PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNITY POLICING : A Safer City Is Worth a Little Work : There won’t be overnight miracles. But we will benefit long-term if citizens and officers share the load.

Only a year or so ago, community-based policing was held out by academics and law-enforcement leaders as a preferred way to solve urban crime problems. Now, like “new math,” it is being sent to the dustbin almost before it is out of its wrapping. A South-Central Los Angeles group named Agenda has attacked the community-policing priorities of the Los Angeles Police Department. Houston Mayor Bob Lanier brags about a 30% reduction in crime because of basic police work that avoids the “social worker” syndrome of “neighborhood-oriented policing.”

What happened? How could a concept that seemed to hold so much promise present such disappointments, especially to the rank-and-file officer on the street?

The problem is impatience. We live in a world of 22-minute TV sitcom solutions. The most complex of world problems are shrunk into 25-second commercials. When community-based policing didn’t work miracles overnight, we were ready to move on. Guardian Angels, perhaps. Or Clint Eastwood-style, bare-fisted law enforcement.

Community-based policing holds as much promise as it ever did. In fact, it is the only formula that holds a prayer of long-term success in our democratic society. What is community-based policing? It is a philosophy of identifying and solving problems. It seeks to attack crime at its roots, rather than trimming its branches. It is a partnership of police and the community.

Community-based policing is not a new concept; it is a return to the philosophy of the cop-on-the-neighborhood-beat tradition. It is a return all the way back to Robert Peele’s London “bobbies,” the great-grandparents of modern police. It began to wane when police climbed into automobiles. The radio patrol car offered great mobility and fast response time in a widespread area, but the efficiency came at the expense of police-citizen acquaintance. Today, citizens talk to officers only when getting a ticket or reporting a crime. They see officers in coffee shops but don’t know their names. Police see citizens as figures through windshields, divided into three castes: suspects, victims or witnesses.

Let’s compare the public’s relationship with law-enforcement professionals to the way people relate to health-care professionals. What if we stopped being responsible for our personal health? What if we smoked, gorged ourselves on cholesterol and fats, sunbathed and ate spoiled food and then held our doctors responsible? It wouldn’t work, because we have the lion’s share of responsibility for our own health. In the same way, we have the major responsibility for the safety of our neighborhoods.

In Pasadena, community-based policing is our everyday way of doing business, from the decision-making of the department brass to the implementation by the street-level patrol officer.

Here’s an example: After the first Rodney King trial verdicts were handed down, there was as much anger and frustration in Pasadena’s large African American community as elsewhere in Southern California. Our police and community leaders met immediately after the threat became clear and formed a group known as We Care. Leaders and neighbors from the African American community rode throughout the day and night with police to keep the peace. One of these people approached a youth in a growing and volatile throng. “I know you,” he said. “You’re Mrs. Johnson’s boy. Get along home now before there’s trouble.” That drama of neighbors calming neighbors was replayed throughout tense days and nights, and Pasadena was spared the destruction and violence that marred Los Angeles.

We tend to think of our crime problem in terms of front-page news: drive-by shootings, carjackings and murders. But the real threat to our way of life is the insidious tide of “silent” crime such as burglaries, vandalism and auto thefts. Controlling crime comes in three parts: Prevention and intervention are the first two, and citizens and police share the responsibility for both. The third part is tracking down and incarcerating wrongdoers after the first two stages fail. Police carry most of the responsibility here. Vigilantes are not a solution.

Forging a citizen-police partnership is hard and will take many years. Police won’t like it, because they’ll be less independent and more accountable to “real people.” Citizens will find it a nuisance to take the time and effort to share the responsibility. They’ll be frustrated at times when they call the police only to have the police involve them in the solution.

As citizens become more aware, involved and trusting of the system, community-based policing will cause more calls for service, not less, and the involvement of police in the causes of criminal activity will result in more arrests, not fewer.

Community-based policing isn’t an alternative to crime-fighting; it’s the only way to permeate the community and identify evolving problems before they are full-grown. With ratios of about one police officer to 1,000 citizens, there can never be enough police to reduce crime in any other way.