Police shift
POLICE INNOVATIONS in small cities often get overshadowed by crime-fighting efforts in larger urban areas. But major cities such as Boston, where the number of shootings has increased by roughly 40 percent over last year, could learn a lot from smaller, more nimble police departments.
Only three homicides have occurred this year in Worcester, a city of 173,000 with a 17 percent poverty rate. Gary Gemme, the city's up-from-the-ranks police chief, is a devotee of community policing, but not slavishly so. The standard model steers entire patrol forces away from the ``next call, next cruiser" mentality toward more preventive practices, in which the same officers work the same neighborhoods, trying to earn the trust of locals.
But Gemme believes that the inevitable demands of chasing emergency calls leave little time for useful contacts with residents. To compensate, he has introduced a so-called ``split force" model that assigns roughly three-quarters of the city's 200 patrol officers to 911 duties. The remainder work out of the Community Impact Division, which assigns officers full time to deal with chronic neighborhood problems, such as drug houses, problem bars, and troublesome youths.
Providing enough time to develop good relations with residents serves both the community and the police. Sometimes, says Gemme, partnerships carry over into the courtroom. In Boston, witness intimidation is a severe impediment to justice. But in Worcester, says the chief, witnesses can usually be counted on to testify.
Lowell, meanwhile, does efficient work with ex-offenders. There is growing concern in small and large cities about recidivism among prisoners who return home with few skills. Reentry programs in Boston try to link the returnees with jobs, housing, and health services. But the programs are often dependent on grants and require careful coordination among police, social workers, and ministers. Often, only those deemed most at risk of recidivism receive help. By contrast, practically every person leaving prison and returning to Lowell receives official attention.
Instead of depending on periodic reentry programs, a team of detectives from the Family Services Bureau of the Lowell Police Department tracks every local prisoner leaving state prisons and county jails. Two detectives drop by the ex- prisoners' homes and give them literature on agencies that might help them reintegrate. The visits, and the responsibility for locating former prisoners, are part of the detectives' regular duties , unit head Lieutenant Daniel Larocque says.
There's a lot to learn about policing outside of Boston. In pursuit of innovation, big-city police shouldn't be reluctant to cross borders.
