Community Policing: To Serve, Protect, and Solve Problems, Part II

In the early 1990’s when I was a rookie officer in the now-defunct New York City Housing Police Department, I was often called to apartments for seemingly ordinary events such as water leaks. While this may not be considered a police matter, upon investigation, it is often discovered that the circumstances surrounding the water leak may require emergency personnel to respond. On numerous occasions, I discovered a person who had fallen in the bathtub and was unable to shut down the water and call for help. Other times, a person preparing dinner or washing dishes would succumb to an in-home mishap, or suffer a heart attack, and the faucet would overflow the sink. Only when the residents below noticed water dripping through their ceiling would the police be called, and the tragic discovery made in the apartment above. Or, overflowing water from an apartment where the residents were not at home would flood the apartment below. The police would be the responding agency to assure that there were no victims associated with the flooding other than property.

Because housing police patrol residential complexes, it is the duty of the officers to become familiar with the residents in the developments they are assigned to. As a rookie, I recall a senior officer making the observation that over the course of time, an active officer will notice that he is arresting the same ten to fifteen individuals over and over again in each neighborhood. The officer further stated that it behooves a cop new to an area to work all three tours of duty over a period of weeks and observe the comings and goings of the citizens on their beat. Beginning around 5:00 a.m. during the midnight tour, you will see people going to work on public transportation. A bit later, parents will escort their children to school bus stops. In the afternoons, starting at 3:00 p.m. or so, those same folks will begin to come home. By 9:00 p.m. on a warm, summer night, the working folks will start to go inside for the evening; the younger kids will go in later. His point to me was that in between the typical schedules of working adults and school aged children, the ten to fifteen repeat offenders will be on the street corners, in the playgrounds, or other common areas while everyone else is at work or school. In addition, there are unwanted visitors in public housing developments who buy drugs, commit robberies, burglaries, or worse. Officers who familiarize themselves with the routines of the residents they serve will spot those who do not live there and investigate their presence accordingly.

An observant and active officer will begin his tour by visiting all of the facilities located on his beat. Most of the public housing developments have health facilities, maintenance shops, community centers, pre-schools, and other social centers on the grounds. By speaking to those who operate the programs and the residents who patronize the facilities, and officer builds trust and keeps lines of communication open with them. Officers perform vertical patrols of the buildings and search the stairwells, roof landings, and roof tops for trespassers and others who may be engaged in law-breaking. Many buildings have active tenant patrols. These are residents who maintain a post in the lobby of their building, working in conjunction with the Housing Authority and in cooperation with the police, and screen visitors entering the building by signing them in and asking for identification. Patrol officers visit tenant patrols and sign their attendance records and inquire about any nuisances or occurrences. It is also important to attend regular community meetings to listen to and respond to the complaints of the residents and provide information on how various issues will be addressed by the police.

A Housing police officer will utilize field reports to alert maintenance about damaged locks on doors, shattered windows, broken lights, or poorly lit areas, downed fences and gates, and any other condition which leads to a lack of security. In addition, excessive graffiti, illegally dumped trash, uncollected garbage, and shattered windows lead outsiders to believe that there is a lack of oversight or weak law enforcement in the area and the building and grounds then become an attractive location for drug use or sales, robberies, burglaries, or large groups loitering in lobbies or obstructing pedestrian traffic. By maintaining close relationships with maintenance crews or other city agencies, community police officers can concentrate resources on these problematic concerns and improve the overall quality of life for the residents and reduce criminal activity.

End of Part II 

About the Author: Michael J. Kannengieser is the author of the police thriller, The Daddy Rock. He is a retired New York City police officer who lives on Long Island with his wife and two children. Michael worked as the Managing Editor for Fiction at The View from Here magazine, a U.K. based literary publication. Currently, he is employed at a performing arts college as an Instructional Technology Administrator. He has been published at The View from Here, and in Newsday, a Long Island newspaper. Michael is a contributor to Criminal Justice News. Click Here to buy a copy of Michael J. Kannengieser's new novel "The Daddy Rock."

Community Policing: To Serve, Protect, and Solve Problems, Part III

Working with the community also means utilizing discretion and taking reasonable actions when dealing with the public. Officers who are familiar with the residents of the development where they work may be more inclined to return juveniles to their parents if they are engaged in minor, nuisance activity, such as breaking housing authority rules against riding bicycles on the grass, staying in the park after the posted closing hours, or other minor infractions. Parents appreciate the discretion the officer exercises, and the rewards of appealing to the resident’s sense of empowerment in maintaining order and control in their living environment becomes tangible. A parent’s reprimand may do the child offender more justice than a juvenile report filed at the precinct. Residents who return home from work on a hot, summer evening and sit outside with an open container of beer may be better served with a request to conceal the container or to drink indoors rather than face a fine. An officer knows that any action he takes can escalate to an arrest in spite of his best intentions, but an experienced community police officer applies his discretion based on his knowledge and experience with the people her serves.

