[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 2 (Wednesday, January 26, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: January 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
COMMUNITY POLICING
Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, no one can dispute the need to put more
police officers on the street. More police usually means more security.
Nevertheless, an article appearing in today's New York Times
demonstrates that the concept of community policing, which is the
centerpiece of the Clinton administration's anticrime efforts, may
sound good in theory, but in practice it is far from perfect.
According to the article, thousands of New York City police officers
who are engaged in community policing do not work during those time
periods when crime is most prevalent--on weekends and late at night.
The article also cites high turnover rates, poor training, and the lack
of coordination among community police officers and the other agencies
within the New York City police department.
Those who beat the community-policing drum should read this article.
As the New York City experience demonstrates, community policing
certainly has its strong points, but the jury is still out on its
effectiveness in fighting crime.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the New York Times
article be inserted in the Record immediately after my remarks.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Community Police Officers Cited on Hours and Training
(By Alan Finder)
The thousands of New York City officers working in
community policing do not work enough weekends or late at
night and are not coordinating well with other police units
and other city agencies, according to nearly two dozen
internal police reports that analyze the program.
The 22 reports, prepared from November 1992 to August 1993,
do not represent a wholesale indictment of the Police
Department's major tactical shift to community policing,
which was introduced by Dinkins administration three years
ago. The reports, in fact, seldom draw broad conclusions.
But in small, often mundane ways, the reports outline
significant problems with the long-term effort to make the
30,000-officer department more responsive to community
concerns and more attuned to preventing crime than just
responding to it.
The internal reports, which were made public earlier this
week after an article about them appeared in The Daily News,
were prepared by former Assistant Chief Aaron H. Rosenthal.
He was assigned in November 1992 by Raymond W. Kelly, who was
then the Police Commissioner, to critique how well the Police
Department was adjusting to community policing. Both Mr.
Rosenthal and Mr. Kelly have now left the department, Mr.
Kelly earlier this month and Mr. Rosenthal last summer.
``I wanted the unvarnished truth,'' Mr. Kelly said in a
interview on Monday, explaining why he had asked for the
reports. ``We recognize that everything in community policing
is not going to work.'' Last February, in fact, Mr. Kelly and
Mr. Rosenthal said publicly that the transformation to
community policing has been hampered by a lack of follow-up
training. They said they expected to identify other problems
in the transition and intended to make adjustments.
These are among the major findings in Mr. Rosenthal's
reports:
weekends
Not enough of the more than 3,000 officers who are
specifically assigned to walk a neighborhood beat are working
on weekends, several of the reports say. Community policing
gives individual officers considerable flexibility in
determining their schedules; they are supposed to work shifts
that best enable them to confront the problems of the people
on their beats.
The problem, Mr. Rosenthal wrote, was that many of the most
pressing criminal and quality-of-life problems highlighted
for attention by the community police officers themselves in
their internal reports did not take the weekend off, and
neither should many of the officers.
``One issue that still needs to be addressed is the sparse
coverage that continues to exist on the weekends,'' he wrote
in a report last May. He repeated the criticism in a report
last July.
In the study last May, Mr. Rosenthal examined the records
of five officers and a supervisor in each of nine precincts
during the first three months of 1993. He found that 78
percent of the officers were off routinely on Sunday and 61
percent were off on Saturday.
In a related finding, Mr. Rosenthal said that narcotics
officers did not work on Sunday and that they made few
arrests after 6 P.M. These hours do not reflect the concerns
of the neighborhood about drug activity at nights and on
weekends. Senior police officials said that undercover
narcotics officers can work more safely during daylight,
because backup officers can see them better, Mr. Rosenthal
wrote.
training
In-service training of community police officers at the
city's 75 precincts ``has been a dismal failure, primarily
due to an overall blase attitude on the part of management
which has filtered down to the attendees,'' according to a
report written on Jan. 19, 1993.
Mr. Rosenthal did not say in that report how or why he came
to the conclusion, but he did recommend that the Police
Academy train precinct supervisors and then monitor the in-
service training at each precinct.
In two reports the next month, Mr. Rosenthal described
visits to four precincts that were made by members of his
staff. In three of the four instances, Mr. Rosenthal's staff
found appropriate training taking place. The officers
conducting the sessions were well prepared and informative,
he wrote.
But at one precinct, the Seventh, in Manhattan, no training
was taking place at the designated hour. It began only after
Mr. Rosenthal's staff member raised questions, and the
officer running the session was ill prepared and the session
was disjointed, Mr. Rosenthal wrote.
In another report, this one last June, he examined the
records of in-service training sessions at 15 precincts
selected at random. Mr. Rosenthal concluded that the record-
keeping was inadequate, with the result that some officers
were exposed repeatedly to the same topics and not exposed to
other subjects.
turnover
Turnover of officers assigned to community policing appears
to be high, and Mr. Rosenthal suggests in one report that it
may be tied to a lack of incentives to remain in the new
units.
In an analysis last February of community police officers
in seven precincts, Mr. Rosenthal determined that between
October 1990 and February 1993 a total of 32 sergeants and
326 officers were newly assigned to community policing units.
In the same period, 13 of the 32 sergeants, or 40 percent,
and 119 of the 326 officers, or 38 percent, left for other
police assignments.
Mr. Rosenthal does not say directly why he thinks so many
officers are leaving community policing. He does say, without
elaborating, that the department needs a rewards system to
keep officers walking their beats. In another report, in
April 1993, he reports on a survey of 15 precinct commanders,
who were asked what problems they had encountered with
community policing. Eight of the 15 said the top problem was
a ``lack of incentives to retain qualified community police
supervisors and officers.''
More traditional forms of policing, including riding in a
patrol car, apparently leads to more arrests and to
traditional kinds of advancement in the department.
coordination
Mr. Rosenthal concluded that community police officers
often did not coordinate well with other police units,
including detectives, narcotics officers and auxiliary police
officers, or with some other city agencies. In a report last
August, he said that six precincts identified traffic
congestion, and particularly illegal parking, as a local
problem, but then did not consult with city traffic agents
about solutions.
In a report last April, he cited precincts that had
identified prostitution as among their communities' biggest
problems. But community police officers often did not work
late at night, when prostitutes were most evident on the
street, and they did not make many of the prostitution
arrests made within their precincts, Mr. Rosenthal wrote.
Often uniformed officers and officers from the public morals
division made most of the arrests, he contended.
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