 -
Kelly Larson
-
Assistant Chief,
St. George Police Department
-
69th President
1997/1998
-
The UPOA 76th Convention was held
in Kanab, Utah, June 10 - 13, 1998
- Department Patch
- "Professionalism through maintaining
community values in all that we do"
We have talked about the importance of having values within our departments, and for each of us individually. I have spoken about the importance of employees, which really is each of us regardless of our position within the law enforcement career.
- Just as important to each of us should be the quality of service we provide. Just as the administrators have worked hard to provide good employees they must also work hard to provide good service. Good service to our customers: the people we each serve and have taken an oath to uphold and defend. But what is good service? It used to be dealing with the problems of the community and taking care of the little things, keeping public order. We can reflect back to early ordinances we were called upon to enforce. Many of these we smile at now, but in their time, they were important.
- Some of us "older" officers can recall dealing with issues back in the "good old days" before the attorneys and so called "bleeding hearts" got the courts involved with how we took care of things. Things which the community we served felt were not up to the standards they wanted.
- As long as I have been in law enforcement (19 years), I have always considered our profession as highly disciplined and closely controlled. We have been called crime fighters. It is a good name. It quickly identifies what we are all about. We are at war with the criminal element in our society and we are the thin blue line. We take pride in tracking statistics which compare crime indexes. Crime rates down and arrests up is a very positive thing! Supervisors continue to keep us in touch with what we are suppose to be doing as they review our efforts. To be sure, citations, traffic stops, arrests, cases, and clearance rates need to be where they should be! We don't have the time to talk to store owners or employees. To talk to a citizen just to talk is unheard of! Part One crimes (those important ones that the IACP and the FBI have listed) give us the most points. The Part Two crimes, we deal with only because they present themselves for our attention. Some, like DUI and narcotics, are important because the administration have always felt they were important. But to roll on a noise complaint or a barking dog, hey, we aren't social workers!
- Making contacts (traffic stops) have been a high profile activity. As a result, we have found it very easy to hide in our patrol cars.They seem to be our castles, our protection from the enemy. I'm reminded of someone I went hunting with years ago. He was a person we always had to wait on; he was a big hunter, or at least, a big talker until we got to the hunting area. It was there he made his big statement which has always stuck with me. I remember it whenever I deal with people who are set in their ways. "If I can't reach out and touch my horse with one hand and my truck with the other, I'm not going anywhere." I sometimes wonder if this is where we are. In the book Fixing Broken Windows the authors sums it up this way:
-
The focus was preventive patrol, and rapid
response to calls for service: police cruising randomly and unpredictably
through city streets in cars could create a feeling, among both good citizens
and criminals, of police omnipresence . . . Finally, in cars police were
constantly available to respond to calls for service: to be "in-service"
meant officers were riding in cars; to be "out of service" meant police
officers were dealing with citizens. Organizational pressure was placed
on officers to be in-service--waiting for the next call.
-
The authors work provides us with a quick
history or how we got to where we are in police work and how important
it is to provide good quality service to the public. In handling criminal
activity we must take a new look at how we should be doing this. Making
arrests and taking care of the big things isn't working. We must, therefore,
adjust our thinking. Something which is always hard for us to do. It isn't
that we can't change, it is more our fear of admitting we may make a mistake
from time to time! Hey, we carry guns, we tell people what to do. To error
often brings down the wrath of God upon our heads (or at least the sergeant
or lieutenant). Trying new things takes us out of our "comfort zone". To
do this is a bigger step than deciding to choose law enforcement as a career.
I agree with the authors of the book that when researchers labeled us as
crime fighters and announced we were at war with crime, it took the term
peace officers out of our vocabulary and changed our attitude about why
most of us entered into this profession in the first place: to serve and
protect.
- We need to understand now as we move into this Community Policing thing that we are still peace officers. Community policing isn't an add-on crime prevention or community relations program. It is one of those " all for one and one for all" things. We need to get back to the basic goals of taking care of our communities, our neighborhoods. Fixing Broken Windows is about taking care of the little things. If we do that, the bigger things we are now dealing with probably won't be there or at least not as great as they are now. If we don't repair a broken window, soon there will be another one, and another. Soon the building is an eye sore, then the neighborhood, etc. But for us to deal with these little things, we need to accept the fact that our present method of dealing with crime isn't working. "When we get out of our cars and establish a presence in a neighborhood, talk to the citizens, building trust and lessening fear, our ability to control the public behavior of citizens without resorting to the actual use of force is greatly enhanced."2
- We need to remember the principles set by Sir Robert Peel in 1829 when he founded the London Metropolitan Police Force:
- 1. The duty of the police is to prevent crime and disorder.
- 2. The power of the police to fulfill their duties is dependent on public approval and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
- 3. Public respect and approval also mean the willing cooperation of the public in the task of securing observance of the law.
- 4. The police must seek and preserve public favor not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law.
- 5. The police should strive to maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police.
- 6. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder; not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with these problems.3
- This is still important information more than 169 years later. Community policing isn't something new, it's been around longer than any of us. Isn't it interesting that the truth never changes. What was true back in London, the same concerns Sir Robert Peel had about "taking back the streets", are still the same today.
- Providing good, quality service to the community, to the citizens, hopefully is what all of us are interested in. We need to adjust our thinking towards new ways of becoming accountable. Let's always re-member to do things because it is the right thing to do. Work towards providing the service we would want if we were store owner, the clerk in a store, the person down the street, our neighbor, our parents, our kid. Service is about treating people with respect and leaving them with a feeling that we care about our work, who we are. If we aren't in this work for these reasons, we should really have a serious talk!
-
- 1. Fixing Broken Windows, George L. Kelling & Catherine M. Coles, Free Press, 1996. Page 78.
- 2. Fixing Broken Windows, George L. Kelling & Catherine M. Coles, Free Press, 1996. Page 98.
- 3. "The Essence of Community Policing", Norman D. Inkster. The Police Chief, March 1992. Pages 28-31.
|