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| Police patrol cars in New York - crime prevention is considered a primary goal of policing. |
by Gregory Saville
The problem-oriented policing (POP) model has been around for decades successfully teaching police officers how to solve problems in partnership with communities. As I mentioned in last week's blog, years ago I chatted with POP founder, Professor Herman Goldstein, and asked him: When will police adopt a fundamentally better way to work with the community and solve problems?
The Ferguson riots unfolded in 2014, along with subsequent protests about excessive force and racism in dozens of other cities, but few remembered that POP had already pointed to better police methods. Eight years ago we knew very well there was a better, and proven, way forward.
Yet, it seems that POP faded from police planning and development so much that by the time the federal government published the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing a year after Ferguson, there was not a single reference to the POP movement. It is as if the Task Force authors had collective amnesia. It did not mention the successes of POP as a crime-fighting or as a community-building tactic.
Instead, authors conflated “problem-solving” as a catch-all term under community policing. “Problem-solving” is a ridiculous term that means everything and nothing at the same time. Without a clear definition and coherent steps, the term is meaningless.
Clearly, they lost the plot.
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| Finding, and responding to, crime hotspots in parks, apartments, businesses, and other places is the latest and greatest in police tactics |
NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES
Why did this happen? Police had already figured how to implement problem-oriented policing. They already knew how to make it part of their regular duties. And yet the evidence did not sway police leaders and their political bosses.
Since 1979, when Professor Goldstein first introduced POP, we have seen the emergence of dozens of tactics for police effectiveness:
Each tactic has admirers and detractors, but none have survived the test of time like POP. Many have already been debunked or, at least, challenged on questionable ethics and constitutional grounds. For example, critics claim SQF can exacerbate the crisis of legitimacy and trust. In another example, predictive policing is criticized for “perpetuating systemic racism through the use of biased data”.
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| Hotspots are often locations where crime opportunities flourish, such as vacant and unsupervised downtown parking lots |
And then there are outright failed strategies like the ‘put-a-cop-on-every-corner’ idea. Consider Philadelphia Police who ran “Operation Safe Streets” in 2002 and put over 200 cops on the worst drug dealing intersections 24-7 in the hopes it would stem the tide of drugs and violence. Like all methods that hack at the branches, it did not go as planned.
One scientific evaluation put it bluntly: There were no city-wide impacts on drug crime, homicides, or violent crimes.
START SMALL, FINISH BIG
Luckily, some approaches like hotspot policing are re-discovering problem-oriented policing. Hotspot policing is not really a prevention strategy. It is not what police do, but rather where they do it. Crime analysts and patrol supervisors locate small areas of repeat crime and violence and then have officers target that spot. By focusing on micro-locations at apartment buildings, local bars, troublesome parks, or risky parking lots, the eventual goal is for crime to drop across the city at the macro level.
Arguably, the unstated motto of hotspot policing is: start small, finish big. Of course, there is no guarantee small starts will do the trick, but that’s the goal.
The concept of hotspots in criminology emerged a long time ago. Studies on auto theft in Peel Region and the Minneapolis hotspot experiment emerged in the 1980s, but not until fairly recently did police do anything with that knowledge. Unfortunately, the fact that one of the worst examples of excessive use of force and racial conflict in recent years arose in Minneapolis, suggests that hotspot policing is not really an answer to some important bigger questions.
Today hotspots are the popular prevention-kid-on-the-block. There is a flood of studies on every aspect of hotspots: how to find robbery hotspots; how to calculate the “hottest” part of a hotspot; or how to find hotspot schools. Criminologists are renaming whole areas of criminology the criminology of place or place-based policing. Perhaps the best review of the topic is Martin Andressen's exceptional book “Environmental Criminology: Evolution, Theory, and Place”.
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| Simple prevention signs are one preventive tactic in hotspots |
Insightful researchers are also careful to describe hotspot policing as a deployment tactic, not a community crime prevention strategy. Interestingly, in some hotspot projects police use POP with great effect.
HAPPILY EVER AFTER?
This brings problem-oriented policing back into the limelight and returns us to
my conversation with Professor Goldstein in the last blog. I don’t know what he would say about this recent bevy of policing tactics. He seldom publicly aired his views about such things without prudent analysis and careful thought.
I do know Goldstein was enormously proud and impressed by those officers who, through creativity and perseverance, worked with others in the community, used thorough crime analysis, and made places safer with POP. He loved hearing their stories and talking to them about how they found inventive ways to work with communities.
And that is as good an ending to this story as I can imagine.
The International Problem-Oriented Policing conference for 2023 will be announced on the POP Center website. Watch for it.
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