Chicago Police Hope To Build Trust With Experiment In Community Policing

Members of a community group in North Hartford, CT, are a positive presence on the streets of the dangerous neighborhood they once grew up in. Men Standing Up Against Violence aim to deter violence, provide support, mediate conflicts, and mentor the youth. The presence of the group was initially unwelcomed by local police officers, but they have proven to be an effective and vital addition to the neighborhood, winning over both the community and the local police department. The group's success is attributed to the trust they've built with locals who often have a deep mistrust and fear of the police.

In efforts to diminish violent crime, police agencies are revisiting a model law enforcement strategy of the 1970s, "community policing," as an alternative to the more recent "broken windows" style of the late nineties. Research substantiates its effectiveness, too, in building citizens' trust of law enforcement, helping a community's ability to solve its own problems, and, in turn, decreasing crime rates. Despite redefined priorities in the wake of 9/11 and post-recession budget cuts, community policing is again on the rise and bringing positive results, too.

After charged discussions and protests around racial injustice within police departments, Baltimore set out to find a solution to bridge the divide created between the city's police force and the kids that lived in stereotyped neighborhoods. Using nature as a common ground, the Outward Bound Police Youth Challenge was born to bring the two sides together and teach them that they have more in common than they may think.

With the police killings of Freddie Gray, Laquan McDonald, and other black lives across the country, the problem remains how to reform police departments and reduce excessive force on unarmed men and women. Procedural justice is a strategy that centers on legitimizing the law for at-risk communities by building trust, so that the environment of policing changes to one of respect and less crime results. Procedural justice has begun to be implemented across U.S. police departments with some measurable successes, although police accountability remains important and should be an extension of the strategy.

The increase of violence between the police and Black communities across the country requires a reconstruction of the relationship that addresses empathy, trust, and crime reduction. The Department of Justice has developed test programs in different cities that train police officers in procedural justice. The early results of this program in Stockton, CA show that communities and police have built trust and law legitimacy, while the crime rate has not increased.

After serious issues with excessive force and police discrimination reached a head in East Haven, Conn., major department overhauls that focused on more diverse hiring, de-escalation techniques, crisis intervention, and conflict resolution have led to much healthier law enforcement for the community. Their model offers hopeful lessons to Seattle and other cities whose police departments also have been required to adopt federally mandated reforms.

When concern arose that the police was not the appropriate department to respond to all non-violent, non-emergency calls, the Mobile Assistance Community Responders of Oakland program was created to do so. The program’s responders are civilian workers who check on community-member reports of things like people sleeping in public, public indecency and reported behavioral issues.

Tucson’s Place Network Investigations program puts dedicated teams in areas where crime is more likely to occur, using community engagement to learn more about residents’ needs and their concerns around local crime. Tucson's program has also partnered with community organizations to offer services as part of public outreach, such as vaccination clinics and food distribution, but some have criticized the initiative as over-policing of marginalized communities.

The Community Safety Partnership Bureau of the Los Angeles Police Department has worked for a decade in 10 neighborhoods to prevent crime through building trust among residents, rather than through the LAPD's costly and troubled war on gangs. One study found that through long-term involvement in neighborhood life, with highly trained officers working closely with community organizers, CSP had helped increase public trust, save public money, and lower violent crime.

In 2020, six years after the Justice Department imposed a series of reforms on the Newark Police Department, Newark police officers have reduced their use of force so much that they didn't fire their guns at all in 2020, nor did the city pay any brutality-lawsuit settlements. Reforms in training, including de-escalation tactics, all backed by supportive leadership and extensive community outreach, turned a "rogue department" of brutality and racism into a more trusted, effective force.