[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 26 (Thursday, February 9, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H1542-H1545]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           COMMUNITY POLICING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Meehan] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to talk about the issue that we are 
dealing with in the Congress this week and early into next week, the 
issue of the crime bill.
  Just last September President Clinton signed the most comprehensive, 
effective, tough crime bill in the history of this country. It was a 
crime bill that was tough on repeat offenders. It was a crime bill that 
made a significant contribution to building more prisons across this 
country, $10 billion. It was also a bill that put 100,000 new police 
officers on the streets of America.
  But I want to talk about two parts of that bill because two important 
sections of that bill are in serious jeopardy over the next several 
days in the Congress of the United States; that is, sections of the 
bill that require and fund 100,000 new police officers across America, 
partially funded by the Federal Government, community policing.
  Let me just say that as a former first assistant district attorney in 
Middlesex County, one of the largest counties in the country, and 
having had the experience of overseeing a caseload of over 13,000 
criminal cases a year, and having had the experience of working with 54 
cities and towns and 54 different police departments across that 
Middlesex County, I can tell you that community policing is a cutting 
edge of what works in law enforcement. It is not an accident that we 
have for the time an Attorney General with vast experience in the front 
lines of the fight against crime.
  This attorney general knows what it is about to manage a case load, 
knows what it is about to work with police departments, and knows what 
fighting crime in tough areas is all about. And that is why I believe 
we have seen this smart, tough, effective crime bill passed into law.

                              {time}  1950

  Community policing has worked all over America, and I want to talk 
for a minute about my hometown, the city of Lowell, MA, where 13 
additional police officers and a commitment made by the Federal 
Government, and a commitment, by the way, made by the Republican 
Governor of Massachusetts, Governor Weld, a former prosecutor who also 
understands that community policing works.
  Because of that commitment, the city of Lowell has been able to form 
community partnerships using the Community Policing Program. Community 
partnerships are the hallmark of police and community oriented 
proposals. During the last year the Lowell Police Department under the 
leadership of Police Chief Educate Davis has opened up new community 
policing precincts in different sections of the city of Lowell, Lower 
Belvidere, Back Central Street, Lower Highlands. They have established 
a Team Lowell to go 
[[Page H1543]]  out in the communities and fight crime. They have 
developed a van plan, getting contributions from toll booths all over 
the city, to help form their partnership between the school department 
and the police department. They have a community response team with 
inspection services. During the first year they have been able to close 
down more than 150 buildings which are identified as drug houses or 
identified as structures that were not rehabilitatible.
  With the special units, the community response team has been 
responsible for over 350 arrests. We have had school visits by precinct 
officers into the community, visiting the schools, forming partnerships 
with educators and students and guidance counselors. We have 
established flag football leagues, where police officers donate their 
time, working with youths in the community. They also have a street 
worker program basketball league working in the city of Lowell, again 
forming that partnership, and a DARE summer camp has also provided 
leadership in the area of cutting drug use among youths.
  Just this past week the police chief in Lowell came out with a report 
showing the city of Lowell crime trends as a result of community 
policing in that city. The results are very, very important.
  These results show how community policing has actually worked in one 
particular city, Lowell, MA. These results are not the results of a 
political opinion poll. They are not the results of focus groups. They 
are not the results are putting one's finger into the political wind to 
determine what is popular one week or another. Because as I watched the 
Republican rhetoric coming on the other side of this issue, I see a 
lack of real understanding of what makes law enforcement ticks, about 
what works in law enforcement. But I see a lot of good political 
posturing.
  What really concerns me is I see a feeling that many Republicans on 
the other side of the aisle who supported this crime bill 4 months ago, 
5 months ago, supported it on the floor of the House, now are coming in 
with a new proposal that would not guarantee one community police 
officer. They allow communities all kinds of discretion to determine 
whether they want to purchase fax machines, limousines, new police 
vehicles, with no requirements at all that they engage
 in a community policing program that has worked.

  What seems to be ignored is the fact that these statistics show that 
community policing works. And there is nothing that could be more 
dangerous than for us to back out of our commitments that we have made 
to communities all over America to participate in a 3-year plan to fund 
community police departments across this country.