Officers operating under the community police model will investigate criminal activity to a wider extent than officers on routine patrol. If there is a suspected gambling location on his beat, drug sales, or other persistent illegal enterprises, the officer may call upon other specialized units at the precinct level or within the department after performing observations and preparing reports. In addition, the officer may be the source of intelligence for outside agencies who wish to execute a warrant or arrest a suspect. On different occasions, my partners and I reported our findings to the Organized Crime Control Bureau, detective units, and other narcotics units. Also, I provided detailed information to Postal Inspectors given to me by a member of the community who trusted me because of my history of fairness and effective policing in his community. Special Agents of the Secret Service visited out Police Service Area satellite to consult with us concerning a suspect who threatened former President Bill Clinton’s life. Because the officers I worked with and I knew the suspect and where he lived, he was arrested without incident by the Secret Service, and with Housing Police present at the scene. On numerous occasions, when responding to nine-one-one initiated calls for police assistance, we would knock on a resident’s door, and when the occupant asked who is was, we’d answer “It’s the police.” The follow-up question was almost always, “Are you Housing?” Then, we would respond with a reassuring, “Yes.”

The methods of community policing employed by the former, New York City Police Department, briefly outlined here are still utilized by the NYPD’s Housing Bureau created in 1995 after the merger of the Housing Police into the NYPD. While relationships between the police and the community can often times be strained or contentious, community policing, as exemplified by the NYPD’s Housing Bureau and the other housing police departments in cities across the nation, remains an effective and enduring model of policing.  

End of Series

About the Author: Michael J. Kannengieser is the author of the police thriller, The Daddy Rock. He is a retired New York City police officer who lives on Long Island with his wife and two children. Michael worked as the Managing Editor for Fiction at The View from Here magazine, a U.K. based literary publication. Currently, he is employed at a performing arts college as an Instructional Technology Administrator. He has been published at The View from Here, and in Newsday, a Long Island newspaper. Michael is a contributor to Criminal Justice News. Click Here to buy a copy of Michael J. Kannengieser's new novel "The Daddy Rock."

Community Policing: To Serve, Protect, and Solve Problems, Part I

When the public hears the term “community policing,” they envision a cop on the beat who knows the local shop owners and is familiar with the residents in town. The beat cop sees and hears everything, knows the routine of the townspeople, and exercises discretion for minor offenses. When police departments deploy community policing strategies, they see the same things as the public does, but their intentions go deeper. Their focus is on developing relationships with civic leaders to gain a better understanding of the needs of the public, identifying crime trends, and preventing law-breaking. Although various departments define community policing in different ways, the concept is not new, and certain agencies – in particular housing authority police departments – are models of community policing. In order to appreciate the difference between standard police model and community policing, it is important to define both and to illustrate the differences.

The standard police model (The Disparity Between Traditional and Community Policing) is a regimented and relatively anonymous, uniformed force which responds to nine-one-one initiated calls for police assistance and focuses on both preventing crime, solving past crimes, and “order maintenance,” also referred to as “keeping the peace.” Officers patrol in marked cars or on foot and concentrate on arresting offenders and upholding the law. Contact with the public is consistent with the motto: “To Protect and Serve,” (The Peelian Principles), and is typically the result of a “reactive policing” philosophy. Officers have little leeway, and the mandate for the department to enforce the law comes from the “coercive power of the law” to gain control.

Community policing is a different concept which has other names (Community-Orientated Policing, Problem Orientated Policing), and has slightly varying definitions, but boils down to the police department serving the community by getting more deeply involved in their problems and involving outside agencies. An officer is given wide-discretion to implement strategies and ideas, while working with businesses, community organizations, and individuals to address crime and quality of life issues. By engaging and interacting with shop owners, housing associations, and youth groups, police learn the specific problems related to a neighborhood and are able to call upon municipal, charitable, or police resources to address the community’s concerns. In addition, citizens feel empowered to report issues to police due to the buildup of trust through regular contact and communication.

The concept of community policing can best be demonstrated by the practices of housing authority police departments throughout the country. Directly serving the residents of public housing, police officers interact daily with tenant groups, community organizers, and individual residents. Officers are able to access the resources of the housing authority for assistance with issues ranging from criminal activity, to noise, to out-of-service elevators. In many areas, the police act as front-line representatives of government. The resourcefulness of street officers, combined with a service-orientated department focusing on community needs, fills the void where other city agencies may be lacking. Community policing is not limited to housing police agencies, but the model is best illustrated by agencies serving public housing due the physical and organizational structure of each public housing development. Individually, they are their own communities with their own unique problems, and housing police units employing community policing methods are best able to provide security for these locations.

End of Part I

About the Author: Michael J. Kannengieser is the author of the police thriller, The Daddy Rock. He is a retired New York City police officer who lives on Long Island with his wife and two children. Michael worked as the Managing Editor for Fiction at The View from Here magazine, a U.K. based literary publication. Currently, he is employed at a performing arts college as an Instructional Technology Administrator. He has been published at The View from Here, and in Newsday, a Long Island newspaper. Michael is a contributor to Criminal Justice News. Click Here to buy a copy of Michael J. Kannengieser's new novel "The Daddy Rock."

The February 22, 2013, episode of American Heroes Radio features a conversation between Michael J. Kannengieser, a retired NYPD police officer and the host, Raymond E. Foster, a retired LAPD Lieutenant, on the similarities and differences between NYPD and LAPD on community policing.

Program Date: February 22, 2013

Program Time: 1500 hours, PACIFIC

Topic: LAPD to NYPD: Community Policing

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