Are The Police More the Enemy Then The Terrorists We Are Fighting?, page 2

Very interesting thread. Does this mean not to open the door when the police knocks?

I read an article in The Economist, I'll try to post it on here, about how many police stations and districts follow the idea to scare people about misdemeanors, which would then somehow prevent them from committing worse crimes.

However, it seems that in Chicago already and in NYC in the future, police will be approaching things differently. They are putting more resources into getting into the actual crimes- by getting right in the middle of gangs, and following up on the big problems, instead of labeling and following the small misdemeanors. They will be focusing more on violence and drug rings.

Such a good idea. Maybe this new philosophy in police departments will be the key.

Here it is: www.economist.com...

For the past 15 years a single model of policing, developed in a single city, has dominated thinking about law and order in America. In the early 1990s New York hired thousands of extra police officers and told them to crack down on petty offenders in high-crime areas. ...

New York’s “zero tolerance” methods seemed simple, and have been widely copied. Yet no other city in America or anywhere else has achieved quite such good results. This may be because most cities are poorer and less densely populated than New York, and so find it harder to flood the streets with cops. ...

The approach that will come to prominence in 2009 is almost the exact opposite of zero tolerance. Rather than cracking down on petty offenders such as turnstile-jumpers and squeegee men, the authorities will focus on those who are most likely to kill or be killed. ... What makes the approach particularly novel is that it depends on local people. Rather than insisting on zero tolerance from the police, it tries to change what the residents of crime-infested areas will tolerate.

The new method has been quietly honed for almost a decade in Chicago, where it is known as Operation Ceasefire. It has two main tools. The more conventional one is a team of outreach workers who try to mobilise communities to oppose violence, often in partnership with local clergy. Then, at night, “violence interrupters” hit the streets to sniff out trouble. Often former gang members and graduates of the prison system, the interrupters have a hard-nosed approach to law and order. They may, for example, encourage an aggrieved man to consider beating someone instead of shooting him, or try to convince rival drug-dealers that a turf war would be bad for business, as it would attract the police.

In May 2008 Operation Ceasefire was evaluated in a report for the Justice Department. The results were encouraging: in five out of seven areas examined, shootings dropped sharply. In four of these areas the decline was much steeper than in comparable parts of the city where Operation Ceasefire was not in place. ...

Operation Ceasefire’s chief architect is Gary Slutkin. An epidemiologist, he likens shootings to a health crisis and insists that they can be tackled in a similar way to unsafe sex or needle-sharing. Zero tolerance’s slogan was “take care of the small stuff and the big stuff will take care of itself”. Dr Slutkin’s slogan is even snappier: “violent crime is a disease”.

The approach may not travel perfectly. Chicago has relatively well-organised gangs and a strong tradition of community mobilisation. What has worked splendidly there may not work as well in, say, Phoenix. We will soon find out, because Operation Ceasefire is swiftly spreading. Baltimore, Newark and Kansas City have projects inspired by it. A further ten or so cities are in the planning stages. In 2009 one of the cities to roll out a trial programme will be New York.