Wednesday, February 09, 2000
Community policing has an impact
It's one part of 10-year drop in major crime
BY PERRY BROTHERS
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Officer Shawn George hugs business owner Eula Hunter as he walks along Burnet Avenue.
(Glenn Hartong photo)
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Behind tinted windows, the driver of a low-riding, silver sports car slowed to honk and wave at two police officers on the corner.
“That's one of our scumbags,” said one officer, after returning the wave. “He lives all the way on the other side of town, but he spends 10 hours a day here.”
The driver, according to Cincinnati police officers Shawn George and Ron Avant, is a drug lord. Avondale is his office.
He knows the officers — well enough to taunt them with a wave.
“They all know "King George,'” Officer Avant said of his partner as the car pulled away.
For more than a year, Officer George has been part of a community-oriented policing (COP) program in the city neighborhood. Officer Avant joined him six months ago.
The COP program fights crime by allowing officers time to get to know the criminals and work with residents and business owners in concentrated areas.
The program is one of a slew of initiatives that experts say have contributed to a decade-long dramatic drop in major crimes.
Since 1991, violent crimes — murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — have declined each year. No one knows precisely why.
Some credit programs like COP and longer jail sentences. Others say would-be criminals have learned from the horrors of the drug- and gun-ravaged '80s.
But an analysis of 10 years of Cincinnati crime statistics shows Cincinnati's total reported offenses — violent crimes plus burglary, larceny and auto theft — began to drop in 1992 and have plunged nearly every year since. Only 1996 showed a slight increase — 1.8 percent — because of a jump in burglary and larceny, or theft without force.
Cincinnati's numbers mirror national figures, according to John Eck, a criminal justice professor at the University of Cincinnati.
“There's probably a lot of things working together to make this happen, but no one thing could have done it alone,” Mr. Eck said.
Lt. Col. Richard Biehl, an assistant Cincinnati police chief, agreed.
In the mid-1980s, Cincinnati's force had about 895 officers. Now, largely because of federal grants, there are 1,045 officers.
Cincinnati's major crimes spiked 29.8 percent in 1991 — possibly the last large wave of violence associated with crack cocaine.
“It put us on notice,” Lt. Col. Biehl said. “When you realize you're not making progress, there has to be a change in methods or tactics.”
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the division launched several programs. The Street Corner Unit, for example, a late-80s pilot project to target drug-related crimes, became a permanent unit.
“Technology overall has certainly helped law enforcement improve its effectiveness,” said Lt. Col. Biehl.
Lt. Col. Richard Janke, resources bureau commander, said the division recently started a database program that monitors crimes in every reporting area to identify “hot spots.” Commanders then focus efforts on the targeted locations.
And, the concept of community-oriented policing — initially resisted by some as soft-on-crime — slowly has garnered support within the division. Fifty-eight sworn officers are assigned to the COP program. Other officers are assigned elsewhere but take part in COP activities.
COP officers like Shawn George and Ron Avant have criminal-trespass agreements with many Avondale property owners. These allow the officers to arrest loiterers and sus pected drug dealers for trespassing when they retreat onto private property.
The officers attend community meetings, work with business owners to improve the appearance of the property, lobby for surveillance cameras and study crime trends to identify problems. And, in the process, the officers forge connections with the people.
“I think we're the bridge between the community and the police department,” said Officer Avant, whose parents still live in the Avondale house where he grew up. “If there's a long-term problem, we can sit down and talk to the citizen.”
Those relationships pay off. Officer George recalled a foot chase with a suspected drug dealer near Burnet Avenue. By the time he caught the suspect, four neighbors had called police to report where the man had tossed packets believed to contain drugs.
“The major reason we have a drop in crime is the community,” said Lt. Col. Janke. “The people themselves become less tolerant.”
In the early '90s, police faced soaring crime rates and continued problems tied to crack cocaine. The new decade holds different challenges, Lt. Col. Janke said, including making the most of crime data and technology. Another priority is police-community relations.
A new program called TACTical Communications is being developed to teach officers how best to interact with the public. The goal is to build relationships that ultimately help police fight crime.
In high-crime areas such as District 4, which includes Avondale, officers need the public's help.
From 1990 to 1999, 24.1 percent of Cincinnati's major crimes took place in District 4. By population, the district ranked fourth-largest in 1990 behind districts 3, 2 and 5. But during the 10-year period, it led in every major category except robbery and larceny, for which it was a close second to the city's smallest district, District1.
District 1 listed 28.6 percent of all reported violent crimes from 1990 to 1999; District 4 had 27 percent.
District 1's downtown neighborhoods of Over-the-Rhine and the West End ranked in the top 10 for violent crimes from 1990 to 1999, as did District 4's neighborhoods of Avondale, Bond Hill and Walnut Hills.
Still, each of the districts showed overall declines in crime rates for at least six of the past 10 years.
In addition to policing, there may be other, less tangible reasons for the crime declines, Lt. Col. Biehl and other experts say.
“One of them that has been discussed — with the reduction of handgun use by young people — is generational learning,” Lt. Col. Biehl said. “We had a generation that was very significantly, negatively impacted by gun use.”
UC's John Eck said that philosophy — while difficult to prove — also could be applied to crack cocaine use.
“Going back a decade or so, you look on the streets at the guys (involved with crack) with the expensive cars and the good-looking girls hanging around,” said Mr. Eck. “Those people don't look that good anymore. A lot of them are in prison, some of them are dead and the rest of them look pretty scuzzy.
“And, you couple that with ... a good economy where there are some good prospects, maybe not available to the kid there before him, those two together might help.”
Numbers and theories aside, David Hankerson is simply glad he's no longer afraid to go to work in the morning.
For seven years, Mr. Hankerson, 41, of Madisonville, has worked in his father's barber shop on Burnet Avenue.
The area in front of the shop used to be choked with drug users and sellers, he said.
Since neighborhood officers George and Avant came on the beat, the problem has vanished.
“The troublemakers have disappeared,” he said. “These were guys that didn't have any fear, no respect. Now, they're unemployed on Burnet.”
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