October 2, 2007
Fenty Orders More Beat Cops in Wake of Shootings
On Monday morning at a little after 11 a.m., we noticed a pair of beat cops walking along U Street NW near 12th Street. In many other cities, this would certainly be nothing to take note of, but in D.C., the cries from neighborhood associations and individual residents for more officers to patrol on foot have been heard for years. Police Chief Cathy Lanier thus rightly made a big deal out of increasing the number of beat cops within her first week on the job, and now, after a particularly deadly weekend in the city, Mayor Fenty has announced that police will be adding even more.
Starting this week, all seven police districts will select additional officers who will be dedicated to patrolling on foot. This is an indisputably good thing, though of course it's less good that it took such a bloody weekend to make the adjustment. Eleven people were shot in the District over the weekend, resulting in at least four deaths, including an infant and a 15-year-old.
But will the changes to foot patrol assignments be permanent? It's unclear from the Post account of the press conference. Fenty and Lanier would be wise to ensure this tactic doesn't follow along the lines of their All Hands on Deck initiatives, disappearing just as they began to do some good. If there's any one policing strategy the community at large has been begging for, it's more permanent, dedicated beat officers. So keep an eye out for any new foot patrols you see in the city, and let us know about them.
Photo by blugrn
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Actually, long term studies have been done that have shown that adding beat cops does nothing to reduce crime in cities. The only positive effect it has is that it increases the public opinion of the police department.
do you have a cite for that, guest 1?
what I like is when the beat cops show up in the park the drug dealers leave for the rest of the day so the kids can play. Since it takes no more than a few minutes a day to make the park safe for kids then I say, "hooray!" It's not 1987 and the crack war doesn't exist, these dealers can go back to northern virginia where they belong.
Lets see, more cops on foot, slower response times to 911 calls, more complaints...
But hey, whatever makes the bloggers feel better I guess.
The "crack" "war" was completely over hyped and didn't really exist. It hasn't lasting repercussions thought of putting a much larger percentage of black males behind bars as sentencing guidelines for crack dealing are disproportional compared to similar amounts of cocaine. Their were other factors at play including rapid disinvestment in the city and increase in lead in blood (from an increase in leaded gasoline and cars in general) and general pollution that just sort of all caught up together. As for community policing, I pretty sure that there are a number of studies that say the opposite of guest 1 -- although again, it's really hard to isolate data with all of the cofactors going on in the urban environment of the last 30 years. For instance, the rise of community policing is paralleled by the first generation of kids to be raised with unleaded gasoline in cars. Coupled with an improving national economy that helped all segments advance in the mid-1990s and investment into the city infrastructure after the neglect of the 1970s and 1980s. How can you say which is the main factor in less crime?
This is the standard MPD response, and the # of police on the street in the target neighborhood almost always returns to pre-tragedy levels within a few weeks (c.f. the murder of Greg Shipe in Mt. Pleasant in 2005).
This kind of shucking and jiving obviously costs District residents dearly, both in tax dollars and personal safety - what will it take to get real, meaningful action?
We need to turn the screws very hard on our elected officials - this weekend's inferno in Adams Morgan following months of excuses RE: the broken fire hydrants is just one more example that we need to make them feel pain before their sloth and indifference causes residents any more ...
Screw foot patrols. Put those cops on horses. Nothing intimidates perps like a guy with a gun hovering 8 feet above you on a snorting animal. And unlike a foot patrol, Bessie won't be out of breath after a run from 12th and U to 14th and Euclid. And have you ever seen those racehorses take a p**s? You can strip paint with that thing.
monkeyrotica:
Actually, around 14th and R I saw a horse cop and we started chatting (it was the first patrolling horse cop I had seen in DC). He said that the PD currently has 5 patrol horses, but there are already plans to bring in more. So... sounds like all those requests you sent in for "MORE HORSIES! MORE HORSIES!" have finally gotten through to the higher ups.
I want cops riding Llamas with trained attack boars. That's not cruel and unusual punishment, its just plain old common sense. We shall call them battlehogs.
Doesn't c.f. Mean "See for contrast" not "For example" (which is "e.g."). So if the policing levels returned to normal in Mt. Pleasant in 2005, then it wouldn't be for contrast, but for example.
Unless you mean that things really are different in Mt. Pleasant. In which case I apologize for being annoying and wrong.
At this rate, I'd be happy with cops in plushie tauntaun outfits. Once you feng shui the organs, it's actually quite cozy.
I saw a pair of MPD equestrians near Eastern Market on Sunday. One was dismounted, wielding a shovel. A great big shovel. I informed the Garden Club folks when I passed their display.
Strangely, I find myself agreeing with pants. Battlehogs indeed would be much more effective.
While 'battlehogs' sounds like an awesome idea, I second monkeyrotica's call for more mounted cops. I'd further suggest, if citizens are worried about slower response times, increasing the numbers of cops on motorcycles, too. Both mounted and motor officers offer much greater visibility than foot-patrolmen, as well as a better chance for positive public interaction.
