By Allison Steele
Philadelphia Inquirer
Kensington resident Wayne Shakur remembers, vaguely, seeing police walk their beats when he was growing up in Philadelphia, and how his mother waved occasionally to the officer on duty.
“Back in the day, you’d get to know the officer in your neighborhood,” said Shakur, 37, sitting on the porch of his E Street home. “That’s the way it should be. The way it is now, they don’t know me, I don’t know them, and I don’t trust them.
“I would love for that to change,” he added.
This summer, Shakur could get his wish. These days, police in North Philadelphia are patrolling the streets in much the way officers across the country - and in Philadelphia - did decades ago: by reporting to the same neighborhood each day and staying there for as much of the shift as possible.
Planting officers in the same place every day will cut down on response times, police administrators say, and allow officers to design crimefighting strategies tailored to a particular neighborhood’s problems. It started last month in the city’s neighboring 24th and 26th Districts, which include Kensington, Port Richmond, and nearby neighborhoods.
Gradually, officers who work those beats day to day will get to know the people in those communities, Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said. That means learning who the troublemakers are and talking with residents who can help police identify potential danger.
“It’s very simple,” Ramsey said in a recent interview. “Know your area, and you can’t help but become better at community policing.”
The 24th and 26th Districts have been divided into mini-sections overseen by consistent teams of officers, and that sense of continuity goes up through the ranks. The districts’ sergeants and lieutenants are assigned to oversee officers in specific areas as well, which Ramsey sees as a way of demanding more accountability from the force.
“We want to get our officers, our sergeants, and our lieutenants some geographical responsibility,” Ramsey said. “If a corner is your problem today, it’s going to be your problem tomorrow. And you have a responsibility to address that problem. You can’t pass it off to the next guy or say you didn’t know about it. You may not be able to solve it, but what are you doing to impact it?”
The zones, called Police Service Areas, will be expanded to each of the city’s 25 districts later this year, representing a back-to-basics approach. It’s a return to the way officers, including Ramsey when he worked in Chicago, patrolled beats decades ago, by getting to know the streets.
Over the years, due to a rise in urban violence and the gradual thinning of police ranks, many patrols became incident-driven, and officers now spend much of their time responding to calls all over their districts.
“It’s not a new idea,” Ramsey said of the service areas. “But old is sometimes good.”
Officers will still leave their assigned areas to respond to serious calls such as shootings or robberies. But generally, officers in each assigned sector are expected to handle 70 percent of the 911 calls that come from within those parameters.
As chief of police in Washington, Ramsey headed a similar program in 2004, and he believes it led to a drop in crime. He said he hoped that testing the service areas over the summer in the 24th and 26th would allow police to work out any glitches before the program went citywide. By the end of this month, officers hope to roll out the program in the 22d and 23d Districts.
By then, Ramsey also hopes that word will spread among officers that the service-area concept isn’t so bad.
“It’s not difficult to do this, but any change causes anxiety,” he said. “Once this gets going, I’m thinking the word of mouth will be positive.”
The 24th District runs from Lehigh Avenue to Frankford Creek and out to G Street. Last year it had 26 homicides, 72 rapes, 276 armed robberies, 685 home burglaries, and 593 car thefts, according to department data. In 2007, it was one of 12 districts that Ramsey said needed increased patrols. The crime rate is lower in the 26th, but the area’s problems are similar. The two districts have just under 400 officers between them.
Capt. Daniel Castro of the 24th District is the first to admit that it took his officers some time to warm to the idea of the service areas.
“Right from the outset, they didn’t want to do it,” Castro said, adding that some were concerned by the idea of being tethered to one area. “Cops get comfortable with what they’re doing, and they didn’t want to be restricted. They want some discretion to do what they think is best.”
The 24th was divided into three sections, one of which is just two square miles but which is infested with drugs and generates half of the district’s 911 calls. More officers and cars were assigned there than to the other sectors.
On the first day the district had the new service areas, Castro said, calls in all three sectors started being handled faster. Officers realized that the sooner they took care of calls within their sectors, the sooner they could check hot spots, clear drug corners, and do other police work. And officers now spend less time traveling around the district responding to minor calls, leaving them more time to patrol their areas.
On a recent anonymous feedback survey, many officers in the 24th grudgingly admitted the program was working better than they had expected it would, Castro said.
“Overall, like the PSA idea,” one officer wrote. “Community likes the same officers returning to handle assignments, building confidence with the residents.”
“The PSA is working well, mainly because you don’t have to go from one side of the district to the other. It maintains sector integrity like the old days,” another officer wrote.
“Cops are going to be cynical, and I’m not naive enough to think everyone loves it,” Castro said. “But I honestly didn’t expect such a positive response so soon.”
Service areas can be difficult to maintain over the long term, said Lawrence Sherman, professor of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, but they can be enormously beneficial to police departments and communities.
“There is evidence that if people get to know their officers, they tend to increase their level of comfort, satisfaction, and trust in the police,” Sherman said. “That leads to more information. And information is the lifeblood of policing.”
Many patrol officers believe in responding to all calls as fast as possible, Sherman said, but most police strategists will say that’s not the best use of their time.
“For a car break-in, should you take someone out of their assigned neighborhood who’s getting to know people who could help solve their next murder?” Sherman asked. “That’s how departments start to prevent crime.”
On a recent drive around Kensington and other parts of the 24th, the streets were crowded with kids out of school for the summer, men and women hanging on street corners, and others sitting on steps and front porches.
Some people who wander the streets all day are looking for trouble, said Shakur, of E Street, but many are just looking for something to do.
That’s part of why Shakur said he thought the service areas were a good idea.
“The police, they need to know the community,” he said.
But Shakur’s friend George Ratliff shook his head with skepticism at the idea.
“I don’t like cops. I don’t want to know them,” he said. “When you need them, they’re not here, and when they’re here, they treat you like a criminal.”
He said that if he were the victim of a crime, he wouldn’t call police.
“No way. I’d take care of it myself,” he said. “Calling 911 is a joke. These guys don’t care.”
Ramsey sees building community relationships as a crucial part of the service-area plan and thinks it could help change the no-snitching culture in some of the city’s worst neighborhoods.
“Trust starts with knowing someone,” he said. “It breaks down the stereotypes on both sides. And there are more decent law-abiding people in these neighborhoods than criminals. They’re just scared to go outside.”
Copyright 2009 Philadelphia Inquirer