Police-Community Plan: Rumblings Among Success Stories : Shortfall in Staffing Hinders Effectiveness

After breaking up fights, writing traffic tickets and making drug busts in Linda Vista for most of 1973, Officer Ray Pulsipher considered himself an expert on the makeup of his beat. He knew most of the streets, the neighborhoods and the crooks. He often told friends that 75% of Linda Vista residents were black and his beat had the city’s worst crime rate.

“Most of my activity in Linda Vista centered around a particular area where there was a problem,” said Pulsipher, a San Diego native who has patrolled the city’s streets for 13 years. “That problem just happened to be black people. Consequently, most of my arrests were black people. That’s all I saw when I was working.”

In the fall of 1973 Pulsipher was one of two dozen San Diego Police Department officers who participated in a experiment that was intended to debunk myths about traditional police work and bring cops closer to the communities they served. When the officers studied the history, demographics and crime statistics of their beats, Pulsipher was shocked to learn that Linda Vista’s population was actually 22% black and his beat had the second-lowest crime rate in the northern half of the city.

“It made me take another look at the arrests I made and realize that the majority were not black or Hispanic,” Pulsipher said. “The majority were white people.”

The experiment was adopted citywide in 1975 and given a catchy title--Community Oriented Policing, or COP. COP was a program with many elements, reflecting a new philosophy of law enforcement that has since become an integral part of everyday policing in San Diego.

It went far beyond educating officers.

In part it was a return to the old days, when cops walked their beats and talked to people in everyday situations. It was training a police officer to sponsor community meetings, to refer a sparring couple to a marriage counselor, or to invite a youth gang leader to ride along in a squad car. And, perhaps most important, it was improving community relations to help cops become better crime fighters.

When COP was adopted in 1975, San Diego epitomized the typical clean, slick West Coast police department. Officers practiced a routine style of policing that became known as the “Adam-12 approach”--they rode in their cars all day long, responding to radio calls.

“We didn’t have strong community identification,” said Norman Stamper, a San Diego deputy police chief who as a lieutenant was the chief architect of COP. “Trying to do police work in Rancho Bernardo the same way in downtown, Southeast or Pacific Beach is ridiculous. A bedroom community cries out for a different style and approach to policing than the center city.”

Ten years after it began, COP is widely praised as a positive step in improving police relations in San Diego. Pieces of the program have been adopted in other cities such as Salt Lake City, Sacramento and Cincinnati. But in San Diego many police officers contend that COP has encountered its share of problems.

Author James McClure wrote in his recent book “Cop World” that Community Oriented Policing “could well make the department a legend in its own right someday.”

Jack Barrell, pastor of East San Diego Presbyterian Church, said, “I’ve found it to be a good method of dealing with the public and letting the public know the police are there to help them. There is a respect here for the Police Department that you won’t find in many other cities.”

Councilman William Jones said: “To the extent that officers are getting out of their cars and getting to know the community, it has surpassed all expectations. But it doesn’t happen enough. They can do a lot more.”

Indeed, many contend that a police staffing shortage over the last decade has diminished the program’s effectiveness. Critics say that patrol officers in many parts of the city, particularly in minority areas where police relations remain tense, are too busy responding to crime complaints to practice the major elements of COP. These critics contend that COP has worked best in low-crime, high-income neighborhoods where officers have the luxury to leave their cars and meet with community groups.

In addition, the concepts of community policing are widely misunderstood by many officers who consider COP a dirty word, said Lt. John Morrison, one of three sergeants to participate in the initial experiment. Some officers, who asked not to be identified because they feared retribution, said they hold COP responsible for jeopardizing officer safety.

“Many cops believe the administration wants them to soft-soap, to go overboard and be nice guys and to leave themselves in jeopardy for public relations,” Morrison said. “That was never the intent of the program. It was to be decent, be a human being. At the same time, that doesn’t ever mean bending over backward to take crap from people.”

When Norm Stamper first suggested changing police methods 15 years ago, he was hardly alone. Nationwide, police administrators realized that their officers needed to improve community relations after the violent clashes with rioters in the late 1960s and Vietnam War protesters in the early 1970s.

San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara said that, in that period, police departments lost sight of who they worked for. “The community pays our salaries and elects our bosses,” McNamara said. “We do have a clientele and we do have to have the support of good solid citizens. They are the ones who call us up . . . and report crimes.”

While many cities reinstated foot and bicycle patrols to better serve inner-city communities, the prohibitive cost ruled out such a move in San Diego, where the ratio of patrol officers per 1,000 citizens--currently 1.5--has historically ranked near the bottom among major American cities.

But Stamper had more dramatic changes in mind than simply taking police officers’ cars away. He wanted to introduce an entirely different attitude and style of policing that would require officers to know the first names of civic leaders, business people and residents--from the Jack in the Box manager on the midnight shift to the housewife who walks her children to school in the morning.

The officers would be expected to arrange neighborhood meetings to discuss problems and suggest solutions, and treat people with dignity and respect regardless of status or race. In theory, these strategies would encourage citizens to join police in combating crime.

