Appendix 3: community policing models.(strategies for greatly reducing homicides)

Models of community policing

A series of strategies begun in the early to mid-1990s in Boston to address violence among youth and the illicit gun market are given credit for greatly reducing homicides, especially among the youth. The plan relied on:

* The police generally adopting an active presence in the community within a community policing model rather than a reactive model in which police simply rode around in their cars and responded to emergency calls.

* Creation of a specific group of officers into an anti-gang unit that was specially trained to rely on street intelligence gathered by uniformed officers, and develop their own sources of information within the (mostly) inner city area of Boston where gangs were thriving.

* Creating relationships with persons who lived in the community in order to address an existing sense that the police were hostile and more of an "occupying force" in the neighborhood and less of a balanced and fair law enforcement presence; and

* Creating relationships with federal law enforcement agencies to coordinate activities focused upon suppression of gang-related criminal activities. The end result of this way of conducting police business substantially contributed to the activities of others in the community in creating the so-called "Boston Miracle," the effective suppression of very high rates of gang-related homicides and other gang-related crime between about 1987 and 1998. (15) Boston, New York City and other ...