By Jerome Burdi
Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
Staff Writer Staff Researcher Barbara Hijek contributed to this report.
WEST BOCA RATON, Fla. — Denise Williams shook her head on a recent, balmy evening in her Watergate neighborhood and told a deputy she just can’t take it anymore.
Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Deputy J.P. Harvey sat in her backyard patio and nodded his head in empathy, looking more like a neighbor except for the green uniform and gun.
Illegal prescription drugs and crack cocaine leave many people in this neighborhood reeling through the streets like zombies or banging on a dealer’s door with money to get high.
“I’m telling you, I’m fed up, I’m really fed up,” Williams said.
She has lived in the 10000 block of North Branch Road for just two years but already plans to put a “For Sale by Owner” sign outside her mobile home.
The home sits near a cul-de-sac that Williams refers to as a “crack-de-sac.”
But Harvey’s listening seemed to have a calming effect on her. And getting specific information about crimes from residents helps the Sheriff’s Office.
This is community policing, a type of policing where deputies focus more on long-term problem-solving rather than just responding to calls. Deputies try to get ahead of crime waves by being on the streets and forging relationships in the community.
It’s part of a nationwide trend for years that harkens back to the days when police officers walked the beat. This philosophy has been a focus of Sheriff Ric Bradshaw’s strategy since he took office in 2005.
The recently re-elected Bradshaw said community policing remains a hallmark of his agency because it’s a successful crime fighting method.
“You can’t arrest your way out of problems in a neighborhood,” the sheriff said. Communication between the community and law enforcement, Bradshaw said, is crucial.
“The criminal element realizes these people are taking back their neighborhood and they can’t operate there,” he said.
Cutting back on crime remains a process, authorities say, that needs community involvement. To get that, law enforcement officers have to gain trust and show a human side.
“If you don’t get involved, then don’t complain,” said Jeannie Gardner, a Sandalfoot Cove neighborhood resident who has offered her house for community meetings. “They can’t do their job unless they have information.”
There are 44 deputies assigned to the Sheriff’s Office community policing.
In law enforcement, there can be resistance to the strategy, said Fred Shenkman, a criminology professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Some police, he said, may look at community policing more as “bleeding heart” work than law enforcement.
“You can’t hire police officers who want to be crime fighters and give them training as [community police] and want them to work as social workers,” Shenkman said.
In a world where police agencies credit felony arrests, he said, police may be more inclined to make those arrests rather than spend time getting to the root of an issue through community policing.
“It’s a wonderful idea but in reality very few people favor it,” Shenkman said. “If one were going to truly understand the underlying causes of crime, people would spend their whole lives to understand.”
At the Sheriff’s Office, the enforcement is there too.
A few hours after his conversation with Denise Williams, the 6-foot-4-inch Harvey parked his squad car and waited. With the car’s lights off, speed radar in hand, and Jimi Hendrix playing on the radio, Harvey looked for someone he could pull over. In the 10300 block of Sandalfoot Boulevard, Harvey gave a speeding ticket to a young man, who had a marijuana leaf design on his shorts.
“He was very respectful,” Harvey said.
Copyright 2008 Sun-Sentinel Company