Watching police leadership is like entering a Ringling circus of word games and non-sequiturs. That's because you never know what you're going to get. Leaders come in all shapes. 

There's lion tamers who attempt to pacify police unions and manage unrealistic public expectations. There's clowns who entertain with their cult of personality but leave nothing behind but good feelings. There's acrobats, skilled in their craft, balancing forward-thinking and leading-by-example.

Given the current system of service delivery and the morphing of roles, policing and it's leadership cannot be separated from safety in our cities. 

Case in point: Seattle papers report two controversies (common in many large cities). 

1. Recent studies show over 30% of young males in America by age 23 are arrested for something more serious than a traffic violation. Are crime declines a fiction or do arrest practices need fixing?

2. There is widespread public distrust when police investigate themselves - especially when police unions get involved. This is particularly acute in Seattle after a Department of Justice probe cited a pattern of excessive force.

Last fall I created search links on the right side of this blog. Google analytics tells me policing trends belong there as well. Dylan said it best: "Times, they are a-changing".

Here are past entries on policing and leadership:

Can research help cops prevent crime
SMART Policing and the power of few - Part 1
Transforming the police - Part 2
Transforming the police - Part 1
Solving the city with math
New chairs at the compstat table
Reforming police = bending granite
Urban warriors and city cops
The guardians and the vanguard
Preventing crime in LA

Once they notice you, Jason realized, they never completely close the file. You can never get back your  anonymity. It is vital not to be noticed in the first place. 
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said - Philip K. Dick (1974)

Philip K Dick was among the greatest sci-fi writers. He wrote award-winning books that became film noir classics like Bladerunner and Minority Report. Clearly, Dick was deeply suspicious of authority and technology. 

I wonder if he'd agree with Malcolm Sparrow's critique of evidence-based policing? What would he think of mathematicians who want to solve the city with math? Or experiments to predict when or where crime will happen before it does? 

And now NPR reports there's a new LAPD unit dedicated to predictive analysis. Some say this is our tomorrow. On closer inspection it seems like cost/benefit gone amok. 

Minority Report celebrates PreCogs, mutated humans who predict murder ahead of time - celebrated until they predict murder by the cop supposed to stop it. Logical calculation gone amok?

In Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, modern philosopher John Ralston Saul says we must guard against the unsentimental application of cost/benefit analysis and logical calculation. That's why, he says, "experts" are so often wrong. There are some things we cannot accurately predict. Weather for one. The economy for another, as recent events prove. 

This is particularly true regarding crime. Saul says when predictive experts fail they are just replaced by a new group who say they can do better. 

Voltaire once warned against adopting a vulgar rationalism (aka predictive technology) to determine what is, and what is not, appropriate use of authority and technology.

If we are to use predictive technology, may 2012 be the year we wake up to our own shortcomings for using it wisely.

As we embark upon a new year it is worth remembering the lessons of the past so we can minimize the bad and maximize the good. During this sea of recessionary dread, one lesson bound to resurface is police service delivery costs spiraling out of control. 

It is mystifying how we can authentically discuss safety as though the community wasn't part of the equation. Yet, whenever we discuss police service delivery that is precisely what we do. 

It is incumbent on municipal politicians - indeed it is their job - to learn reality versus the myth of police service delivery. As they say; what is our return on investment?

I found a speech by a leading criminologist on the topic. Informed police officers will recognize John Eck as founder of the SARA model in problem-oriented policing. Eck offers a cautionary tale we should heed in the new year. 

An excerpt: 

"Police, to the common person, are a free service and what we know about free services is this. You give us things for free and we consume more of it. That's what makes us fat. A modest amount of policing is far better than a large amount…

…we are going to have to live within our budget. We cannot ask these officers, highly trained, very dedicated, to answer all of the calls we currently have them answer with fewer numbers. They are having a difficult enough time as it is."

If the link doesn't load properly, click HERE

Research seems to be the last place cops look for solutions. They appear to implement most new approaches without supportive research to back them up.

