Working in partnership with the community to solve problems.
Personalizing police service response (beat responsibility).
1. Commitment to Customer Satisfaction
Public agencies are finding out what the private sector has known for a long time: "Success within an organization is measured by the satisfaction level of your customers." For the Salinas Police Department, the members of the community are our customers. A major governing principle of our COPS philosophy is to do our best to satisfy the needs of our customers whenever and however possible.
This may translate to spending a little more time explaining our policies and processes, or providing extra assistance beyond the traditional. For example, if a person requires referral to another city employee or department, contact that person yourself, to ensure the problem is properly routed. Leave your name with people contacted, in the event follow-up is needed. Avoid leaving members of the community frustrated and disgruntled following contact with our department, as far as humanly possible.
2. An Emphasis on Solving Chronic Problems
Instead of using a "Band-Aid" reactive approach to calls for service, problem solving techniques should be utilized whenever possible.
As we learned with an aggressive approach to domestic violence cases, repeat calls can be reduced through problem eradication. This consists of identifying the problem, analyzing potential options, and implementing a results-oriented action plan.
3. Empowering the Beat Officer to be the Problem Solver
To effectively resolve problems, beat officers need to be empowered with the ability to design their own problem-solving plans. Officers need to be allowed the freedom to use creativity and resourcefulness in attacking problems. Supervisors become the resource providers, helping implement the officer's plans.
4. Determining the Actual needs and Desires of the Community, and
Responding to Those Needs as Priorities
Police departments have often functioned under the perception that we knew what was most important to the community in the delivery of police services. This led to a high value being placed on immediate response to crimes in progress, for example. For the most part, members of the community were seldom involved in input as to what was most important to them. It has been found that, quite often, the problems most pressing to the general public were nuisance crimes, and the general perception of fear in their neighborhoods. Fear of rape, homicide, etc., were at the bottom of the list of neighborhood concerns. Surveys also found that the perception of fear was often resolved through high visibility patrol efforts, (foot and saturation patrol, etc.) whether or not crime was actually reduced.
It becomes an important factor in the COPS model to determine the actual needs and desires of the community as to what they expect of the police department. This is learned through surveys, public contact groups, and formal/informal feedback networks.
5. Working in Partnership with the Community to Solve Problems
For the community's part, it is not enough for them to be passively involved in law enforcement activities; a COPS philosophy demands active community participation. This can take the form of active Neighborhood Watch groups, citizen spotters of narcotic activity, cooperation of property owners in improving their facilities and properties, and calling in problems as they occur. There must be a community willingness to get involved.
6. Utilizing All Available Resources to Impact Problems
Creative problem solving requires participation by all city departments, including public works, parks and recreation, and the fire department. It may include utilization of civic and private sector resources, as well as other governmental bodies, such as the health department or district attorney's office. All city departments have been trained in the COPS philosophy, and should be ready to assist us upon request.
7. Personalizing Police Service Response
A key component of the COPS philosophy is personalizing police service as much as possible. In essence, this simply means a return to a "beat" concept. Every section of the city will have an officer who is personally responsible for that area. Beat boundaries will be drawn, as far as practicable, to include neighborhoods within the same beat. Officers will be assigned the same beat as consistently as possible, so that the officer will have the opportunity to get to know the players and problems on the beat. Foot patrol; meeting business operators, home owners, apartment managers; identifying current and potential crime "hot spots," will all be a part of this philosophy. Coordination should take place between the officers assigned to the same beat, over the different shifts and days off, for continuity.
8. Becoming Proactive, as Opposed to Reactive
Instead of waiting to respond to calls for service related to problems in the making, we want to attack a problem as soon as it is identified as such, as aggressively as possible. This can include targeting individual addresses for abatement; high profile enforcement; saturation patrol; calling in other resources, etc.
9. Changing Traditional Measures of Police Effectiveness
We have historically been dependent on statistics to determine and justify our level of effectiveness in law enforcement. In the COPS philosophy the resolutions of problems and customer satisfaction is the measure of success. Such results are often difficult to measure; methods of determining satisfaction need to be further developed, as does our system of rewarding individual and group efforts.
10. Managing Calls for Service and Available Resources
Lastly, in these days of limited resources, it is obvious that calls for service and available manpower must be managed as efficiently as humanly possible, if we hope to meet our expectations as outlined. Alternative methods of service delivery need to be considered and implemented, such as an increased use of counter and phone reports, call screening, elimination of some services, etc. Time must be made available to allow officers the freedom to solve problems. Running from call to call will obviously not allow us to achieve our goals.
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