“The officer can’t be just a nameless, faceless symbol of authority,” Stamper explained. “He is a human being . . . who has to develop a mutual trust and a solid working relationship with people in the community. In the same breath, it would be really naive to suggest that such overtures by police officers will be received by all people in the community.”

With the help of police and city officials, Stamper prepared a proposal in early 1973 for a Police Foundation grant to pay for the experiment, then called Community Profile Development Project. But his program had to clear one major hurdle: resistance from then-Police Chief Ray Hoobler.

Hoobler said he worried about the program’s impact on police response times and he didn’t want his cops turning into social workers as they tried to iron out community problems. Also, he was concerned about how his deputy chiefs and commanders would react to a radical shift in policing initiated by Stamper, then a 29-year-old lieutenant, whose views were not universally respected within the department.

“Norman was perceived as very liberal when it came to law enforcement,” Hoobler said. “He was well-educated but philosophically he and I walked to a different drumbeat. I’m ultraconservative.”

Deputy Chief Stamper, 41, joined the San Diego Police Department in 1966 as a patrol officer and has worked his way up the chain of command. In between, he spent a six-year stint as a civilian adviser to current Police Chief Bill Kolender, who has been an enthusiastic supporter of COP.

Wrapped in a thick wool sweater as he leans back in his office chair sipping tea during a recent interview, Stamper comes across more like a college professor than a police veteran. His hair slightly graying at the temples, Stamper has a thin frame and a soft voice.

Despite Hoobler’s hesitancy to embrace Stamper’s program, the former chief was attracted to the idea of training officers to collect information and talk to people without alienating them. Hoobler had long believed that many of his officers lacked the communication skills possessed by the prior generation of foot-patrol cops.

So, with certain limitations, Hoobler agreed to take Stamper to Washington to request funding from the Police Foundation. Together with matching money from the city, Stamper was given $164,000 to conduct a one-year experiment in the city’s northern division.

The experiment covered a wide variety of beats, including beach neighborhoods (Pacific Beach), industrial zones (Sorrento Valley), minority communities (Linda Vista) and Navy housing areas (Tierrasanta) to name a few. The 24 officers and three sergeants assigned to those beats were told to participate whether they wanted to or not.

“Some officers were wildly enthusiastic,” Stamper recalled. “Others had to be brought into the program kicking and screaming.”

The intensive training began with officers spending the first week at the Winner’s Circle Lodge in Del Mar. Experts from around the country were recruited to teach various methods of communication, organizational skills and criminal analysis techniques. The officers learned about San Diego’s history and how each of the city’s communities developed. Their speaking habits were videotaped and critiqued.

Some of the officers grew frustrated with the workload of the experiment, and two officers were disciplined for failing to keep up with paper-work requirements. But many of the officers could not get enough. Each workday, they surveyed their beats, then parked their cars and walked as they tried their new skills on startled citizens who were unaccustomed to casually chatting with police. They worked overtime without pay to talk before community groups.

“I was really happy about COP because this is what I thought police work was all about,” said Pulsipher, who said he became a police officer because he wanted to help people improve their lives. Today, he is still a patrol officer, assigned to Kearny Mesa.

“Police work was not done that way,” Pulsipher said. “You did not get involved in the community. You were not allowed to get out of your car and mingle with citizens. You were not really responsible for anything other than criminal activity in your area.”

COP changed all that. Some examples:

- Groups of 8 to 10 officers began to meet with their sergeants to share pertinent information such as the names of armed and dangerous persons. No longer did line-up sessions resemble the opening of “Hill Street Blues” episodes, where a large group of officers sat mutely and scribbled a few notes as a sergeant lectured about crimes throughout the entire precinct.

- Officers were issued portable radios that permitted them to leave their squad cars and still remain in touch with dispatchers.

- The Police Department began responding to requests for service based on a priority system. Response to low-priority calls such as parking violations, petty thefts, abandoned cars and non-threatening neighborhood disturbances was delayed in favor of more serious requests. In some cases, this allows officers time to investigate an auto theft ring or form a rape prevention awareness group. “COP would not work without that system,” Stamper said. “This city is so big that police cannot come running when a cat is up a tree.”

- Police officers encouraged the public to ride along in squad cars to observe their work. Although many officers and high-ranking officials continue to resist this phase of COP, many patrol officers use the ridealongs to bridge gaps with troubled youths, ordinary citizens, teachers, community leaders and even transients.

- Officers were evaluated on how well they knew their beats. Does a cop know the name of the local high school counselor? How many burglaries were committed on the beat last month compared to the same period last year? Who runs the local community alert program? Such knowledge is a far cry from the not-so-distant days when officers were rated based on the number of tickets they wrote, the cleanliness of their squad cars and the manner in which they served their superiors. But police supervisors still count the numbers of arrests, citations and citizen contacts made by officers.

With these changes in place, the success stories started rolling in.

In the beach areas, for example, police designed and distributed brochures advising people who were planning large parties to have a good time and obey the law. Officers arranged for the city to bring in extra trash cans and provided information on alternative parking areas. Police reported few major disturbances at beach parties compared to previous years.

