Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Future policing

I was in Providence, RI for a couple days last week, invited by the National Institute of Justice to the second symposium on predictive policing.  About 100 key informants (police chiefs, crime analysts, researchers, and the like) have been invited to these two meetings to discuss this initiative specifically, and the future of policing more generally. 

The meeting was interesting on several levels, and I hope my minor contribution was worthwhile.  The highlight for me was a “listening session” after lunch on day two.   Many of the attendees had already bolted for the airport, so about 60 of us were left to a town hall meeting with three of the most important DOJ executives:  Kristina Rose, director of the National Institute of Justice; Jim Burch, director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance; and Bernard Melekian, director of the Office of Community Oriented Policing—otherwise known in our field as the COPS office.  It’s not often that three heads of DOJ bureaus are in the same place, and the opportunity to dialog in a relatively small group was great. 

At the airport, Director Melekian and I chatted a little more.  Until this appointment, he has served as a police officer for 37 years—the past 13 as chief of police in Pasadena, CA. Our career trajectories sounded pretty similar.  Chiefs of mid-large police departments have a lot of common experiences, and you can sense that certain shared history when you chat with a colleague.  You just know that he or she has dealt with the same gut-wrenching situations, politics, decisions, conflicts, cases and dilemmas. This is the Far Side cartoon framed on my credenza, and the wallpaper on my computer. 

We had a concourse conversation about the inevitable changes both of us see coming in U.S. policing—driven by the economic realities in government of dwindling resources.  It was a theme also broached at the first predictive policing symposium by San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon.  Police departments are consuming an ever-increasing percentage of the total municipal budget, as income fails to keep up with expenses and cities continue to cut other services to preserve police and fire budgets.  It is an unsustainable model, and something will eventually have to give.  Neither Director Melekian nor I knows exactly how this will play out, but we agreed that we are on the verge of some significant changes in how police services look in the future.

9 comments:

Steve said...

Don't worry Chief, if things get too bad, John Spartan will come from the future to prevent any more murder-death-kills.

Anonymous said...

Interesting topic, perhaps the "entitled" public will have to make due with fewer police services in the future.

I wonder if there is any kind of dialog in the nations fire departments about reducing services? How about the public school systems? Just not enough tax dollars to go around.

Anonymous said...

Chief-I'm afraid that what you are faced with is the same choice facing management in every part of our economy right now. That is cutting service or finding new sources of revenue. The difference is that you provide essential services that the public can't do without. Once you have reached as much efficiency as possible, you need to find more revenue, which in the case of a public entity means more taxes or charging a fee for service. No way to sugar-coat it.Best wishes.

256

Anonymous said...

It is interesting that at any time, a minimum of 76 people are at the beck and call of the citizens. These same people are found sleeping at night, still, on a moments notice, they jump up, strap on their gear and go fight a fire or transport someone to the hospital.

When these folks are sleeping, many less of the city's employees are left to their own devices, to act as peace keepers, doing the same work as guidance or marriage counselors, psychologists, garbage collectors, traffic signals, parents or whatever other skills are necessary to resolve situations which arise. They also have to fight crimes, make arrests and offer reminders that traffic laws should be adhered to. Some are very creative and resourceful doing all this too.

Being of an entitlement mentality, our citizens have come to expect more from the police and government agencies. Though it is unfair to load this on the officers and staff, this becomes necessary to meet the needs of the moment while attempting to balance the budget trimmed in other departments.

If there was a way to garner more funding without complaint of the taxpayer (not likely) to lighten the burden on the individual officer through more officers or civilians, or better yet, more officers, I would push to do so.

Since this does not seem likely, I fear that in a short amount of time, you Chief, will have to tell the City Council that you can not meet that need. I don't envy you when that day comes.

Looking at the tax structure, I think that the 70% of property tax, currently paid to the schools are enough and that citation and fine monies might better be distributed to local government. Now if we could only get the Unicameral to make that change.... Police could go back to a quota system for traffic stops...

Anonymous said...

I am curious, can you explain what kind of signifcant changes there might be, ie, the different scenarios? Thanks!

Tom Casady said...

9:10-

I'll have some observations about that tomorrow or Friday....

Anonymous said...

We are apparently able to come up with several hundred million dollars for a cool new arena. You'd think we could find some money for essential services, but I suppose no developers or construction outfits would get fat off of that, and no toxic waste areas would get sold to a sucker that would have to clean them up, so...

Mark said...

I suspect that the fringe benefits are due for change. If private enterprise has abandoned the pension for life, public government will have a hard time keeping it. Plus with life expectancy creeping up the costs to fund such a pension will rise as well.

Mark

Anonymous said...

You and the director are saying what others are thinking. The American police system is about to be turned upside down. One of the 3 C's will prevail - collaborate, cooperate, or consolidate. USA budgets will no longer support 18 thousand police independent police organizations. There is no right or wrong answer but America's police leaders must construct a system taxpayers can afford.