Having co-researched and co-authored (with Gerry Cleveland) the Police Training Officer program - first adopted in Reno and then nation-wide - I am sensitive to this argument. The PTO program (and its grown-up progeny, the Police Problem-Based Learning program) was fully funded by the COPS Office. They both were thoroughly researched and pilot tested prior to implementation. Along with Problem-Oriented Policing a few decades earlier, I believe this to be a rarity in the police world. 

It is the same with crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED). CPTED was studied and evaluated many years ago by researchers. Studies exist today on its effectiveness and some progressive police agencies have adopted CPTED based on this. 

But usually not. 

Now there is a new movement called evidence-based policing that seeks to fix the disconnect between science and policing. 

This week I chatted with Harvard's Malcolm Sparrow. He has just published a brilliant and provocative response to the Evidence-Based scholars in a paper called Governing Science.

This is a must-read for informed leaders. It is a must-read for social scientists too. 

Here's one tasty tidbit:

"…the relationship proposed by proponents of evidence-based policing offers virtually no benefits for police. The best they can hope for is that the scientists they have invited in…will finally confirm what police thought they knew already: that an intervention or program the department had previously deployed did actually work. The downside risk for police is much greater."

The article explains why he says this and how he thinks it should work. Read it HERE.

In Charles Dickens's classic work, three ghosts haunt Scrooge. My last blog described evidence-based criminology - particularly the power of few - as a path for policing in the future. It too has three ghosts. 

The power of few emerges from evidence-based criminology and has morphed into the new vogue - SMART policing. Comstat (computer crime statistics) and intelligence-led policing are part of it. SMART policing is Strategically-Managed, Analysis and Research-driven, Technology-based. The goal of the SMART Policing Initiative (SPI) is to develop effective, efficient and economical tactics.

Three ghosts come to mind. 

Ghost #1: What data?

Evidence-based approaches rely on data to prove or disprove hypotheses in an objective empirical way. Data are the thing.

Mike Scott said as much at the inaugural SPI conference; standards of proof for evidence of success are difficult to define. What happens when the data is far from objective? 

I've done blogs on research-driven and technology-based approaches like the paralysis of analysis, predicting crime with superlinear scaling, and problems with comstat data.

Ghost #2: Tech-envy

The SPI website offers a proof of technology-driven success in the story of security cameras in London.

London's Ring of Steel is a system of 500,000 CCTV cameras resulting in, supposedly, an improved clearance rate for murder. The evidence? London's murder clearance rate in 2005 increased to 95% from 75% in 1999. 

Unfortunately London's 2008 teenage violence increased to a record 29 teenage murders (an epidemic for London), a year in which six days of youth violence ended in 6 teen knife attacks (two fatal). 

Also unfortunate is that London's robbery rate ebbed and flowed the past decade. Then there was the explosion of robberies from 26,330 in 1998 to 53,547 in 2002. 

So much for the Ring of Steel. 

Ghost #3: Buy-in

It is rarely, if ever, advisable to proceed without public education and outreach, especially when targeting offenders or neighborhoods. SMART policing doesn't do that, but too many evidence-based methods do.

Some SPI advocates acknowledge this. "Smart Policing will benefit an entire community, not only through cost-savings and improvements to criminogenic problems, but also through the promotion of a sense of community and collaboration."

If done well, I think this is where SPI might flourish. Not just by promoting a sense of community. Rather, like SafeGrowth, by re-creating it and growing it from the ground up. McKnight and Kretzman describe this in Building Communities From The Inside Out.

Community capacity-building isn't an add-on after number-crunching is complete. It's not a tactic for strategic managers to craft their evidence-based plans. It is the very DNA of safe communities. 

To ignore that DNA is to risk being haunted by ghosts of our past.

Some criminologists believe a small number of places or people cause disproportionate crime. I wrote on this recently regarding Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto and chronic offenders in Vancouver. 

For example, Professor Lawrence Sherman now shows up on YouTube with the title, How Criminology Can Save States from Bankruptcy.

