He's still on the beat

Retirement in sight, Lexington chief takes community's pulse on police force

Lexington Police Chief Christopher Casey, checking in with downtown visitors, shares his police trading card with (from left) Genevieve and Sophie Burnieika of Cambridge and Marliana Bland of Bedford. (Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff)

Lexington Police Chief Christopher Casey is ending his tenure just as he began it, by asking residents how well the local police are doing their job and how they could do it better.

As Casey, 53, heads toward retirement later this year, his search for feedback is very much in keeping with his career-long advocacy for community policing.

"When I first started, it was more like a professional model: We drove around in patrol cars with the windows up, we were very stoic, we came across as the experts, we thought, 'We can arrest our way out of problems,' " he said in a recent interview. "Now we engage with the community."

A lifelong Lexington resident, Casey was among the earliest of the state's top cops to embrace community policing. He trained his officers to work collaboratively not only with each other but also with local and regional groups, and use the community's help to solve problems and prevent crime.

Recently, he took it a step further, mailing a confidential questionnaire to some 2,000 Lexington residents seeking detailed feedback. With an exhaustive rating system, the questionnaire asks about crime prevalence and safety, police handling of it, how they could improve, and values or characteristics officers should possess.

Many say it is a progressive approach that has gained notice and accolades, especially in police circles, for Lexing ton's department and its chief.

"Chris is very highly respected," said A. Wayne Sampson, executive director of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association. "He's been extremely involved in upgrading the professional standards of policing."

Those standards have been critical for Casey ever since 1977, when, shortly after graduating from Boston College, he first donned his blues. In 1993, when he took command as chief in Lexington, he immediately put his ideas into practice. At the time, the department had 56 employees, including 50 officers, and a budget of $2.6 million.

Casey reasoned that the best way to teach his officers was to employ the collaborative approach within the department first. He asked all his employees, from the rank and file on up, to identify problems they saw on the force.

It turned out that their most pressing desire was for new uniforms. "They hated the color, French blue, they hated how they fit," said Casey, who let the officers research new outfits and figure out how to pay for them. "That was really the icebreaker," he said. "It also created a sense of ownership and responsibility."

Casey instituted a system in which department members interviewed candidates for promotion, even for the highest-ranking brass. "They want the same kind of people to supervise them as we do: people who are conscientious and capable," he said. Word spread, and Lexington was asked to share its experience with other police departments in presentations in Georgia, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.

In 1996, Casey circulated his first questionnaire for the town's residents. At the time, a top concern turned out to be keeping Lexington's youths off illegal drugs.

In response, Casey placed a police officer in Lexington High School to work with administrators, teachers, parents, and students to discover the sources of drugs and try to stop their spread. Other officers were added later to the middle schools and the Minuteman Regional High School.

Casey also joined with police in seven other communities to form a regional drug task force. The departments used officers from the communities to keep local drug dealers from recognizing investigators. In 1997, the task force started targeting the pushers for arrest, and succeeded in taking more drugs off the street than ever, Casey said.

He also met regularly with school and town department heads to try to head off problems - a management style that came in handy when two out-of-town hate groups prepared to hold local demonstrations within weeks of each other.

In May 2005, an Arkansas-based supremacist group, White Revolution, planned to visit Lexington's Battle Green as part of a protest against an annual Holocaust remembrance. The year marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps and the 10th for the Holocaust Memorial in Boston.

Casey helped plan a counterdemonstration with a clever twist: the suggestion that nobody show up. When members of the Arkansas group arrived, they were underwhelmed by the lack of an audience, and quickly retreated. "It's the ultimate in prevention," Casey said. "It never happened."

Another challenge came the next month when Fred Phelps Sr., the virulently antigay pastor of a Kansas-based church, organized a series of demonstrations to condemn homosexuality, including one at the Lexington High School graduation being held at the Tsongas Arena in Lowell.

Working with a broad coalition, including town officials, religious leaders, and activists from Lexington and area communities, Casey helped stage a peaceful response. With their backs to the antigay protesters, the counterdemonstrators linked arms to symbolize "a chain of love and support and community against the forces of hate," Casey recalled.

In 2006, the International Association of Chiefs of Police awarded its annual civil rights award to the Lexington Police Department for its handling of the hate groups.

With all his progressive notions, Casey, who is married and has two children and a grandchild, has never been soft on crime. Even today, he recalls with passion the case of Craig Conkey, accused of murdering Mary Lou Sale in 1994. After being twice convicted of the crime, Conkey is set to go to trial for a third time within the next year after the Supreme Judicial Court overturned his latest conviction on a "technicality," Casey said. "As far as I'm concerned, we have the right guy," he said.

Over his career, Casey has partnered with residents, other town departments, and regional groups on many issues, including crime, domestic violence, public safety emergencies, student drinking, and the newest challenge, homeland security.

Indeed, as he looks toward the future of policing, Casey said, he is concerned that scarce police resources increasingly are being directed toward homeland security instead of community issues. Casey manages 61 full-time employees, including 47 officers, on a budget of $5.2 million.

"We do need homeland security from a national perspective, but homeland security begins with hometown security," he said.

Still, he said, he believes "the future is bright" for community policing, now an integral aspect of law enforcement in most communities. Casey has firmly set Lexington on that course, according to Town Manager Carl F. Valente. "Chris really puts into play the concept of community policing," Valente said.

One measure of that is the questionnaire, this year's virtually the same as the one circulated 12 years ago. When the results are tabulated this month, Casey, and Lexington, will have some evidence as to how well his approach has worked.

Connie Paige can be reached at cpaige@globe.com.