When cops become combat troops

What's the alternative to the military approach to crime? In many cities it's community policing. In Boston, community policing has helped reduce crime even more dramatically than in high-profile New York.

This approach envisions generalist police officers as collaborative, community-based problem solvers. It stations officers on a neighborhood beat so they can distinguish the gangbangers from the wannabes. It brings together community leaders -- ministers, business owners, school principals -- to work on community problems, including gangs, recognizing that these ills require addressing the underlying dynamics that allow problems to persist.

Arrest is only one tool. But aggressive enforcement tactics that focus on arrest give officers nothing but a hammer, so its no surprise that every problem begins to look like a nail -- even if it is a just a kid wearing blue shoelaces.

Taxpayers have good reason to demand a say in the kind of policing they will support. CRASH unit excesses in Los Angeles will cost the city an estimated $125 to $200 million, eating up all or most of the tobacco-tax money otherwise earmarked for public health and children's programs.

In contrast, Leroy OShield, founding member of the American Association for the Advancement of Community-Oriented Policing, saved millions of dollars during his tenure as chief of the Chicago Housing Authority Police Department. His dedication to involving the community, which included creating a civilian review board with real power, reduced annual liability claims from 27 lawsuits with a payout of $1.5 million to one lawsuit settled for $27,000 within two years. In Boston, too, police brutality complaints and claims have dropped dramatically, thanks to the new approach.

Yes, police must always maintain the ability to respond quickly to crises and to deploy a specially trained tactical unit to handle those rare instances when force and the show of force are the only safe solutions for citizens and police alike. But the pervasive problems of crime and violence also require officers who understand the context in which they occur and who have the departments support for exploring creative, collaborative solutions.

Republican critics of the raid on the Gonzalez home have called for congressional hearings about the government use of force. If they were sincere in their concerns about civil rights, they'd hold hearings about police tactics in the war on drugs, too. Instead, they're playing politics, just like their liberal counterparts who blindly defend Attorney General Janet Reno's show of force, and ignoring the real threat to civil liberties that the military approach to policing represents.

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