He says preventing crime is not about expanding prisons. It's about targeted incapacitation of the chronic few and reinvesting in crime prevention. 

Sherman claims we'll be better off encouraging governments to "cut the prison population, save that money and invest in local policing".

He's right about misspent funds. I'm just not sure policing is where the money should go.

For example, in Toronto collective bargainers raised the police budget to almost $1 Billion dollars for 5,700 sworn cops (compared to the 2010 NYPD budget of $4.3 Billion for 47,000 cops). No doubt police there do many positive things. But it is worth $1 Billion?


TARNISHED BADGE?

Lately, the Toronto badge is a tad tarnished by scandals like the G20 fiasco, slut walks, and race issues.

To be fair, controversy is no stranger to policing anywhere. Yet spending just under $1 Billion for the 2011 police budget begs the question, What's our return on investment? 

On one hand, Toronto has a persistent low crime rate compared to large US cities. On the other hand, crime rate drops are ubiquitous. It's unlikely Toronto's police budget is responsible for dropping crime - similar drops are underway everywhere, including cities where police budgets are not growing, like New York.

Consider also worsening Toronto social ills such as vertial poverty that feeds crime, rising gun violence, and persistent street gangs.

Are we really getting bang for our prevention buck?

Criminologist Irvin Waller thinks not. He says it is municipal governments themselves who need direct accountability and more competency in crime prevention.

That begins with re-allocating who should direct and administer prevention and justice funds. Unlike Sherman, Waller doesn't seem to think policing is where the money should go.

In Less Law, More Order, Waller claims that 

"Americans believe two to one that more money and effort should go into education and job training than deterring crime by paying for more police, prisons and judges...the majority believe that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

If only our decision-makers would listen.

NEXT: What criminology can offer

The last blog was on change. A gulf exists today between two policing styles. The Back to the Future crowd want traditional roles: just the facts ma'am; answer-the-call-and-move-on; tactics and weapons. I call them Combat Cops (no slight of professional military is intended).

Combat cops live in a past long gone. They cling to a simplicity that was never there. In the 9/11 era, this style receives funding and attention. I have blogged on this HERE.

Conversely the problem-solving crowd wants critical thinkers. Emergency response is balanced with finding community partners to solve difficult crime problems. I call them the Community Cops. 

Why does this matter? 

Over a hundred police agencies have adopted the new police training officer program (PTO) described in the previous blog. Over the years a few agencies have dropped PTO. Sometimes they were combat cop agencies. Sometimes they were taken over by leaders sympathetic to combat cop values. In every case they offered up sneers for PTO unaware that isn’t the same as offering up a legitimate critique. 

This is dangerous to community safety. Why? 

A University of Illinois PTO evaluation study discovered that survey respondents who rejected PTO were worried about the "development of a soft or kind and gentle officer": 

"Survey and focus group respondents reported a preference for the officer who responds to a call, prescribes guidance, and serves as report takers, not an officer who collaborates with members of the community or utilizes its resources to solve problems."

What? 

You mean like in the 1960s, the good old days of Dragnet? Or, perhaps Terminator 3: The Rise of The Machines?

Dichotomies are fictions. There are critical thinkers who retain tactical skills and combat cops who solve problems. The danger here lies in a pendulum swinging toward the latter and away from the former.

Police leaders in the video PTO is the answer, get how PTO strikes a balance. They get how powerful values (combat vs community) derail forward motion. Far too many executives don't. They cling to the past. 

​Research about PTO and video testimonials isn't enough to convince Combat Cops. As Rick Shenkma says in Just How Stupid Are We? given the choice between a harsh truth and a comforting myth, most people will choose the latter.

Two of the leaders in the video have retired (Reno’s Ronald Glensor and Charlotte’s Darryl Stevens). Reno’s current Chief will be gone next month. What will happen next? Which path will the next regime follow?

Building safer communities has many dimensions. Police leadership is one of them. I've blogged recently about one excellent example: Indian police Chief Kiran Bedi.