  But that is what is at risk. And I think it is really unfortunate as 
a person who has had some experience with crime to watch the rhetoric 
in the Congress. Many Members of Congress who have a lot to say on 
quick sound bites about crime have never been in a courtroom, have 
never prosecuted a case, have never put one criminal in jail, ever. But 
they have become so-called experts in law enforcement, so-called 
experts in what the future trends are in this country and what works 
and what does not. And that is bad news for America, because fighting 
crime is serious business. You do not learn how to fight crime by 
reading a political poll or looking at a focus group or determining 
shifts in the political winds. Fighting crime is serious business.
  Mr. STUPAK. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. MEEHAN. I would be glad to yield to my colleague from Michigan 
[Mr. Stupak], who I might add has done tremendous work on the task 
force on crime and has 12 years experience as a police officer in 
Michigan. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. STUPAK. I thank the gentleman. I thank the gentleman for once 
again taking the lead in putting together another special order on 
crime. But you were commenting a little bit there on statistics in 
Lowell, MA and what you found with community policing. But through all 
this rhetoric, I think one part that has been lost is that if you take 
the last decade, take the last 10 years, crime has tripled. It has gone 
up, violent crime, part I crime, has tripled in this country. It has 
gone up 300 percent.
  In that same 10-year period, do you realize how many police officers 
were added to help combat crime, which went up 300 percent in 10 years? 
A mere 10-percent increase in police officers throughout this country.
  So the point that you are making about violent crime and how police 
officers under a community policing program can have impact, our 
resources are scarce, crime is soaring out of sight. Like I said, it 
tripled in the last decade. Yet here we have a program that works, that 
works, as is shown in your area, and I am from northern Michigan, in 
Marquette, a city in my State of 17,000 people. But yet we put a 
community police officer in 1990, and in the last 2 years the crime has 
dropped 23 percent. The first 2 years it has been in existence it 
dropped 23 percent.
  We were just awarded another police officer because the community 
policing grant ran out in Marquette, but under the COPS Fast Program 
which was announced yesterday, they have now received money to fund 
this program for another 3 years to keep the solid work that is being 
done in community policing in a small rural community like Marquette. 
It works.
  Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you. The 23 percent figure that you mentioned is 
consistent with the figures here that are up in the first year of 
community policing in the city of Lowell. For example, burglaries, down 
34 percent; residential burglaries, down 32 percent; business 
burglaries, and what could be more important in terms of fostering 
economic development and business growth, down 41 percent; larcenies, 
down 23 percent. In car thefts in the city of Lowell, they are down 20 
percent as a result of community policing. And these are not my 
figures. They do not come from a political pollster. They do not come 
from a political group in Washington. They come from the police chief 
of city of Lowell, MA, a law enforcement professional with years of 
experience in fighting crime, in a very, very difficult city to fight 
crime.
  When I was a first assistant district attorney in Middlesex County, 
the first five homicides I attend, and we used to in our office, the 
first assistant would have to go to a homicide scene to determine what 
experts needed to come in to investigate a murder, to basically head up 
that investigation and make sure it was conducted properly.
  The first five homicides that I attended in the first few months, 
three of them were in Lowell, MA. So this is an area really that has 
been plagued by difficulties in fighting crime. And the statistics that 
you mentioned are consistent right in this community, dramatic 
increases in crime in the eighties and into the early nineties.
  These figures I think speak for themselves, and they are consistent 
with my colleagues' experiences as well.
  The other thing that I think is important to mention is what 
community policing is all about. Because sometimes people hear the term 
and really do not understand what makes community policing work and 
what actually happens when a community undertakes a competent community 
policing program.
  I know from the rhetoric I have heard on the floor of the House of 
Representatives, it appears to me a lot of Members of Congress do not 
know what community policing is all about. I was wondering if you 
could, given your 12 years of experience, relate what community 
experience is all about and your experience with it.
                              {time}  2000

  Mr. STUPAK. I would be pleased to. Back before I came to Congress, I 
was in the State legislature back in 1989 and 1990. We wrote the 
community policing law for Michigan. Community policing is really a 
concept where the police officer works and lives in the community in 
which he is policing.
