' CAPS 1997 Release 
NORTHWESTERN STUDY FINDS PROGRESS IN CHICAGO'S COMMUNITY POLICING
PROGRAM
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Northwestern News on the World Wide
Web: http://www.northwestern.edu/univ-relations/media/
CONTACT: Pat Tremmel at (847)
491-4892 or p-tremmel@nwu.edu)
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Chicago's community policing program, underway for more than
four years, has become a part of the city's fabric, according to a just released
study from Northwestern University.
Two-thirds of Chicagoans are aware of the
community policing effort, and among those who are, 30 percent have attended at
least one beat community meeting. About 4,500 residents attend those meetings
each month, a pace that matches last year. And, officers in the Chicago Police
Department's Patrol Division--the 9,000 member unit that handles day-to-day
operations out on the street--have begun to accept the program as the standard
for policing in the city.
These findings are part of an ongoing evaluation of
the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) program. "Chicago is grinding
through the long period that it takes to change the culture of any large
organization," notes Wesley G. Skogan, professor of political science and
faculty fellow at the Northwestern University Institute for Policy Research
(IPR).
CAPS continues to be a flagship community policing program. "It is
distinguished by the outstanding opportunity for involvement offered to the
community through monthly beat community meetings and by its ongoing commitment
to training residents as well as police officers," he added.
Skogan, an internationally known criminologist, spearheads the evaluation in
conjunction with researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Loyola
University and DePaul University. The multiyear study is funded by grants from
the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority and the National Institute of
Justice, part of the U.S. Department of Justice. "These advances are encouraging,
because complex programs such as this take substantial time to mature," adds
Susan M. Hartnett, an IPR research associate and director of the evaluation
project.
The report is the fourth in a series examining community policing in
the city. The study also examined community activists' attitudes about CAPS
progress, residents' satisfaction level with their interactions with the police,
the effectiveness of the city's marketing campaign aimed at raising program
awareness in the neighborhoods, and how successfully the various components that
comprise the community policing strategy are being implemented.
CAPS was instituted in 1993 in five experimental districts. In autumn 1994
elements of the program, such as the coordination of city services, officer
training and new dispatching procedures, began to be introduced on police
districts throughout the city.
Among the findings of the 1997 CAPS study:
- A special study of community activists from throughout the city found
they were extremely optimistic about the program's progress. They were the most
satisfied with beat community meetings, their districts' commanders' efforts to
implement CAPS, program marketing efforts, and the quality of service being
delivered by beat officers. Their views grew more positive between 1996 and 1997
on most measures, and most notably with respect to beat integrity, city service
requests, and the Court Advocacy project, through which residents identify and
track legal cases that are of concern to the community.
- During the past year, more than half of Chicago residents contacted the
police about some matter. Overall, more than 80 percent thought police were
helpful and treated them politely, and 70 percent were satisfied with the
outcome. About one-quarter of adults were stopped by the police during the year,
almost all about traffic offenses. About 62 percent thought they were treated
fairly and 58 percent politely, and 61 percent were satisfied with the outcome.
Males, African-Americans and poorer respondents were less satisfied than others.
Respondents were also asked about their perceptions of police misconduct, and 10
percent to 13 percent thought police were excessively aggressive. Just more than
60 percent thought police corruption was not at all a problem in their
neighborhood, but that figure was much lower in the Austin district.
-
Between January 1995 and May 1997, an average of 4,500 people attended monthly
meetings held in the city's 279 police beats. Attendance for the period totaled
about 140,000. The average participant attends about five times a year. About 90
percent of attendees surveyed thought they learned something at a meeting and
that the meetings were useful for finding solutions to neighborhood problems.
Seventy-two percent reported that actions were taken or that they noticed a
change in their neighborhood as a result of the meetings.
- An aggressive
program to market CAPS was underway during 1996 and 1997, resulting in a large
increase in awareness, from 53 percent of adults last year to 68 percent of
adults. Awareness increased in almost every social group but remains linked to
education and income. It stood at 70 percent among Latinos who were most
comfortable being interviewed in English, which is almost identical to levels of
program awareness among whites and African-Americans. However, recognition stood
at only 52 percent among those preferring to be interviewed in Spanish. Most who
knew about CAPS reported hearing about it on television. Many Spanish speakers
reported learning about CAPS on the radio. Both city and local papers largely
attracted the attention of homeowners, whites and more educated respondents.
However, those who actually attended a beat meeting were more likely to have
heard about CAPS from someone else, via an announcement carried home from school,
at church or at a festival booth promoting CAPS. More personalized contact seems
to get people out to the meetings.
- Teamwork and planning, a hallmark of community policing that expedites
problem solving, is underway in all districts. However, the effectiveness and
degree of officer involvement varies from district to district. Partnerships
between the community and police teams continue to develop through regularly held
beat community meetings and District Advisory Committee meetings, although
sophisticated joint problem-solving projects are rarely in evidence at this
point. New management and beat-level training efforts may help improve this.