Here's another.

Next month, Reno Police Chief Steve Pitts retires from duty. So what! Police executives retire every day and drop off the public radar screen. Why should we care?

Unlike TV's RENO 911, the real Reno police have been progressively reforming into a community-based, problem-solving agency. A decade ago myself and Gerry Cleveland worked with Pitts (then Lieutenant) and his colleagues to create a new recruit field training program called Police Training Officer (PTO). Technical aspects of the program are described HERE.

A new video has been released called PTO is the answer. It provides testimonials from leading police executives about PTO success. 

In the video, Louisville Police Chief Robert White says: 

The whole premise behind policing, as far as I'm concerned, is crime prevention and the key to that is to have a relationship with the community…the PTO program with its core values, speaks to the importance of working with the community and making them part of the solution.

​To provide scientific evidence, Pat Rushing at the University of Illinois is conducting a PTO Evaluation Study on the impact of PTO. Her preliminary results are remarkable. 

PTO officers in her study were able to think creatively, solve problems in their community, complete their duties going beyond the basics and follow-up with members of the community. They searched for non-traditional solutions knowing they had the latitude to do so. Above all that, she writes, PTO turns out to serve as good leadership training. 

Those familiar with traditional field training systems will appreciate the vast contrast between these PTO results and what is currently offered elsewhere. Since 2005, PTO has now led to a new transformation in police academy training called Police PBL: Blueprint for the 21st Century.

All good news, right? Not quite. So what's the problem? In short, fear. Specifically, fear of change. The departure of executives like Pitts leaves a vacuum too often filled by a new breed who return Back to the Future. That is dangerous. 

We wish you well Steve Pitts. We just wish we didn't have to lose an ally.

Next blog: Where's the danger?

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​What does a 19th century Italian economist have to do with neighborhood safety? Consider Vilfredo Pareto's principle that the majority of a phenomena can be explained by a minority of causes. Sometimes called the 80/20 Rule, criminology has long demonstrated a small number of chronic offenders cause a significant portion of crime.

Reflecting on my Comstat and police leadership blogs recently, I came across a fascinating news documentary Pareto would have loved. It's called Lock Em Up.

It's about competent policing and quality leadership in an unlikely place - Vancouver, BC. I say unlikely because, with all my harping on the skid row tragedy in that lovely city, one might assume I blame the cops or their chief. Not so. In Vancouver at least, I don't think that's the case. Jim Chu, Vancouver's Chief and their Chronic Offender Unit - COU - have put research to good tactical use. Similar to the Winnipeg auto theft solutions project I mentioned two years ago, this seems like a winning ticket (though, as you'll see below, in Vancouver there is a number missing from their lottery ticket).


A DENT IN CRIME
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Property crime is rarely seen as a serious matter, yet it comprises 75 percent of all crime. In 2009 Vancouver had over 21,000 thefts and 5,000 break and enters. As Pareto might warn us, chronic offenders with multiple offenses cause a significant number of those crimes. 

What is a chronic offender? Vancouver defines a Chronic as someone with over 39 convictions (that's a lot of convictions). There are also Superchronics, a group with over 79 convictions each. That's convictions, not crimes. They committed far more than that. One offender interviewed in the film below says he has broken into well over 1,000 homes.

How many chronic offenders are there and how many property crimes to they cause in Vancouver?

The COU and the Vancouver Police planning section report that over 5 years, 379 chronic offenders were charged with over 12,000 offenses, roughly 10% of all yearly property crimes. It is of course much higher since chronic offenders were not charged for all of their crime, only a small number. The reality is probably more like 25% - an educated guess I'm sure both Pareto and COU detectives would confirm. 

​In other words, out of a half million people only 379 cause between 10% to 25% of all property crime in Vancouver! Their research report is available for review by clicking here.

If there was ever a case where chronic offenders should be removed to protect us, this is it. Remove them for drug treatment, incarceration, or both. But, get them off the street. 