The silliest part of the All Hands on Deck stuff is where they assemble each shift out in the street -- usually near a hotspot -- and turn them out on patrol with a double file of bike cops in the lead. Everyone is so self-conscious it's painfully embarrassing to watch.
Mount them on anything. Motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles, horses, barbary apes, miniature ponies with roman candles up their a**es. Relying on Fatty Mcflatfoot to waddle 5 blocks is not a "proactive law enforcement strategy."
And that purse in the pic just screams "ghetto fabulous." Are those standard issue, or do the cops have to buy their own?
I really hope that dog is purse-trained.
Yes, roving packs of battle hogs is really the only logical solution.
Thank goodness there were horse cops on the mean streets near Easten Market.
I hear its a bad part of town on a Sunday...
I used to love, LOVE the mounted police in Mount Pleasant. Clop clop clop would get me outside my house faster than an ice cream truck!
Invisible Sun:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/198203/broken-windows
Oooooooh! Ice cream trucks! The cops should be driving ice cream trucks! That's some tasty community outreach.
"PUT...DOWN...THE NUTTY....BUDDY...and step AWAY from the vehicle!"
Unless the beat cops patrol at NIGHT, I doubt this will have much of an impact other than the mayor and police chief to CYA.
Barbary Apes and ice cream trucks...hmm, now my mind is picturing immense armored Riot Rhinos and cops mounted on brontosauri. And unicycles!
It's been proven time and again that there's a direct correlation between the rise in youth violence and the decline in organ grinder monkeys. Give the cops a high-performance hurdygurdy, give the chimp a gun and a jetpack, and the crime problem fixes itself.
"But monkeyrotica," you say, "then the skies of DC will be full of armed monkeys with jetpacks!" Therein lies the real beauty of the plan: when winter comes, all the monkeys die of pneumonia. Q.E.D.
Can we just outsource the entire MPD? Outsourcing solves everything, right?
making the city's police, fire, and other emergency workers LIVE in the city would make a concrete improvement in city safety. other cities, such as chicago, have that requirement. the public policy rational is police, fire, ambulance, etc. workers, especially in these days of terrorism, need to be able to respond quickly to emergencies. but there are so many added benefits of having these city workers live in the city.
I'm pretty sure if they could AFFORD to live in the city, they would. If not, be prepared to pay them a wage where they could afford to live in the city.
I'm pretty sure if they could AFFORD to live in the city, they would. If not, be prepared to pay them a wage where they could afford to live in the city.
"making the city's police, fire, and other emergency workers LIVE in the city would make a concrete improvement in city safety. other cities, such as chicago, have that requirement. the public policy rational is police, fire, ambulance, etc. workers, especially in these days of terrorism, need to be able to respond quickly to emergencies. but there are so many added benefits of having these city workers live in the city."
What?
First off, very few cities still have residency rules.
Second, MPD currently has a very difficult time recruiting good cops since the fed agencies all pay more and offer better working conditions. They also allow officers to live wherever they want. If DC had a residency requirment the quality of cops would only go down.
Third, policy rationale for residency requirments is not now and never has been in any way related to response times. In the history of most major cities you can count on one hand the number of time the police or fire department have had to call in every single officer from their homes. Besides, when those call out occur, they are usually preceded by assistance from on-duty officers from neighboring jurisdictions.
The rationale for residency requirements is to give officers a sense of "community" by making them live near where they work. In other words, it allows them to see the city from an off-duty and on-duty capacity.
In any case, it is a bad idea in DC. In fact, I would go so far as to predict that if DC instituted a residency requirement for police and fire, you would lose over 1/2 of the officers, paramedics, and fire fighters. They would beat a path to the Feds and suburban agencies faster then they could be replaced. And one more thing, remember the last time DC quickly hired cops that nobody else wanted? It was the early 1990's, the city skimped on background checks and took guys that PG County, Secret Service, Park Service, had rejected. The result was a signfiicant number of cops having use of force issues, corrpuption charges, and in a few cases drug dealing charges.
Doesn't c.f. Mean "See for contrast" not "For example" (which is "e.g."). So if the policing levels returned to normal in Mt. Pleasant in 2005, then it wouldn't be for contrast, but for example.
"c.f." = Latin confer = "compare" or "consult"
It's the latter meaning that I suspect is intended here - that is, "see Greg Shipe's murder for an additional example proving this point".
Invisible Sun, Chicago ain't the best poster city for coppers living in the city. The vast majority live on the fringes far-southwest and far-northwest. They don't have to answer their phones off duty, and the city basically has no emergency plan known to the first responders (the brass have publicly stated that they will not tell anyone the plan until the plan is needed).
Even the SWAT team does not have take-home vehicles, and there have been delays of as much as an hour for a full SWAT team to assemble when called.
I'm sympathetic to your point, but I think it would be a pretty good idea for the city to try and get the coppers to spread out into other neighborhoods a bit more. Maybe a 5K per annum stipend to live in the area (say, by zip code) with the fewest coppers currently residing, and then graduate it down to 0 for the 25% of the city where coppers are already saturated.