  It is usually a small geographic area where the police officer 
basically befriends the people in which he is serving. Many people 
refer to community policing probably in the larger cities as walking 
the beat. While you are walking that beat, you are learning to 
communicate with the people you are serving. You have built a 
friendship. You have built a trust. You actually have 
[[Page H1544]]  built a partnership in the community in which you are 
trying to serve.
  Once that partnership is cemented, then the faith, the trust and the 
confidence in law enforcement comes back. So when there is a crime, 
when you go to one of the five murders that you went to in Lowell, MA, 
when you go there, you go there a complete stranger and you try to do 
an investigation. But if you are a community police officer and a 
murder or a crime happens in that community, you go there, you have 
contact. You have seen these people. You are not strangers trying to 
resolve a heinous crime that may have concern, but rather, you are a 
community that has come together to focus on this crime, with the 
faith, confidence, and trust in your police. They are more open. They 
will assist him in solving this crime.
  And once you have built that trust, that relationship, community 
policing can and will work. You work together as a community. It is a 
partnership that is formed between the geographic area.
  In Michigan, one of the ways we defined the areas in which a 
community police officer would work would be the density of population 
in a given area, the crime rate and the juvenile population, since 
juveniles seem to be the focus of most, a lot of the crime that happens 
nowadays.
  So when you take those three factors, you put a police officer in 
there. That police officer lives there. He works there. So when that 
police officer investigates this crime, whatever it might be, whether 
it is murder in Lowell, MA, or breaking and entering in northern 
Michigan, the police officer that took the original complaint, started 
the investigation, is the same police officer that stays through the 
whole investigation. It is the same police officer that brings the 
request to the district attorney or the prosecutor for the warrant. It 
is the same police officer that goes to court with the witnesses or the 
victim's family, whatever it might be.
  Throughout this whole investigation, there is a trust that is being 
built. There is confidence in the department. Because the way it is 
right now, without community policing, one police officer takes the 
initial report. He turns it over to the investigator who goes and sees 
the family or victim, wherever he does his investigation. Someone else 
goes to the prosecutor to get the warrant. And when you go to the day 
of trial, the person who took the initial complaint, you do not 
remember anymore. You might know the investigator. You never met the 
prosecutor. There is not that teamwork, that partnership, that 
relationship, that trust that is needed.
  When it is put together, it works, whether it is a rural area or in 
an urban area.
  I know the gentlewoman from Houston, TX [Ms. Jackson-Lee] wants to 
jump in here because they have a tremendous community policing program.
  Mr. MEEHAN. I might add, our colleague from Texas [Ms. Jackson-Lee] 
has been a leader in the Committee on the Judiciary on these issues, 
has been extremely active and has experience as a Houston city council 
member, a lawyer, and I have to say has been a very articulate, 
outspoken advocate on these crime prevention programs, antigang 
activities. And I am delighted that she could join us tonight because 
she certainly has made a tremendous impression as a new Member of 
Congress. And I wonder if she could relate some of the experiences that 
she has had in Houston.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas [Ms. Jackson-Lee].
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Massachusetts for his leadership and certainly I thank the gentleman 
from Michigan [Mr. Stupak] for really evidencing from a very personal 
perspective, and as you have evidenced from a very personal perspective 
what it means to be a police officer and what it means to balance the 
whole concept of prevention and preventing in law enforcement.
  I think one of the things that our colleagues are missing on the 
other side of the aisle is there is not
 a conflict with law enforcement and having officers know their 
communities. You are not inhibited or prevented from being forceful in 
arresting the bad guy, if you will, and ensuring safety in the streets, 
if you also have the balance of being able to know the neighborhood.

  Coming from the city of Houston and having served, and I thank the 
gentleman very much, on the city council, being part of the local 
community, one of the aspects of policing that they were so excited 
about is what we called neighborhood storefronts. That simply meant 
that our officers were right in the neighborhood. And believe it or 
not, we would have a tough time turning away communities who wanted to 
offer free space so that cops could be on the beat, somewhat similar to 
the President's programs of cops fast, cops ahead, and cops more.
