Saturday, May 17, 2008
As New York struggles to rein in its police department, Boston brags about reducing crime and police brutality at the same time.
Apr 27, 1999 | Even a journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. And so it is a small, if slightly comical, sign of progress that New York police officers will now carry palm cards with pointers for behaving more politely to a populace they have grown accustomed to bullying. "Use terms such as 'sir' and 'ma'am,'" the cards advise. "Say 'hello' and 'thank you,'" and "apologize for any inconvenience."
But apologies won't do much to compensate for the "inconvenience" of Amadou Diallo, the African street vendor who was shot 41 times and killed by police Feb. 4. And forced manners aren't likely to placate the many thousands of New Yorkers who have come to see the city's police force as the enemy.
By now, New York's dilemma is familiar: Under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the city's crime rate has plunged, with homicides down 70 percent and felonies down by half since 1994. At the same time, police brutality and harassment complaints have risen alarmingly. New York registered about 5,000 complaints about its officers' conduct in 1998, up from about 3,600 in 1993. Racial tension is peaking as minorities feel especially targeted by the department's aggressive tactics -- a concern crystallized in such high-profile incidents as the Diallo shooting and the brutal beating of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima last year. To some, the lesson is that stamping out crime means stomping on civil liberties.
Less publicized, however -- as good news always is -- is a happier story to the north. In Boston, not only has crime dropped even faster than in New York, but complaints about police tactics have fallen as well -- by an astonishing 50 percent. Like New York, Boston has adopted new crime-fighting strategies in the 1990s, but there has been no backlash against its police force -- no street protests, no cries of racism, no expletives hurled at the mayor. As people try to figure out what New York did wrong, they should look first at what Boston has done right.
Where the New York police have acted like an occupying force in the city's neighborhoods, Boston's police have succeeded through partnerships. Where New York has relied on an aggressive strategy that cultivates fear and intimidation, Boston's police have worked with local clergy and community leaders to identify and target actual criminals, rather than wantonly sweeping neighborhoods. Next to New York's archetypal "NYPD Blue" approach, Boston's strategy might sound wimpy. But don't snicker. President Clinton has called on "communities around the country [to] follow the example of Boston." And New York Sen. Charles Schumer recently proclaimed: "The Boston model will work in New York, and we should move quickly to implement it here."
So what's Boston's secret? "Basically, [Boston] has done it with the community," says Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, "and not to the community."
New Yorkers may think of Boston as a quaint, provincial New England capital. But a decade ago, the city was an urban nightmare, with drugs, guns and gangs terrorizing residents.
Bostons low point came in 1989, with the nationally publicized murder of Carol Stuart, a pregnant white woman who, her new husband said, had been stabbed by a young black man. Stuart's murder led to a citywide manhunt in which Boston police officers shook down dozens of black males who fit her husband's vague description. The cops proudly apprehended their man -- but then released him when Stuart's husband was revealed to be the actual killer. Minority neighborhoods seethed.
The Stuart case touched off deep soul-searching within the city. But it took another horrifying event to bring a revolutionary change to the city's police culture: At the May 1992 funeral of a 20-year-old Boston gang member, a dozen hooded kids from a rival gang rushed into Morning Star Baptist Church in Mattapan, firing on mourners and stabbing a teenager nine times. Days later, 300 local ministers met at the church to come up with a way to address the drug and gang epidemics in the city's minority neighborhoods. (Contrary to its shamrock image, Boston has a minority population of more than 40 percent.)
In the late 1980s, according to one Boston police superintendent, "there was a lack of trust, there was no communication" between the police and the neighborhoods. Now the traditional rivals needed one other. The police wanted to shed their reputation for racism, and the clergy wanted to stop the killing. The result was a partnership between the police department and neighborhood leaders that allowed the cops to crack down on minority offenders without being resented in minority neighborhoods.
"That is the approach of neighborhood policing," says Boston Police Commissioner Paul Evans. "It's the idea that the police cannot solve the problems themselves. They have to work with the communities to solve problems."
Evans might sound like a social worker, and if his approach hadn't paid off, he might be one now. But neighborhood policing has won converts among cops in Boston because it works.
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