces and write a report. Better to have officers walking or biking the beat able but not required to answer every request for police service. This kind of patrol could actually preventcrime and increase public satisfaction.

    Rapid Response should be a division separate from patrol. A few officers in cars could serve as backup and be assigned to those calls in which police really are actually needed right there and then. But these calls are few and far between. And if it’s a bullshit call? Then take a number and we’ll get to it when we can. The promise of car patrol and the illusion of rapid response is not worth the resources of half the police department.

  • Talk Yourself to Jail

    Two good posts by Pepper Spray Me.
    Talking Yourself to Jail.
    And Hire a Lawyer, Please.

  • Police History: Patrol

    This great historical tidbit is from the Edinburgh Review of July 1852. The original article, in pdf form, is here. The whole journal can be found on google books.

    I discovered this through Marjie Bloy’s excellent website on English history. She has a lot on Sir Robert Peel and early police (that’s how I found it).

    During the night they never cease patrolling the whole time they are on duty, being forbidden even to sit down. The police district is mapped out into divisions, these into sub-divisions, these into sections and these into beats, all being numbered and the limits carefully defined. To every beat certain constables are specifically assigned, and they are provided with little maps called beat-cards. The business of the constable on duty is to walk around his beat in a fixed time according to an appointed route. As soon as he has gone over it, he immediately begins his rounds again, so that the patrolling sergeant knows at any moment where the constable ought to be found unless something unusual has occurred. In this way every street, road, lane, alley and court within the Metropolitan Police District is visited constantly day and night by some of the police. The beats vary considerably in size. In those parts of the town that are open and occupied by the wealthier classes, an occasional visit is sufficient but where the character and density of the population is different, the throng and pressure of the traffic greater and the streets intricately designed the frequency of visits is increased. Within a circle of six miles from the centre of Kensington the beats are usually covered in periods varying from seven to twenty-five minutes and there are points which are never free from inspection.

    When anything occurs in the district worth communicating the intelligence is conveyed from one constable to another until it reaches the station house, thence, by an admirable arrangement of routes and messengers to the headquarters of the central office in Whitehall. Then it can be radiated along lines to each divisional station-house to every constable. This rapid transmission of intelligence is important as regards the detection of crime but especially as a means of preserving the city from riot. The effectiveness of this was proved with the disturbances of 1832 [the Reform Act riots]. In case of emergency the Commissioners could use this system to collect all 5,500 men in one place in two hours. There has therefore been no need to call upon troops. All crimes have been reduced but, because of this system, especially felonies, assaults and larcenies. Few people now dare carry weapons. Indeed many criminals have moved elsewhere for safety and easier work.

  • Car vs Foot Patrol

    There’s a good discussion I’ve been contributing to in the comments section from a post in marginal revolution.