In response to high-profile cases around the country that have brought police misconduct into the spotlight, including the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore, police departments have made efforts to improve relations with local communities and combat the growing mistrust in police.
There have been increased calls for officers to be not only a protective but also a friendly presence in communities and engage with those they are supposed to protect. By increasing their presence on the streets, police hope to both reduce crime and build relationships with local community leaders and ordinary people. Many city leaders say that community cooperation makes police work more effective as officers get more information about specific offenses and crime trends in the area.
The movement for a community-based approach for policing has also extended to Hopkins. Campus Safety and Security has stepped up patrols in and around campus by partnering their officers with Baltimore Police Department (BPD) officers. Campus Safety and Security also works with private security companies in order to increase their ability to patrol the Hopkins area. In total, the office employs almost 300 personnel, which includes 50 campus police officers, 40 BPD officers and around 200 Hop Cops, according to Executive Director Lee James.
He says that their partnerships with outside organizations have enabled them to track and prevent crime. They can also increase the coverage of their patrols and collaborate on handling current crime trends. As a result, Hopkins has a lower crime rate than the Baltimore average.
“I think because of our deployment and our partnership that the crime rate in Homewood is relatively low. If you’re a bad guy, you’re not coming here to commit crime,” James said. “The crime rate is reflective of the deployment in place. We don’t want our students or faculty being victimized.”
In addition, student and community outreach continues to play an important part in their mission. Some of their initiatives to connect with students include community safety walks, crime alerts and infosessions that are held throughout the year. They have also encouraged their employees to get to know people who live in the diverse neighborhoods that surround campus.
James said that one BPD officer has become so well-known to Charles Village that residents refer to him as “the mayor of Charles Village.” He believes that community policing efforts have been successful in keeping students safe around the clock by maintaining a clear police presence.
“We’re meeting people who live and work in the community, letting them get to know more about our officers and the BPD police officers,” he said.
The BPD intends to train more of its officers on how to conduct foot patrols. The department appointed a new police commissioner Kevin Davis last fall following the city’s unrest and spike in homicide. Davis, who has extensive experience in community engagement, devised fresh ideas for the department.
The BPD has also changed the structure of its Community Collaboration Division, according to Director of Media Relations TJ Smith. The purpose was to give the officers unified direction. Before the change, one commander led the unit for each of the city’s nine police divisions.
He asserted that targeting young people will allow the police to build relationships earlier that they can carry throughout their lives. Even if the high school students do not become police officers, he hopes that by targeting young people who grow up in Baltimore, they can reduce the misconceptions that stand between them and the police. After the decades of mistrust that have existed between citizens and police, building trust requires a generational effort.
The No Boundaries Coalition, a community group, recently released a report on police misconduct in Sandtown-Winchester as part of the West Baltimore Community Commission on Police Misconduct. The report notes that Sandtown-Winchester residents blame the systemic mistrust on aggressive law enforcement policy. The harsh, no-tolerance approach that officers took caused them to become less involved and unreceptive to the community’s complaints, it says.
“The War on Drugs and War on Crime discourses that empower officers to act more aggressively and invasively and weaken the institutional mechanisms by which citizens could seek legal redress and hold law enforcement accountable for any perceived misconduct. As a result, the emphasis on drug policing allows officers the legal pretense to ‘do whatever they want,’” it stated.
Complaints about police misconduct are not handled as well as other major cities handle them, according to Brian Hammock, a candidate for Baltimore City Council for the fourth district. According to an op-ed he wrote in The Baltimore Sun in June, the Civilian Review Board lacks manpower and specific procedures or a timeline on handling complaints.
“When it works, it works great, but when it doesn’t, there are concerns. Often the DOJ [Department of Justice] mandates that they have one. In Baltimore, we have one, but it’s not functional any longer,” he said.
The BPD is currently being investigated by the DOJ for discriminatory policing and excessive force. Giving the Civilian Review Board more power would likely be a key step toward restoring trust with citizens, according to Hammock.
The No Boundaries Coalition reports that neighborhoods with higher rates of police misconduct are often unsafe and underserved, which adds to the sense of fear and abandonment that residents experience. It says this is the result of police failing to properly investigate crimes. Few areas want less policing and instead are looking for better policing.
“Beyond police misconduct issues we have communities that are not safe today. As I campaign, I have yet to hear a person who wants fewer police officers in the neighborhood,” Hammock said.
Smith said that police officers will undergo training on how to do foot patrols, which give them greater visibility in the areas that they patrol rather than in a patrol car.
“Most notably, one of the things that we’re doing is foot patrol curriculum, where we have created one which we believe is one of the first of its kind in the county. Oftentimes we’ve told officers to do foot patrol, and we haven’t given instructions on how to do foot patrols,” he said.
To try to get officers to know the area they serve, the BPD has a History of Baltimore speakers series where officers go to historic locations in Baltimore and learn about the community’s history.
Still, many on the BPD force do not continuously work in the same neighborhood for an extended amount of time during their careers. Smith says that many do not live in the city.
He says that this is an area for improvement. Hammock agrees.
“In Baltimore we suffer from a transient force where we bring in a new crop of police officers that rotate every five years. We need to do better recruitment and retention of police officers,” he said.
To start more positive interactions between police and young citizens, the BPD has expanded a program called the Police Youth Challenge (PYC). It’s a partnership with Baltimore Chesapeake Bay Outward Bound School that pairs a police officer or trainees with high school-aged children and has them do team-building exercises.
In 2012 the BPD had every trainee to go through the program, but since the 2015 unrest BPD has aimed to have all staff, including command staff, attend the weekly Thursday activities at Gwynns Falls Leakin Park or other locations. Six hundred individuals, about 30 officers and students each week, have attended this year so far.
The Bloomberg School of Public Health has an upcoming study on how the program has changed the youth’s perception of officers and the officer’s perception of youth.
“The common thread that runs from week to week is the astonishment of youth that the officers are just people like them and share many of the same likes, dislikes, fears and hopes.
The officers also see the youth through a different lens, and take those perspectives back into their jobs. Ninety percent of them reported that they had the skills to positively interact with youth after their PYC day. To match that, 81 percent of youth said they felt officers were trustworthy after their course,” Ben Worden, marketing director of Outward Bound, wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
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