What do police do in Vancouver? Since a small number of chronic offenders create a significant portion of crime, police strategies target habitual offenders to break that cycle. Vancouver Chief Jim Chu is behind the approach. 

Criminological research, where it is done well, is fairly clear. It shows that arresting Chronics and getting them off the street works, at least until the courts release them again. That's the missing link in this chain - the Vancouver court system, one of the most lenient in Canada. Stunningly, their study showed length of incarceration actually got shorter as the Chronics committed more crime. Worse still, over half of the Superchronics received less than a month in jail - and 25% of the Superchronics received less than a day in jail. 


CATCH AND RELEASE

In short, cops caught them so judges could release them. Talk about frustrating! The report says:

as these offenders tend to specialize in low‐level property offences, their sentences tend to be relatively short. These short sentences do not serve to incapacitate them and protect the public for any significant period of time, nor, in most cases, are they long enough to allow for admission into appropriate addiction treatment programs.

Makes one wonder, who are the real culprits? Unaware, ill-considered and lenient judges? That's what the CTV documentary suggests. What about criminologists failing to inform decision-makers? Where is the Canadian research? Of 30 habitual offender studies cited in the report, only 4 were from Canada (two of those were graduate student theses). 

As I said in a previous blog, when social tragedies happen like the public housing fiasco in St. Louis's Pruitt-Igoe and gang infested Jane-Finch corridor in Toronto, someone is asleep at the wheel. 

In Vancouver, it's definitely not the cops.

Now Colorado Springs has begun to come to terms with it.

Like many cities, hundreds of homeless people were squatting in unsafe and unsanitary conditions in Colorado Springs. Life in makeshift tents (or in nothing at all) is a miserable experience; there are no provisions, sewage, water, nor protection from the elements. Not to mention the danger from crime. 

Police tried clean-ups, arrest and removal of abandoned property. When they were criticized for civil rights violations, they stopped. Then the sanitation problem worsened with piles of litter, garbage and human waste. At that point over 500 people were living in a homeless tent city. 

The police formed a special team to apply problem-oriented policing. The key, they say, was collaborating with numerous groups. They spoke to a hundred homeless people to discover their needs.


ANALYSIS - DOING THEIR HOMEWORK

They examined programs across the country and researched new laws. They analyzed and mapped the scope of their problem and found a majority of related calls for police service clustered around the homeless camps. In other research conducted on the local homeless they discovered 21% had severe mental illnesses and another 23% suffered substance abuse. 

Their homework paid off. When clean-ups took place, they happened in the context of a much more rigorous collaborative process. What did they do?

• They created referral programs to mental health agencies, alcohol treatment programs, shelters, and jobs programs. 
• They connected homeless people with family and obtained funding to reunite them.
• They worked with civil rights groups to draft an ordinance prohibiting camping on public property when social strategies failed.
• They met weekly with homeless, service providers, civil rights leaders, and homeless advocates.

In their report they say the team has worked with "nine shelter agencies, 11 food providers, 6 mental health care providers, and a number of other agencies providing medial treatment, drug and alcohol treatment, clothing and other services." 

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WHAT HAPPENED? 

Over the past year there have been only 29 felony arrests and about 80 minor arrests. Concurrently, of 500 people living in tents, 229 families have been sheltered in better living arrangements, 117 people were reunited with family, 100 people were successful finding jobs, and 40 clean-ups of camps around Colorado Springs were completed. 

I've mentioned before the problem of displacement. Because they were able to help with social service referrals and family reunifications, they managed to minimize displacement

Incidents and problems have diminished and police related calls for service have declined. 

Congratulations to the Colorado Springs community and it's police department.

Last blog I talked about confusing messages from police agencies about their operating philosophy. Are they one thing, or are they another? Does it matter?

Yes, it does. First, it is too easy to get sidetracked by all the crime prevention jibberish showing up nowadays. Police agencies need to be properly informed about what works, what doesn't, and what role to play. Last year Gerry Cleveland did a guest blog here about the Guardians versus the Vanguard that spells this out.