Advisory Committees, composed of residents that assist the district commander in
identifying and solving the neighborhood's priority problems, are seeking more
direction and communication about their role. Beat integrity is at a
satisfactory level throughout the city, and officers in the field report that the
performance of the Office of Emergency Communications (which runs 911) has
improved markedly. Newly introduced dispatch communications technology was widely
accepted by field officers in spite of inevitable hardware glitches. The
Detective Division still does not have a clear role in CAPS, and while some
simple procedural accommodations have been made to help districts enlist the aid
of other units, community policing remains a chiefly Patrol Division strategy.
The various support functions put into place to augment the problem-solving
process (district administrative managers, police-community trainers and outreach
workers) are being integrated and appropriately utilized. Response to requests
submitted by the police for city services has improved in the last year.
- A
ground-level view of community policing detailing what CAPS looks like in
operation showed that among 15 beats that were examined in depth, four have made
excellent progress, and five more have good programs. Two beats are struggling to
implement CAPS, and four beats have not made much progress at all. Differences
between them are primarily attributable to leadership at the most local level. On
a day-to-day basis, the success of the program lies primarily in the hands of
sergeants and their teams of officers. In beats where these street-level
supervisors understand their roles and have accepted the challenge of making
community policing work, they have been successful in engaging the community and
resolving important community problems.
"This reinforces what we already knew, that sergeants are the most important
people in police departments," Skogan notes. The report also addresses the issue
of whether CAPS is effectively supplementing the efforts of communities that are
in need of assistance, or if it is just doing best in better-off areas that
traditionally work well with the police. Results indicate that about half the
beats with little capacity to defend themselves have vigorous programs, but in
the other half of high-need beats, CAPS is poorly implemented. Six areas that are
highly organized and exercise a great deal of informal social control are also
split, but two-thirds are getting relatively good support from police. The other
two are middle-class African-American beats, which have underdeveloped CAPS
programs.
Many of the new initiatives introduced by the department to augment
CAPS included:
- During 1996 and 1997, the department inaugurated several
measures intended to increase the breadth of the program. It created a new
planning process that begins with the formal identification of beat problems and
the resources required to attack them, and culminates in the formulation of
district and area plans that respond to those needs. Chicago's program envisions
the formation of police-citizen partnerships for problem solving, so beat
officers participate in a wide range of community meetings and events, in order
to ensure community input in setting their priorities. Their beat plans are
supposed to identify specific individuals or groups with whom they will
coordinate their efforts against the beat's priority problems. The role of
sergeants who supervise the beat teams was clarified, and special training
sessions were held for them. Leadership training was also conducted for many
lieutenants, who will have new roles as the rank of captain is phased out of the
organization.
- The end of 1996 saw the conclusion of the first citizen
training effort, which fielded an organizing and education program in almost all
of the city's 279 police beats. Early in 1997 civilian and police trainers were
added to the staff of the department's Education and Training Division. They will
tailor the city's future training and technical assistance efforts to the needs
of individual neighborhoods, community organizations and police beats.
-
During 1996 and 1997 the city created a staff of community outreach workers
charged with assisting beat and district projects and sustaining participation in
beat community meetings, and added more staff to support a new emphasis on
building and land use issues. A task force representing several city agencies was
created to tackle clusters of problem buildings, and city prosecutors were
assigned to selected districts to work with police using civil as well as
criminal remedies.
- New technology was introduced to the department. A more
advanced crime mapping system was developed; mobile data terminals were installed
in patrol cars; experiments have been conducted with voice mail and cellular
telephones for beat cars; and progress has been made on the development of a
modern database management system for the agency. There were significant
improvements in emergency dispatching and the delivery of management data, which
should increase the analytic capacity of the police department.
As all of
this was taking place, crime declined throughout the city. Since 1991 there has
been a noticeable decline in all major categories of crime, and some of the
largest decreases have been in violent offenses. Over that period, robbery
declined 43 percent and homicide 14 percent. The decline is also widespread. The
report classifies each of the city's 279 police beats by the race of its
residents, and trends are examined separately in each category. By-and-large,
major categories of crime decreased everywhere; murder, for example, declined
between 15 percent and 24 percent in different areas. One of the largest
declines was registered for crimes involving guns; gun crime is down 18 percent
to 44 percent in different areas. In general, crime was down the most in
predominately African-American beats. The report reviews possible explanations
for these declines, which began before community policing was under way in the
city.
In the remaining years of the evaluation, CAPS researchers will broaden
their look at the implementation of CAPS--moving to a citywide evaluation--as
well as continuing to monitor training and assess advances in technology. The
evaluation also will take a look at grassroots initiatives by community
organizations to solve local problems focus and the launch of a pilot program
that brings community policing to one of Chicago's public housing complexes.
(This new report is available without charge from the Illinois Criminal Justice
Information Authority, 120 South Riverside Plaza, Chicago IL 60606
(312-793-8550). Details of the experimental period and early successes of the
program can be found in Community Policing, Chicago Style, a new book
written by Wesley G. Skogan and Susan Hartnett.)
12/3/97
Project paper summaries can also be accessed by clicking here.Many of the papers may be downloaded using Adobe Acrobat Reader.