Jill DuBois, Wesley Skogan, and Erik Gudell
The ongoing study found that a large majority of residents knows about the program and remains highly involved, with attendance at monthly beat meetings averaging 6,000 citywide during the first 11 months of 1998. "These robust involvement figures are impressive, especially in a year when there was a change in administration at the Chicago Police Department as well as some challenging, high profile cases on the minds of Chicagoans," according to Susan M. Hartnett, an IPR research associate and project director of the evaluation.
Yet in some ways "it has also been a standstill year," Hartnett cautions. Following the loss of a key architect of the program and the transition to new leadership, "many things that were in the works just stopped," she said. This was
especially true of district management plans for allocating resources and improving problem-solving at the neighborhood level‹important steps in CAPS development that didn't get far off the ground.
Though the rate of programmatic innovation slowed, the CPD and city government have made significant structural changes to accommodate CAPS, the report found. Community policing and problem-solving are now integrated into the department's recruit training, and virtually all city departments have been re-engineered to ensure they can be responsive to service requests filed by police officers.
"Chicago has managed to carve out a meaningful role for the key players in problem-solving policing‹the community, the police, and city services‹and engage them as well.
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| Members of the CAPS evaluation team
(l to R): Jennifer Comey, Susan Hartnett, Jill DuBois, Wesley Skogan, and Erik Gudell |
The report is the fifth in a series examining community policing in the city. "Community Policing in Chicago, Years Five-Six: An Interim Report" describes community activist attitudes about CAPS progress; the effectiveness of the city's marketing campaign aimed at raising program awareness in the neighborhoods; and the extent to which program components are being implemented. It also delineates a new community organizing initiative that aims to rebuild the capacity of city neighborhoods to resolve their problems.
CAPS was instituted in 1993 in five experimental districts. In autumn 1994, coordination of city services, officer training, and new dispatching procedures began to be introduced in police districts throughout the city.
Following are highlights of the findings in years five and six of the evaluation:
Recognition of CAPS has grown from 53% to 79% since 1996. It increased the most among young adults, and the least among older Chicagoans and Spanish speakers. Gaps between groups have not been erased, however. The largest cleavages are between high school graduates and those with less education, between English and Spanish-speakers, and moderate- versus low-income people.
Television is the greatest source of information about the program; in 1998, nearly 40% of Chicagoans recalled hearing about CAPS on television, a figure that has risen from 16% since 1996. Word of mouth, posters or signs, brochures, flyers, and newsletters, also showed noticeable increases.
Involvement continues to be strong among some of the city's poorest, most crime-ridden, poorly educated communities, and highest in areas with high levels of violent crime.
Overall, 14% of Chicagoans said they attended a beat meeting during the past year and thought them productive. Evaluators, however, found the meetings weak at finding solutions to problems. Most actions were proposed by police rather than residents, and the percentage of meetings at which solutions were discussed actually declined between 1995 and 1998. Residents were ineffective at reporting about their recent problem-solving efforts, volunteers were seldom recruited, and residents rarely left a meeting with a clear commitment to action.
Community activists from throughout the city were generally satisfied with the program. Substantial majorities think the police are effectively fostering resident involvement, and believe their district commander and advisory committee are effective.
Police officers who attend beat community meetings also found the meetings effective and well-attended, and nearly all felt welcomed by the community members.
A new community organizing initiative that aims to strengthen the problem-solving ability of neighborhoods has considerable work ahead. The city's CAPS Implementation Office is coordinating the efforts of about 40 organizers in about 90 target beats throughout the city. Nearly all residents of the targeted areas‹disproportionately low-income, and poorly educated‹were pessimistic about the quality of police service in their community. They thought police were not doing a very good job at controlling crime and disorder, and were not particularly responsive to resident concerns.
The impressive pace of innovation has moderated. The lack of a sworn manager with line authority within the organization seemed to shift the program's gears into neutral. Progress in rectifying deficiencies in the department's planning process and the development of new organizational processes also suffered.
In recent months, however, the department has moved to rectify the situation. It has created a new senior management team with explicit responsibility for pushing CAPS implementation forward, and a senior police official now shares co-directorship of the program with an experienced civilian executive. Commanders who demonstrated their ability to implement the program have been given new, higher level responsibility for the program.
The report is available free of charge from the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, 120 South Riverside Plaza, Chicago, IL 60606 (312-793-8550). The study is funded by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, the U. S. Department of Justice, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.