Second, SafeGrowth and crime prevention types get help (or not) directly from their local police services. In marginal agencies that help will be limited to patrol or enforcement crackdowns - important in a few cases, but not many. 

With exemplary agencies SafeGrowthers will receive a full range of prevention services, crime analysis, sophisticated problem-solving as well as enforcement.

The difference between the marginal agency and the exemplary agency is night and day. And while the choice for prevention practitioners is a simple one, unfortunately they may not have the choice. Sadly, some police agencies are still mired in the muck of obsolete methods, or worse, choose to de-evolve to by-gone philosophies.

What are those philosophies? 

The first cops - British bobbies - walked the beat. They knew who was who and what was what. The American version of that in the late 18th and early 19th century was the standard bearer of early peace-keeping. They were, at least by some accounts, part of the community. They are a distant echo of today's community policing, but lacking the technological sophistication and training emerging from the "professional" era.


PROFESSIONAL ERA - THE LAW ENFORCER

For reasons of training, quality and anti-corruption, a whole new kind of policing grew up in the early 20th Century - professional policing that focused on "law enforcement". Cops were taken off the beat and placed into patrol cars. Removed from the lives of everyday people, they were dispatched to trouble spots via radio (today, computer dispatch).

In the 60s professional law enforcement came under attack for being too removed from the everyday citizen. Police were not a part of the community. Out of touch with popular sentiment and ineffective at preventing crime, professional law enforcement got a black eye. It turns out, only a small part of policing deals with enforcing laws. Most of it is about keeping the peace, community safety and solving neighborhood problems. 


COPPS PROBLEM SOLVER

That led to the community policing and problem-solving (COPPS) movement. My favorite part of COPPS is problem-oriented policing (POP). 

Over the past few decades much fruit was born from POP collaborative police/community strategies. They solved difficult problems like robbery, violence, and burglary. For samples look no farther than the clearinghouse-of-everything-POP at the website of the Center for Problem Oriented Policing. I blogged on last year's award winner about cutting motel crime in California.

This year's batch of POP projects is now working through the adjudication process. As a screening judge on the POP awards panel I can tell you there are some remarkable projects this year. 

If you get a chance to attend the POP Conference, do so.

I passed a beautiful architectural feature the other day on a brief trip to Miami: A gleaming police HQ building. Monumental and modern, it was a civic fortress on display. It was similar to many other big city police HQ architectures in recent years. 

Down the road I drove past a sports field called the Police Athletic League for kids. What a great opportunity for kids to play ball, hang out, and have fun.

Then a question of some irony dawned on me; Do urban features like these indicate police are in the community or a symbol of it? 

At HQ the architectural story was clear; Clean and magnificent, landmarks like this show off something far more than a functional police headquarters. Landmarks like this stand out! More important, they stand apart from the everyday life the rest of us live. We expect that of city halls or war memorials. But why police stations?

The sport field told a different story. Like cultural activities and local storefronts, these are the kinds of everyday things we expect to integrate into our daily lives. They don't stand apart from community. They are a part of community.

Semantics? Perhaps, until you consider history.

Over the last century, police evolved from local cops walking a beat to law enforcement officers in patrol cars - the "professional law enforcement" movement. Over the last 40 years police reformers promoted community oriented problem solvers working to resolve local troubles - the COPPS movement. 

It's difficult to know where some agencies are today. Many are a confusing hybrid of all those things. 

The police HQ "fortress" is an emblematic symbol of law and order, a obvious product of the professional movement. It seems to me that is in stark opposition to COPPS. Nowhere was this more true than on the patrol car doors with the motto "Professional Law Enforcement". Someone obviously missed the COPPS memo. Or maybe not.

One place showcasing an alternative architectural hybrid is the small town of Milliken, Colorado.

Innovative Milliken Police Chief Jim Burack spent considerable time with residents, experts, and his own agency to craft a sensible balance. It goes to show it is possible to have security and accessibility to the public. Let's keep the fortress in the medieval age where it belongs.

