Alongside its divisive law enforcement practices and lack of meaningful response to community concerns about police conduct, FPD has made little effort in recent years to employ community policing or other community engagement strategies. This lack of community engagement has precluded the possibility of bridging the divide caused by Ferguson’s law enforcement practices, and has increased the likelihood of discriminatory policing.
Community policing and related community engagement strategies provide the opportunity for officers and communities to work together to identify the causes of crime and disorder particular to their community, and to prioritize law enforcement efforts. See Community Policing Defined 1-16 (U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2014). The focus of these strategies—in stark contrast to Ferguson’s current law enforcement approach—is on crime prevention rather than on making arrests. See Effective Policing and Crime Prevention: A Problem Oriented Guide for Mayors, City Managers, and County
Executives 1-62 (U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2009). When implemented fully, community policing creates opportunities for officers and community
58 FPD may have initially accepted this as a formal complaint, but then informally withdrew it after completion of
the investigation. No rationale is provided for doing so, but the case does not appear on the Chief’s IA investigation log, and another case with this same IA number appears instead.
59 Our review of FPD’s handling of misconduct complaints is just one source of our concern about FPD’s efforts to
ensure that officers are truthful in their reports and testimony, and to take appropriate measures when they are not. As discussed above, our review of FPD offense and force reports also raises this concern.
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members to have frequent, positive interactions with each other, and requires officers to partner with communities to solve particular public safety problems that, together, they have decided to address. Research and experience show that community policing can be more effective at crime prevention and at making people feel safer. See Gary Cordner, Reducing Fear of Crime:
Strategies for Police 47 (U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Jan. 2010) (“Most studies of community policing have found that residents like community policing and feel safer when it is implemented where they live and work.”) (citations omitted).
Further, research and law enforcement experience show that community policing and engagement can overcome many of the divisive dynamics that disconnected Ferguson residents and City leadership alike describe, from a dearth of positive interactions to racial stereotyping and racial violence. See, e.g.,Glaser, supra, at 207-11 (discussing research showing that community policing and similar approaches can help reduce racial bias and stereotypes and improve community relations); L. Song Richardson & Phillip Atiba Goff, Interrogating Racial Violence, 12 Ohio St. J. of Crim. L. 115, 143-47 (2014) (describing how fully implemented and inclusive community policing can help avoid racial stereotyping and violence); Strengthening the Relationship Between Law Enforcement and Communities of Color: Developing an Agenda for Action 1-20 (U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2014).
Ferguson’s community policing efforts appear always to have been somewhat modest, but have dwindled to almost nothing in recent years. FPD has no community policing or community engagement plan. FPD currently designates a single officer the “Community Resource Officer.” This officer attends community meetings, serves as FPD’s public relations liaison, and is charged with collecting crime data. No other officers play any substantive role in community policing efforts. Officers we spoke with were fairly consistent in their
acknowledgment of this, and of the fact that this move away from community policing has been due, at least in part, to an increased focus on code enforcement and revenue generation in recent years. As discussed above, our investigation found that FPD redeployed officers to 12-hour shifts, in part for revenue reasons. There is some evidence that community policing is more difficult to carry out when patrol officers are on 12-hour shifts, and this appears to be the case in Ferguson. While many officers in Ferguson support 12-hour shifts, several told us that the 12- hour shift has undermined community policing. One officer said that “FPD used to have a strong community policing ethic—then we went to a 12-hour day.” Another officer told us that the 12- hour schedule, combined with a lack of any attempt to have officers remain within their assigned area, has resulted in a lack of any geographical familiarity by FPD officers. This same officer told us that it is viewed as more positive to write tickets than to “talk with your businesses.” Another officer told us that FPD officers should put less energy into writing tickets and instead “get out of their cars” and get to know community members.
One officer told us that officers could spend more time engaging with community members and undertaking problem-solving projects if FPD officers were not so focused on activities that generate revenue. This officer told us, “everything’s about the courts . . . the court’s enforcement priorities are money.” Another officer told us that officers cannot “get out of the car and play basketball with the kids,” because “we’ve removed all the basketball hoops— there’s an ordinance against it.” While one officer told us that there was a police substation in
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Canfield Green when FPD was more committed to community policing, another told us that now there is “nobody in there that anybody knows.”
City and police officials note that there are several active neighborhood groups in Ferguson. We reached out to each of these during our investigation and met with each one that responded. Some areas of Ferguson are well-represented by these groups. But City and police officials acknowledge that, since August 2014, they have realized that there are entire segments of the Ferguson community that they have never made an effort to know, especially African Americans who live in Ferguson’s large apartment complexes, including Canfield Green. While some City officials appear well-intentioned, they have also been too quick to presume that outreach to more disconnected segments of the Ferguson community will be futile. One City employee told us, “they think they do outreach, but they don’t,” and that some Ferguson
residents do not even realize their homes are in Ferguson. Our investigation indicated that, while the City and police department may have to use different strategies for engagement in some parts of Ferguson than in others, true community policing efforts can have positive results. As an officer who has patrolled the area told us, “most of the people in Canfield are good people. They just don’t have a lot of time to get involved.”
5. Ferguson’s Lack of a Diverse Police Force Further Undermines Community