“The hosts of the parties would call us to pick up drug dealers, drunks and party crashers,” Lt. Morrison said. “In the mid-’70s, that was a tremendous success.”

In Linda Vista, Pulsipher established a working relationship with a young man who had a crime record the length of his arm. Pulsipher gave the man a ride when he needed it and helped him get a driver’s license. Pulsipher lost contact with the man until the night he responded to a complaint of shots being fired inside an apartment and recognized the man standing on a balcony. The man volunteered to go back to the apartment, retrieve the gun and make sure it was safe for Pulsipher to enter. The situation was resolved without incident.

“Under other circumstances, we probably would have used force to get in the apartment and taken people to jail,” Pulsipher said.

COP also has encountered some major setbacks. Serious staffing problems that have plagued the department during the last decade have caused police to become “professional report takers,” said Councilman Ed Struiksma. One sergeant requested that The Times not publicize the department’s ridealong policy because his division is so understaffed that it cannot accommodate requests by citizens to accompany experienced officers on their beats.

“COP is great but we’ve never had the manpower to do it as effectively as we would like,” said Sgt. Ty Reid, president of the San Diego Police Officers Assn. “It would be real nice to attend a senior citizens meeting, but if you do, the guy or woman on the beat next to you will not have a cover unit.”

Thus, the areas with the highest crime rates and most calls for service suffer the most, critics say. These communities--including Southeast San Diego, San Ysidro, Otay Mesa, Balboa Park and Pacific Beach--are among the same areas where police relations need to be improved, according to Councilman Jones.

In some of these communities, Hoobler said, citizens are “less prone to want to associate and get to know the police. And there is an inherent stigma of their associates seeing them talking to a cop which may create personal problems for them.”

Hoobler added: “You’re up against a lot more obstacles, but it’s still worth the effort to try.”

Stamper acknowledged that COP would be more effective if the city had smaller beats and more police officers, but he said that staffing shortages do not mean the program cannot be successful.

“The fact is if we had one-half or one-fourth the cops, COP could still work,” Stamper said. “It would not look the same and not produce the same results, but the underlying principles are still valid and sensible. To say radio calls interrupt or distract our efforts to carry out COP is dead wrong. It’s doing the best job you possibly can with what you’ve got.”

The other nagging problem for the department is that a contingent of veteran officers who for years relied on a gruff, aggressive style of policing to apprehend criminals have never really accepted COP.

“They thought that if we started treating people courteously, they would start taking advantage of us,” Pulsipher recalled. “The days of rough ‘n’ tough, shoot ‘em up stuff are gone. You have to treat people like human beings.”

In Santa Ana, where a similar version of COP began a decade ago, veteran officers also have resisted reform, Police Chief Ray Davis said.

“I’ve got people in the department who puke at the word humanistic,” Davis said. “If they step out of line, I will have them. I believe we run this department for the people in the community, not for police officers.”

After 10 years, COP remains a mystery to many San Diego police officers. Some officers, for example, defined COP as simply making more citizen contacts during their shift. Others assigned to the midnight shift have been heard grumbling, “There’s nobody out there to COP tonight.”

Several officers blamed COP for the department’s khaki uniforms, white cars and ban on leather jackets--all symbols they regard as softening the presence of police. Those symbols, however, were implemented years before COP.

During interviews, many officers remarked that they interpreted the department’s directives to treat people with respect to mean that criminals should be coddled. As a result, these officers believe that COP has made San Diego an unsafe city for police.

Since the introduction of COP in San Diego, nine patrol officers have been shot to death in the line of duty. That number represents more dead police officers per capita than any other large police department in the country.

Pulsipher said he tells his peers that the police shootings and COP are unrelated and that many of the officers were shot before they even had the chance to talk to their killers.

Stamper said the notion that COP is somehow responsible for the jump in police deaths suggests that some officers do not understand the philosophy.

“I have heard that people think COP is soft,” Stamper said. “They are wrong. It was never intended for an officer to say, ‘Excuse me, sir,’ during a hot stop.”

The COP philosophy, according to Stamper, lets the community know that officers “are not here to hurt you, but they’re not here to be messed with, either.”

Stamper admitted that the Police Department has not made that message as clear as it should.

As a result, critics say, the basic misunderstanding of community policing within the department has been COP’s biggest failure. Changing the nature of policing does little good unless a majority of the officers comprehend those changes.

But the most unfortunate part, Lieutenant Morrison said, is that officers who did not understand the program a decade ago are now sergeants and lieutenants who pass on their misconceptions to rookies on the street.

Stamper admits that the department made some mistakes in implementing COP.

“We moved too quickly,” he said. “We made a menu of sweeping changes and force fed it to the organization.”

In an attempt to eliminate any confusion or resentment, police administrators in 1978 dropped the acronym, stopped using the literature and started injecting heavy doses of the COP philosophy into everyday policing. But that effort did not work, either.

“For some reason (the name) won’t die,” Stamper said.