  What it meant is that they would come into the neighborhood, they 
would be next to the corner ice cream store, the corner grocery store, 
the neighbor who was going to the cleaner's could go into this 
neighborhood storefront, share information. The police could share 
information and there was a complete dialoging. You would be very much 
pleased with the fact, evidenced in your support for this program and 
our support for his program, of how many criminal activities were 
either stopped or how many arrests were made because of that 
neighborhood influence and because of that interaction between neighbor 
and police.
  I think it is certainly a travesty that we would come this far, 
hearing the announcement that was just made for this past week where 
the President was able to announce some 6,600 law enforcement agencies 
being able to hire 7,110 community police officers under the Cops Fast 
Program. It is a tragedy to know that what we have on the table now is 
an effort to go back to the station, if you will. When I say the 
station, the train station, rather than pulling out and going forward, 
we are going back to where we started from and to turn back the clock 
on programs like this.
  Mr. MEEHAN. The point that the gentlewoman made relative to getting 
police officers into the community is important for two respects. One 
is, you can reduce crime. But my experience has been, we have a DA up 
in Middlesex County, Tom Riley, who has really been on the cutting edge 
of priority prosecution programs. And what happens is, a police officer 
working with the community, the schools, the probation department, they 
can identify who the worst offenders are, who the gang leaders are, who 
the ringleaders are, identify them and make them a priority and get 
them out of that neighborhood. Those who cannot be rehabilitated or 
those who need to be removed are removed. And you get them out of the 
neighborhood and then you work with the vast majority of the 
individuals that are left. That is the type of law enforcement that 
works. And it is proven all over the country.
  Mr STUPAK. For those who are watching us either in their office or at 
home, the reason why we are here, this program, community policing, was 
just started October 1, just over 4 months ago. And on February 7, the 
Republicans, our friends on the other side of the aisle, brought forth 
six pieces of crime legislation on February 7. We have been debating it 
for the last few days. We talk about 100,000 police officers we made a 
commitment to put on America's streets in the next 5 years. The program 
is 4 months old. There is overwhelming support throughout this Nation 
for it from the police officers.
  The gentlewoman from Texas mentioned the Cops on the Beat Program, 
the Cops More Program, the Cops Fast Program, three of the programs 
that have just started will have 17,000 police officers on the street 
in the last 4 months.
  But why are we here talking about it? Because even though the slogan 
is, our friends on the other side of the aisle say the slogan is taking 
back the streets, what they are doing is giving back the streets to the 
criminals, to the violent perpetrators because they want to scrap this 
program, this 100,000 cops on the street. I still have not heard a good 
reason why it should be scrapped, but they want to scrap it for nothing 
more than political reasons.
  The would replace these 100,000 cops on the street and replace them 
with a massive block grant program. When you look at that massive block 
grant program, billions of dollars are going to be put into a block 
grant program. They way that is to help fight crime at 
[[Page H1545]]  the local level; after all, the local people know what 
is best for them. There is not one police officer earmarked in their 
plan. There is not any program earmarked in their plan to put police 
officers on the street. And we have been seen in late 1968, with the 
Law Enforcement and Administration Agency, LEAA, how the money was 
squandered, was squandered or as someone said the other day, it reminds 
you of the pork of Christmas past, what they did with all that money. 
For every dollar that was spent in the late 1960's and early 1070's, 33 
cents on every dollar went for administrative costs, overhead, 
bureaucrats. We did not see more police officers on the street.
  What we are here trying to inform the American people is this 
unrestrained giving of money back without any conditions will repeat 
the problems we had in the late 1960's and the early 1970's, the abuses 
that went into the LEAA Program.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE. Let me just take you up on that point because you 
make a very valuable point. First of all, I think it is important to 
note that we come from respectively different parts of the Nation. I 
think it is a tragedy, again, if our colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle would pretend to think that this is a big-city problem or it 
is a big-State problem. What we are finding out is whatever the 
jurisdiction, the hamlet, a town, a country, the cops program that was 
passed in the 1994 omnibus crime bill went to seed--that's the heart of 
the matter.


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