Louisville has much to offer: lower crime rates, the Kentucky Derby, more Victorian homes in one area than elsewhere in the country, parks designed by Frederick Olmstead, ballet, opera, theatre, and large convention centers. None of those things, per se, typically produces a walkable neighborhood street culture. But they are nice. 

​Lately I’m thinking more about city streets and jigsaw puzzles. Consider downtown Louisville where I walked this week. There are wide expanses of cement and asphalt. One-way downtown streets, empty during evenings, and long distances between stores make downtown walking in some parts tedious and pointless. No different than what I saw in Houston and San Antonio and most other (but not all) large North American cities. The indigent ask me for coin. A homeless woman pushes over street furniture – perhaps a statement of her boredom with poverty, her frustration with it, or just being drunk! Jane Jacobs would hate this piece of the Louisville puzzle.

I wonder: Shouldn't we expect more from downtown street life? 

Later I am shown an entirely different piece. The fabulous Bardstown Road in the Highlands area is filled with art galleries, street cafes, restaurants of all ilk, and a variety of folks safely intermingling from all walks, incomes, and peculiarities. It’s a little Bohemia both fascinating and tasty. This is street life with diversity and energy. Jane Jacobs would love this. 

A few days later I find my own underground jewel snaking off a boring and empty street into a back courtyard café. The Derby City Exresso bar is the kind of place where edge politics thrives. The bar reeks of alternative culture and proves cultural depth isn’t obsolete. If it were the 50s, Kerouac and the beats might have submerged here with their jazz poetry. Today’s version offers wall labels that advertise Propaganda Nite, Postmodern Magic, and warn us, This Machines Kills Fascists. Another asks, What now? 

Three Louisville pieces emblematic of disjointed neighborhoods in cities everywhere. The latter two pieces seem a naturally evolving antidote to the former. This is the puzzle of our contemporary downtown street life or, in too many cases, lack thereof. 

What now indeed? 

​I discovered there are some exciting things happening here! The Louisville police department has been gradually implementing the most advanced police training method in the country - Problem Based Learning. As I mentioned last blog, PBL supports the COPS strategy. COPS is one precursor to more expansive SafeGrowth strategies and safer neighborhood design. 

Also, there is visionary new leadership at the University of Louisville's NCPI – the National Crime Prevention Institute. Because 1st Generation Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design pervades cities throughout the world, we forget that in the early 1970s (shortly after the publication of Newman’s Defensible Space and Jeffery’s CPTED) NCPI was the original birthplace of CPTED training. Reinvigorated learning opportunities at NCPI hold some interesting possibilities for safer neighborhoods. 

Perhaps that’s one way we can learn to do neighborhoods right? Updated learning may yet provide the most important piece linking the safer streets puzzle.

​Toronto or...

GUEST BLOG Gerry Cleveland is an attorney and also an expert in youth violence prevention. He is a former police officer and an educator with experience in troubled high schools. Gerry wrote this response to my February blog "Preventing Crime in LA". I invite you to respond to Gerry's last question... 

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​The police focus in community development, in my view, is both dangerous and ill conceived.

The guardians are any society exist (from Aristotle's onward) for the sole purpose of enforcing an established status quo. These guardians (modern day police) should never be asked into the vanguard and leadership of any societal movement. Unless we expect renaissance abilities from them and we are prepared to equip our police officers with political and social philosophy training, then they should always take rear guard, supportive actions.

Similarly, those most avaricious of creatures, the corporations, should also never be expected to take on a societal development or redevelopment role. By doing so, we ask the lion to watch the lamb.

The current problem with community development is that we are asking the wrong people to do the right job.

What ever McDonnell [LAPD Deputy Chief] or Bratton [LAPD Chief] do is, in my view, irrelevant until we have the right forum, with the appropriate thinkers to lead them. What we need and what we currently lack in North America is what is known as the 'guiding mind' for what Saville wants: fundamental social reform.

