Net Plays Growing Role in Community Policing

In perhaps no other area of public policy are there as many controversies and paradoxes as in the use of information technologies by the police. I began to learn this last month when I participated in a workshop on the subject in Chicago, called “Beyond the Rhetoric: Facing the Challenges of Community Policing.”

The conference of about 750 law enforcement officers was co-sponsored by the Justice Department’s COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) program and the Chicago Police Department.

“Community policing” is the new mantra of police departments throughout the United States, especially in Los Angeles after the issuance of the Christopher Commission report--in the wake of the riots that followed the Rodney King verdict--that recommended the LAPD be reoriented to community policing strategies.

The COPS program defines community policing as a “philosophy that promotes and supports organizational strategies to address the causes and reduce the fear of crime and social disorder through problem-solving tactics and community-police partnerships.”

Among the goals: personalizing police officers and strengthening their ties to communities, solving problems before they become incidents of crime, improving quality-of-life factors, and expanding the range of problem-solving strategies available to communities beyond arrests and police crackdowns on crime.

The Internet can play an important role in community policing. Three basic tasks in community policing are information gathering, analysis and information referrals. The Internet, as an information tool, may make these tasks easier.

Crime statistics, for example, have proved to be an integral part of community policing. Police departments sit on mountains of information about communities, gathered and processed by officers in the routine course of their work on the streets. In New York City, crime statistics have helped the police focus on “problem areas” and work with local residents to reduce the crime rate. Now a lot of police departments are putting their “crime maps” online, such as the South Pasadena Police Department (https://sppd.org/).

Information referral means pointing citizens to places where they can find solutions to neighborhood problems that are best handled by service agencies rather than the police.

In this role, police officers--who are often the most visible agents of the public sector--become expert information referrers, possibly with the assistance of well-designed Internet resources. This “one-stop shopping” is one of the most promising approaches of community policing.

Steve Snow, director of Charlotte’s Web (https://www.charweb.org), the community computer network for 14 counties surrounding Charlotte, N.C., says area police will soon have laptop computers in their cars. “They’ll be able to look up sources of information for people they encounter, and perhaps say, ‘Here’s an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting you can attend this week,’ ” says Snow. “That’s exciting.”

In fact, the idea that fixing community problems with whatever tools work best was one of the original motivations for community policing. The example most often cited is the “broken windows” case, in which fixing broken windows, eradicating graffiti, hauling away junked cars or addressing vacant lots and buildings is more effective at preventing crime than responding to individual crime incidents.

The Internet could be used by police as an information resource for referrals to mediation services, substance abuse treatment, welfare and food stamp agencies, employment services, psychological counseling or other government agencies.

But it is precisely this philosophy of community policing that has come under harsh criticism by some police officers who are reluctant to become “social workers.” Many police officers are attracted to the profession because they want to “catch bad guys,” not fix broken windows or haul away junked cars. Some cops have complained that community policing turns them into “grin and wave” mollycoddlers, and that trying to solve the innumerable problems of poor neighborhoods saddles them with an impossible task.

The LAPD’s Web site (https://www.lapdonline.org), which LAPD officials boast is the “largest criminal justice Web site in the world” with more than 2,000 pages, highlights the department’s commitment to community policing but features no links to external problem-solving alternatives such as those mentioned above. Its page titled “Building Safer Communities” is dominated by traditional approaches to crime, and the page “Sites of Interest,” with links to outside pages, is mostly a list of other law enforcement Web sites.

Some community policing strategies run into resistance or other obstacles. The LAPD stopped distributing public copies of its crime maps last May after encountering resistance from real estate agents and developers and discovering that the maps were being used as advertising by home security firms. The LAPD Web site does not contain the crime maps that are common features on other police department Internet sites.

The LAPD’s Web site may reinforce the impression of some Los Angeles citizens that the department doesn’t grasp the philosophy of community policing, despite Chief Bernard Parks’ strong defense, which is included as part of the site (https://www.lapdonline.org/general _information/community_policing/ gen_mgmnt_paper/gen_mgmnt_paper_frame.htm).

Finally, there is the all-important question of access to the Internet. This is the paradox of Internet-assisted community policing: The communities that need the most assistance are often those with the least access to the Internet, to computer skills, and to English competency and even basic literacy.

Snow of Charlotte’s Web says: “It’s almost laughable to create a giant Web site that the target audience can’t see. It’s like having a fleet of motorcycles but no gas.”

There is no easy solution to this problem, but police departments, like other government agencies, are confronted with the difficulty of how to extend digital information resources to neighborhoods where the basic infrastructure and skills are hard to find.

In the private sector, one significant effect of the Internet has been to “blur” the boundaries of corporations, making it difficult to determine where one company’s activities stop and another’s start.

The same thing is beginning to happen in the public sector, but the typical bureaucratic boundaries of governments are often more difficult to break down. This is especially true of police departments, long protective of their turf and elite status. Both community policing and the Internet are corroding law enforcement’s traditional isolation and practices, and it’s a painful adjustment for many cops.

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Gary Chapman is director of the 21st Century Project at the University of Texas at Austin. His e-mail address is gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu.