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In >Dayton Daily News< May 29, 1992
COMMUNITY POLICING IN DAYTON:
MORE FLASH THAN SUBSTANCE?
Dean Lovelace and Gordon Welty
A community gathering was held on May 3 at College Hill
Community Church to discuss the acquittal of Rodney King's
assailants and its aftermath in Los Angeles. On that occa-
sion, Mayor Clay Dixon acknowledged that Dayton has in the past
had problems with police brutality. But he was reassured be-
cause, as he indicated, "Dayton now has in place community polic-
ing." Is community policing a promising development in the
history of Dayton's troubled police department? Or is this just
another weak reed -- like the earlier Civilian Review Board, with
no real community-based component -- which will easily bend in
the face of the next onslaught of official violence?
It is worth recalling that the January 11, 1992 >Los Angeles
Times< reported that Police Chief Daryl Gates had taken personal
control of the Community Policing Project in Los Angeles. This
project was one outcome of the Christopher Commission's inquiry
into the Rodney King beating. It proved a weak reed, indeed.
Rodney King was not the first victim of police brutality and
blind justice, nor will he be the last. African-American commu-
nities are always at the brink of rebellion, and a spark of
injustice can easily ignite an explosion of rage. The African-
American community has been plagued with "Black on Black" crime
that receives little attention until it spreads beyond African-
American neighborhoods. Community policing has been offered as a
remedy to this problem also.
Many cities have experimented with various forms of "commu-
nity policing" -- by the end of 1990 it was estimated that there
were more than 300 such programs across the nation. Dayton is
one such city. Police Chief James Newby proposed a community
policing project for Dayton as early as November 9, 1990. This
followed the infamous "Iron-Gate Case" where David Greer was
burned by several Dayton police officers on January 12, 1990.
However, these Community Policing programs have yet to prove
their effectiveness. As Hubert Williams of the Police Foundation
put it on BET's "Lead Story" on February 2, 1992, "there is no
documentation that community policing reduces crime." What
evidence is there about the effectiveness of Dayton's project?
After all, the test of effectiveness is to increase the sense of
security of the citizens, the community.
Let us first consider community need, and then the official
response. We have just completed analysis of data from a tele-
phone survey of Dayton residents which relates to both these
issues. This survey was completed in early March 1992, randomly
sampling more than 210 households -- some located inside and some
outside the target neighborhoods of Dayton's Community Policing
program as identified in the >Dayton Daily News< (January 29,
1992). Of the respondents, all were over 18 years of age, and
57% were female. 37 % were African American, 60 % White, and 3 %
other. 58 % were married, of which 60 % had been married for
more than a decade. 53 % had children in the home. 76 %
had lived at this address for five or more years.
Let us consider the community's need. It is axiomatic in
police-community relations that citizens are less likely to
resort to their own security measures, if the police are able to
solve the citizens' problems. In Dayton, as in many cities
around the nation, citizens perceive their own community's secu-
rity problems as fairly serious. In our study, for example, the
majority of the respondents (62.5 %) said they considered the
crime problem in their own Dayton neighborhood to be "somewhat
serious." By contrast, 10 % responded "very serious," and 25 %
responded "not very serious."
Furthermore, 48 % of the sample indicated their own Dayton
household had been criminally victimized during the past three
years -- the most prevalent crime reported was theft (37.8 %),
followed by vandalism (20.9 %). Moreover, the citizens feared
drug-related crime even more than vandalism, and assault even
more than theft, even though their actual reportage of these
crimes in Dayton was not as prevalent.
The citizens' behavior corresponds to their perceptions. In
light of these experiences as victims, and these fears about
crime, Dayton residents would be expected to resort to their own
security measures. And indeed, a majority of our respondents
indicated they had extra locks on doors (69 %), locks on windows
(61 %), and had a gun (51 %). A minority of the respondents
indicated they had an electronic home security system (35 %),
door sensors (21 %), or a guard dog (17 %). These latter securi-
ty measures are, of course, more expensive than locks or guns.
Finally, two-thirds of the respondents stated that their neigh-
bors also had some of these security measures. Thus a substan-
tial portion of Dayton residents are incurring an additional
expense on top of paying their local tax dollars, in an effort to
ensure the security of their own homes.
Most disturbing, perhaps, is the finding that more than half
of our respondents said they had a gun or guns in their home for
protection. This availability of weapons is directly related to
the incidence of violence involving weapons. And adults' sanc-
tioning of weapons for protection is directly related to the
prevalence of youth bearing weapons in school, etc. As we re-
flect back on the evidence we have presented here, we see that
Dayton citizens' resorting to their own security measures can be
traced back to the inability of the police to provide that secu-
rity, to solve the citizens' problems.
Let us turn now to the issue of the offical response to
those needs. Clearly the traditional modes of policing have not
proved effective in Dayton. What about Community Policing? The
majority of our respondents (57 %) indicate they have not heard
of the Community Policing program at all, regardless of where
they live. This finding is in itself an important reflection of
the ineffectiveness of the program's implementation.
Even if the Community Policing program is poorly implement-
ed, it may be differentially implemented, with greater impact in
target areas than in other areas.
We compare the responses of two groups: those who reside
inside the four target neighborhoods, and those who reside just
outside the neighborhoods. A significantly larger portion
of those who reside inside the target neighborhoods indicated
that they had heard about the Community Policing program (48 %)
than did those outside (33 %). There are three ways in which
they could have heard about it.
We analyse the responses of those 89 Dayton residents who
indicated that they had heard of the program, in terms of those
who had read about the program in the newspaper (38 %), those who
had seen it on TV (32 %), and those who had heard about it from a
police officer (31 %). We find no statistically significant
relationship between the three sets of responses. Since the
three sets are independent, we see that those respondents who
indicated that they had heard of the Community Policing program
tended to have received that information from the mass media --
the newspaper and TV -- rather than from personal interaction.
This is suggestive that the public relations effort (or marketing
effort) associated with the Community Policing program is more
effective than the actual programmatic outreach.
But any community policing program must amount to more than
publicity in the newspaper. It must actually enhance the inter-
action of citizens and police. What is the effectiveness of the
Community Policing program's outreach effort? Of those 89
Dayton respondents who have heard about the Community Policing
program, the majority (53 %) indicate that they have never seen a
Community Policing officer. This finding is in itself an impor-
tant reflection of the failure of the program's outreach effort.
Even if the Community Policing programmatic outreach is
largely ineffective, it may still be differentially effective,
with lesser impact outside the target neighborhoods than within
them. As we shall see, however, the data suggests otherwise.
As a final step, then, we compare the responses of the 89
Daytonians who had heard about the Community Policing program,
broken down into the groups inside and outside the target neigh-
borhoods. Our findings here are the most striking of the entire
study. There is no statistically significant difference in the
portions of those residing inside (45 %) and those residing
outside the target neighborhoods (50 %) who indicate they have
ever seen a Community Policing officer.
As we turn to the analysis of the data, it will be useful to
distinguish between city-initiated and neighborhood-initiatedpo-
licing programs. To date, virtually all policing programs in
Dayton, including the Civilian Review Board (headed by the Police
Chief) and the Community Policing program, have been city-initi-
ated, that is reflecting agendas and priorities which are set
down town, rather than those of the community.
In the case of the Community Policing program in Dayton, the
means of undercutting neighborhood initiatives seem quite simple.
There is a peculiar bureaucratic structure whereby the Community
Policing officer is subject to a "dual reporting" relationship,
responsible to one lieutenant in the program structure and at the
same time to another lieutenant in the district chain of com-
mand. These officers have not yet discovered "how to serve both
God and Mammon," hence end up serving only one superior. And
that tends to be the lieutenant in the traditional line of com-
mand. In effect, this permits the subversion of any initiative,
the overturning of any priority, which does not come from
down town. Little wonder Community Policing programmatic
outreach is ineffective.
But it is the citizens' tax dollars which are funding this
"dual structure," subsidizing this duplication of bureaucratic
effort, this exercise in ineffectiveness. To what end? All this
makes sense only if we understand that the Community Policing
program was initiated as a community relations response to the
n"Iron-Gate Case." Our data suggest that this program may enhance
the public relations of the police in Dayton. Improved policing,
on the other hand? No!
There are many interpretations and models of community-based
policing. One feature of any effective program, in our opinion,
is the primacy of neighborhood initiatives. This would insure
that neighborhood residents set the agenda, the priorities, and
the terms of recruitment and deployment of police personnel into
the target neighborhoods. The primacy of neighborhood initia-
tives will go a long way toward ensuring that residents feel
safe and secure in their own community.
In any case, our study findings reflect upon a comment Mayor
Dixon made at College Hill: the Rodney King verdict amounts to a
"wake up call." Dayton must wake up in time for a deep and
allround policy discussion about policing in general, and commu-
nity policing in particular.
----------------------------------------
DEAN LOVELACE is Past President of the Edgemont Neighborhood
Coalition, Co-Chair of the Montgomery Co. Rainbow Coalition, and
Director of Neighborhood Development in the Office of SRD at the
University of Dayton. GORDON WELTY is Professor of Sociology at
Wright State University, and a Charter Member of the Rainbow
Coalition.