The leadership we want won't, sadly, be coming from our famous Chicago politician. As hopeful and inspiring as Barack Obama is, he remains a creature not of reform but rather of politics and that failed infrastructure.

Yes, he has a background in community development, but his history teaches us, (at the Harvard review and in the Senate as two examples) that he will be more of a guardian than a reformer.

So, the question is this: who will lead this reform that we all know we need? Will it be someone like Muhammad Yunus who provides loans for Indian villagers - especially women - to engage in local commerce. I suspect so.

Sadly, I think we require great turmoil to effect great change. Until we are collectively forced to look beyond current, ineffective ways of living together, nothing will change. Looking to guardians and the maintainers of the status quo - like police and governments - to lead that change seems hopeful, but naive.

Perhaps this so-called global crisis will be the spark that will destroy a mean spirited, divisive economic system. Let's hope so.

Perhaps what we suffer now will lead us to better days ahead. Any ideas on what next Greg?

​It is impossible to talk safety and prevention and not talk about cops. I am conflicted whenever I see stories of ineffective, obsolete, or just bad policing, as I did this week.

My conflict arises from my own belief in the decent goodness for people who choose an often impossible and unforgiving profession. I am committed to police reform. But it seems our policing system is a legacy of a pre-digital age. Recent crime trends, it seems, are not. 

Ultimately policing is a vital, but very small, part of the public safety story. It's a story that cannot be told without participating residents. 

Consider my February blog with the LAPD video about this very point. 

Watch video

Today the news in Vancouver is flooded with yet another story about a tragic Taser death during a violent arrest. We are told by the Taser crowd the technology works and saves lives, though apparently not in this case. We are also told Tasers are too often abused during arrests. Who to believe? Tasers are a newer technology with promise. But the medical research on them looks less like facts from sources and more like factoids from sourcelings. What to believe?

Yet again we hear calls for police reform reverberating through the media. 

Read Vancouver newspaper story

No one is immune and Vancouver is by no means alone. The public wants something done, mostly they want safer neighborhoods and less fear of violence. Which brings me to my duh moment - our goal: We obsess on the means to an end (policing, tasers) and forget all those means are but a tiny part of how we actually get to our public safety end. 

Of course the police use of force is important. By the nature of the job it cannot go away. During violent arrests it may be needed. Of course we should make sure police training is done properly and the technology does what it says. Of course we need police reform, especially reform in training/education and the political gumption to stick with it. 

Yet the goal should be to keep our eyes on the prize - neighbors working together in functional places to make vital and safe streets. 

The questions we should be asking: 
How to get neighbors to work together in a positive way? 
How to create functional neighborhoods with social activities? 
How to build places where people feel safe and participate fully in community life? 
How to more effectively do community development?

As I read the latest crisis it is easy to obsess on the vicissitudes of policing when things go bad. I agree we must never forget, or fail to prevent, deaths in and from police arrests. All lives are precious. But policing was created specifically for crime prevention and public safety. Do police tactics, resources, and training focus directly and daily on crime prevention and safety? No! When they don't, they need to. 

That is the prize that matters most.

You got to give the mayor in Tacoma, Washington credit for his goal to cut crime 50% within 14 months. Not many public officials are bold enough to make such claims. I remember a former Vancouver BC Police Chief making similar claims a decade ago. Note the word FORMER! (It didn't work out).

Neither is it working out in Tacoma. A year into their extensive program, crime is down only 5% by some accounts - by other accounts it is up slightly. But is that really a "failure" because it didn't reach some early, and perhaps naive, goals? After all, they collected 1000 tons of refuse, litter and debris from city streets. They cleaned up properties. More folks are involved in community efforts than before. Those are all laudable successes. And if crime is down only 5%, at least it is down! Maybe their goal should be to double that for next year. 

Through the law of doubling, especially if Tacoma gets skilled at sustaining their work, they may very well reach 50% within 2 years. Not bad if it holds. ESPECIALLY during a time of economic collapse. Check out the newsclip on the program.

See the Tribune Story