Wesley Skogan

	Susan Hartnett

Chicago’s community policing program, underway for more than four years, has becomea part of the city’s fabric, according to a report issued in December by an IPR led research team that is evaluating its progress.

Two-thirds of Chicagoans are aware of the community policing effort and 30% of these have attended at least one beat meeting. About 4,500 residents attend these meetings each month and the vast majority find them useful. Officers in the Chicago Police Department’s Patrol Division—the 9,000-member unit that handles day-to- day operations on the street—have begun to accept the program as the standard for policing in the city.

These encouraging findings have emerged from IPR’s ongoing evaluation of the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) program they are conducting in conjunction with researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Loyola University, and DePaul University. “Chicago is grinding through the long period that it takes to change the culture of any large organization,” notes principal investigator Wesley G. Skogan (IPR-Political Science).

The multiyear study is funded by grants from the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA), the National Institute of Justice, and the MacArthur Foundation.“These advances are encouraging, because complex programs such as this take substantial time to mature,” adds Susan Hartnett, IPR research associate and project director of the evaluation.

The report issued by ICJIA is the fourth in a series examining the progress of community policing in the city. The latest study also looked at community activists’ attitudes about CAPS, residents’ satisfaction with their interactions with the police, the effectiveness of the city’s marketing campaign to raise awareness of CAPS in the neighborhoods, and the success in implementing various components of the community policing strategy.

CAPS was instituted in 1993 in five experimental police 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 in police districts throughout the city.

Among the major findings of the 1997 CAPS study:

- Community activists were extremely optimistic about the program’s progress. They were most satisfied with beat community meetings, their district commanders’ efforts to implement CAPS, program marketing efforts, and the quality of service that beat officers were delivering.

- During the past year, more than half of Chicago’s residents had contacted the police. More than 80% thought police were helpful and polite, and 70% were satisfied with the outcome. Among adults stopped by police during the year—nearly all for traffic offenses—about 62% thought they were treated fairly and 61% were satisfied with the outcome. Males, African-Americans and poorer respondents were less satisfied than others. Only 10%-13% of respondents found the police excessively aggressive.

- About 90% of people who attended beat meetings said they were useful for finding solutions to neighborhood problems. And 72% said that actions were taken or they saw a change in their neighborhood following the meetings.

- An aggressive program to market CAPS resulted in a large increase in awareness, from 53% of adults the previous year to 68%. Awareness increased in nearly every social group but remained linked to education and income. Levels of CAPS awareness (70%) were nearly identical for whites, African-Americans, and those Latinos who were most comfortable being interviewed in English. However, recognition stood at only 52% among Latinos who preferred to be interviewed in Spanish. Most people who knew about CAPS reported hearing about it on television. Many Spanish-speaking respondents said they learned about CAPS on the radio.

- Among 15 beats that were examined in depth, four have made excellent progress, and five more have good programs. Two beats were struggling to implement CAPS, and four had not made much progress. Differences between them were primarily attributable to leadership at the most local level.

Is CAPS effectively supplementing the efforts of the neediest communities, or is it doing the best in better-off areas that traditionally work well with police? The study found that about half the beats with little capacity to defend themselves have vigorous programs, but that CAPS was poorly implemented in the other half of high-need beats.

The report highlighted several CAPS initiatives that were introduced in 1996-97. Among them:

- 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.

- The first citizen training effort, which fielded an organizing and education program in nearly all 279 police beats.

- New technology that included a more advanced crime mapping system, installation of mobile data terminals in patrol cars, and experiments with voice mail and cellular telephones for beat cars. The police department has made progress in developing a modern database management system and made significant improvements in emergency dispatching, both of which should increase its analytic capacity.

The researchers are now looking at implementation of CAPS citywide while continuing to monitor training and assess advances in technology. They are also focusing on grassroots initiatives by community organizations and organizers hired by the city to facilitate the joint solving of local problems.