More with Less Policing

Stop me if you've hear this one before:

Higher unemployment will drive more people to seek an illegitimate income, and budget shortfalls will force cities and counties to cut back on police officers, or at least fail to hire enough new ones to cope with their growing populations.

This prediction, from The Economist's "World in 2009" review, suggests that a new policing strategy will necessarily surmount the resource-intensive "zero tolerance" model pioneered in NYC in the early Nineties and adopted in most big city police departments since. The article continues:

The approach that will come to prominence in 2009 is almost the exact opposite of zero tolerance. Rather than cracking down on petty offenders such as turnstile-jumpers and squeegee men, the authorities will focus on those who are most likely to kill or be killed. Some may be drug dealers recently released from prison. Others may be the associates of people recently wounded by gunfire. What makes the approach particularly novel is that it depends on local people. Rather than insisting on zero tolerance from the police, it tries to change what the residents of crime-infested areas will tolerate.

This approach, pioneered in Boston and refined in Chicago, aptly describes Seattle's own Youth Violence Prevention Initiative (YVPI). Seattle's plan focuses government resources on the 800 or so youth identified as likely to commit future acts of violence. The YVPI uses a "case management" model to capture the target population, offer them various kinds of support, and allow opportunities for their behavior to be monitored and measured.

The notion that it "depends on local people" is a debatable feature of Seattle's YVPI. Using community resources and guiding a community's expectations by involving them in crime fighting is supposed to be what makes this strategy cheap compared with "broken windows."

One aspect of the program, the use of "violence interrupters" ties it to Chicago's CeaseFire program and provides at least an shred of community involvement -- the community in this case being ex-con or former gang member (the interrupter) with enough street credibility to diffuse potential violence before it erupts.

The YVPI conspicuously lacks another of piece Chicago's CeaseFire program -- community "responses" at the scenes of all shootings. These aren't built into the Seattle program precisely because the City has not developed the capacity to mobilize the community.

Seattle City Councilman Burgess affirms the need for community involvement in a recent Op Ed without pointing to any institutional framework for community involvement:

Most important, the initiative recognizes that one of the most effective ways to prevent violence is for community members to engage directly with at-risk youth, to challenge norms tolerating violence, and to encourage young people to speak out when violence strikes.

Two points to make here:

1) City officials have gone out of their way to champion their Youth Violence Prevention Initiative as "community-led" and "community-driven," which it is not. It is a smart "technocratic" strategy that leverages existing bureaucracy and expertise. It is led by government administrators, and driven by law enforcement, education, juvenile justice, and social welfare professionals.

2) I doubt the CeaseFire-like aspects of the YVPI signal a titanic shift in Seattle from one model of policing to another, but they do highlight a police force stretched dangerously thin and, owing to a tight budget, apt to see hiring levels reduced sometime in the next year. I have high hopes that case management for 800 kids will result in fewer shootings in our neighborhoods, but I'm skeptical that it will effect residential burglaries in Seward Park or other parts of the city. Budget woes or no, Seattle can't skimp on police hiring.