Community policing and youth as assets.

• Author: Forman, Jr., James

INTRODUCTION

Over a decade after it was first introduced, community policing remains the most important innovation in American policing today. Called "the most significant era in police organizational change since the introduction of the telephone, automobile, and two way radio," (1) community policing has been supported by the past three Presidents, Congress, every major police organization, and much of the public. (2) A broad cross-section of the legal academy also endorses community policing. Those who seek new ways for inner-city communities to mobilize against disorder and crime support it, (3) as do others whose principal concern is reducing police abuse of minorities. (4)

In this Article, I will argue both that there is much to be said for community policing and that it has not reached its potential. The flaw, I suggest, is that a critical group--youth and young adults--has largely been left out of the new policing model. Community policing rejects the discredited "warrior" approach to policing, in which inner-city communities were viewed as implacably hostile to the policing enterprise. Yet I will show how this warrior model persists for the young, who are still viewed as targets of policing rather than as assets to it.

The bad news is that leaving young people out of this new model of policing has tremendous implications. Public safety turns, to a great extent, on what the young do and what is done to them. This is the group most likely to engage in criminal conduct, to be victims of crime, and to be targeted by police. By treating the young exclusively as threats to public order, the state creates and reinforces attitudes of hostility and opposition. This has negative consequences for public safety, because oppositional attitudes can increase law-breaking and make it less likely that citizens will provide information to law enforcement. Further, as the central representative of the state in inner-city communities, what the police do (and what they teach by what they do) has implications beyond policing. The alienation generated by the warrior model creates costs that are borne not just by youth themselves, but by their neighbors and the rest of society.

The good news is that the warrior model of policing the inner-city young is built on premises that are faulty, and therefore can be corrected. Despite the powerful image of urban youth as threats, most delinquent and criminal conduct is concentrated among a small percentage of young people. The rest--the majority--are law-abiders. Moreover, they are the principal victims of the law-breaking minority. They therefore have a profound stake in keeping their neighborhoods (and themselves) safe. Coupled with their interest in reducing police abuse and harassment, this gives the young powerful incentive to participate in the community policing enterprise.

Moreover, just as the warrior model alienates young people from the police and society, community policing offers to do the opposite. A growing body of empirical research establishes that people's satisfaction with the legal system, including the police, is determined not by whether they are satisfied with the outcome of the decision, but instead by whether they believe the process was fair. These findings have powerful implications for community policing. Not all community policing is equal, as I will explore. But some versions offer citizens the opportunity to participate in regular group deliberations with neighbors and local officers to set community policing priorities. To date, young people have not generally been involved in this type of policing. But a model that included the young would place them alongside other community members and officers in trust-engendering deliberations regarding matters of community safety. This process would, in turn, increase law enforcement's legitimacy in their eyes, by increasing their respect for the process of police decision-making.

This Article proceeds in four parts. In Section I, I will outline how community policing developed out of dissatisfaction with the antagonism caused by the warrior model. Because community policing is a term that has been used to describe quite disparate concepts, in this Section I will define what I mean by it. I will also emphasize what I view as the enormous potential of community policing to increase local regulation of law enforcement. I will do this by contrasting community policing to what I call the "judicial control" model, in which judges attempt to regulate police conduct through enforcement of the Fourth Amendment.

In Section II, I will describe how community policing has failed to change the way the inner-city young are policed. Young people are less likely than older citizens to be involved in the community meetings and other venues where the community policing agenda is set. Further, they are more likely to be stopped, disrespected, and illegally searched by the police on the streets. I will then turn to the rhetoric regarding the young, and argue that here too they appear solely as threats and objects of intervention. I will suggest that part of the reason for this portrayal is that community policing gained currency just as youth crime, especially youth homicide, increased dramatically. Because our national imagination was fixed on the image of the adolescent and post-adolescent "super-predator," it was difficult to see that same group as potential assets to the community policing agenda.

In Section III, I will justify my claim that we should view youth as assets, and I will explore the costs of our failure to do so. First, I will describe the investment the young have in influencing police behavior and fighting crime. Second, I will outline society's stake in using all mechanisms at its disposal--including law enforcement--to reinforce bonds of trust and faith in law's legitimacy among the inner-city young. Drawing on sociological research, I will suggest that many youth and young adults in urban areas are "walking a tightrope," between what Elijah Anderson has called "street" and "decent" values. (5) Perhaps the greatest evil of warrior policing is that, because it is perceived as illegitimate and unfair, it encourages its targets to adopt street values. On the other hand, I will argue, the state has the power to increase law's legitimacy by adopting policing practices that are perceived as procedurally fair.

In Section IV, I describe in greater detail what a model of community policing that engages young people would look like. Through an examination of novel and promising policing experiments in Chicago and Boston, I will outline the model's core principles. I will also describe some potential pitfalls, and discuss how they might be avoided.

1. THE POTENTIAL OF COMMUNITY POLICING

   1. BACKGROUND TO COMMUNITY POLICING

      Community policing grew out of a variety of sources, (6) but of central importance was the growing consensus in the 1970s and 1980s that police-community relationships in many cities had become untenable. (7) Many departments and individual officers had long subscribed to the "warrior model" of the detached, aloof crime-fighter who daily battles the hostile enemy--the public. (8) Indeed, it was something of a matter of faith in many city forces that citizens were inalterably opposed to the police, and therefore would never cooperate regardless of what the police did. William Westley's 1970 study, for example, found that seventy-three percent of officers believed that the public was "against the police" or "hates the police." Thirteen percent believed that "some are for us, some against us," while only twelve percent believed that the public "likes the police." (9) Similarly, a Kerner Commission study found that most big city policeman believed that the public saw them as "brutal, annoying, and inconsiderate." (10)

      Community policing gained further support when police officials confronted new criminological findings demonstrating the inadequacy of many traditional police tactics, (11) This research, conducted principally in the 1970s, questioned the value of increasing the number of patrol officers, showed the limited utility of random and saturation patrol, and cast doubt on the efficacy of rapid response to 911 calls. Moreover, it suggested that police officers spent relatively little time fighting violent crime, and instead spent the bulk of their shifts passively patrolling and providing other services. Finally, the research showed that most crimes are not solved by investigation, but rather because an offender is arrested immediately on the scene or the police are given specific identifying information such as a name, address, or license plate number. In total, the research undermined many of policing's core assumptions, thereby creating an opening for reformers to offer new approaches. (12)

      With crime and fear of crime rising, community relations at a low, and research questioning the efficacy of the current approaches, some within policing circles began to conclude that the warrior strategy was failing. (13) But replacing the warrior strategy required a paradigm shift that was not entirely easy. It meant questioning the entrenched belief that the public--especially minority residents of inner cities--was implacably hostile to the policing enterprise. This required police to recognize that although inner-city-residents were more critical than were other Americans, substantial majorities nonetheless held generally favorable views of police. (14) Even more profoundly, it meant understanding that even those who were critical did not want less policing--they generally wanted more, and better, protection. (15) As the Kerner Commission found, "[t]he strength of ghetto feelings about hostile police conduct may even be exceeded by the conviction that ghetto neighborhoods are not given adequate police protection." (16)

      The recognition of this reservoir of community support for policing was...