Crime/Urban Decay
We propose to increase funding for Community Oriented Policing and to increase funding for youth recreational programs.
Background
Of all the factors which influence the goal of extending self-determination to inner city Blacks, perhaps none is more important than preventing or limiting crime. Crime has a negative impact on both the educational process itself and the external factors which detract from the educational process.
It is a truism of social control that rewards must be accompanied by penalties; we must deter undesirable behavior even as we promote desirable behavior. The tuition guarantee program outlined earlier is an attempt to promote desirable behavior. Yet its effect will be lessened unless we also discourage the unacceptable behavior of crime.
College offers a long term reward. Crime, and particularly selling drugs, offers an immediate reward to youths. Further, it is an option which has countless examples; the Street Corner Apprehension Team, in its two years of existence, arrested 363 dealers operating within 1000 feet of schools.33Information provided by St. Louis Police Dept. The ready advantages offered by crime and selling drugs in particular encourage children to pay less attention to education and to honest paths to success. Both statistical and anecdotal information reinforce this point. An article in the Post-Dispatch highlights the lure of crime:
E.J., the 21-year-old drug dealer, puts it more baldly: "They say, `Why should I do this job when I can make five, six times more out on the streets -when I want to do it, how I want to do it and the way I think it should be done?'" Aaron started dealing drugs at 12 because his older brother was in the business. The older brother had nobody to set him straight. The mother had abandoned the two boys, and both were reared by a grandmother.34St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sun. June 9, 1991
Thus it is important that the cost of crimes be apparent as well; we must aggressively work to apprehend and punish law-breakers. In doing so, we can remove at least a portion of the lure of crime, and so keep inner city youths from taking the easy path.
Crime can interfere with education on a more basic level as well.
Black males have:
- The highest homicide rate. Nationally, the rate for Black males aged 15 to 24 has increased by 40% since 1984. In fact, homicide has become the leading cause of death among young Black men. One in 12 will dies before reaching 25. (In St. Louis, almost 80 percent of the 177 people murdered last year were Black males.)35Ibid.
The social cost of crime is just as extreme; it is perhaps the driving force of urban decay. Crime decreases acceptable housing stock. Lenders are unwilling to extend home-loans for buildings in crime-ridden areas, and so the housing falls in disrepair. Entrepreneurs are often unable to secure startup capital, and so are unable to create jobs. Those businesses already in operation must bear the burden of increased insurance costs. In short, every elements associated with urban decay, from loss of adequate housing costs to a shortage of employment, is directly affected by crime; it is the most effective tool available for destroying neighborhoods. This link can be seen by the correlation between murder rates and abandoned buildings in St. Louis: Those wards with the highest murder rates also tend to have the largest number of abandoned buildings.
In many ways, the fear of crime is as damaging as crime itself.
A Los Angeles police sergeant put it this way: "When people in this district see that a gang has spray-painted its initials on all the stop signs, they decide that the gang, not the people or the police, controls the streets. When they discover that the Department of Transportation needs three months to replace stop signs, they decide that the city isn't as powerful as the gang. These people want us to help them take back the streets. "Painting gang symbols on a stop sign or storefront is not, by itself, a serious crime. As an incident, it is trivial. But as a symptom of a problem, it is very serious.36Wilson, James Q., and Kelling, George L., Making Neighborhoods Safe P. 48, The Atlantic Monthly, Feb 1989
Crime has a snow-ball effect. Once people feel that criminals have gained the upper hand, even with something as trivial as graffiti, they conclude that crime will continue to increase, and if possible they move out. Urban flight, and the resulting abandoned buildings, in turn, do lead to a higher crime rate. The fear of crime often turns into a self-fulfilling prophesy.
The St. Louis Police Department has made a concentrated effort to respond to rising crime rates, and in particular the growing drug problem. In 1989, the Police Department created a Street Corner Apprehension Team (SCAT) designed to focus exclusively on arresting drug dealers. Operating city-wide, SCAT arrested 1544 subjects, and seized 56 firearms. The arrests resulted in a 100% conviction rate. A task force specifically for Area III (called the Dream Team), was instituted on January 7, 1991. Since that time it has seized $173,820 worth of drugs, 135 firearms, $62,699 in cash and arrested 245 adults.
The Police Department has also made an effort to combat the fear of crime by implementing an innovative strategy referred to as Community Oriented Policing (COP). COP efforts are being implemented in a number of cities around the country. Although taking many forms, they tend to share a number of characteristics:
- police focus on issues instead of incidents
- police strengthen ties to community members
- police go beyond the traditional realm of law-enforcement.
Often this involves using foot patrols, and having police officers become involved in a wide range of issue facing a community, from building code violations to irregular garbage pickup. The police officers involved in the neighborhoods almost become community advocates, operating many times as a go-between for residents and city agencies.
The net effect is that residents of an area targeted for a COP program feel safer in their homes:
When residents of a Houston neighborhood became fearful about crime in their area, the police not only redoubled their efforts to solve the burglaries and thefts but also assigned some officers to talk with the citizens in their homes. During a nine-month period the officers visited more than a third of the dwelling units in the area, introduced themselves, asked about neighborhood problems, and left their business cards. When Antony Pate and Mary Ann Wycoff, researchers at the Police Foundation, evaluated the project, they found that people in this area, unlike others living in a similar area where no citizen-contact project occurred, felt that social disorder had decreased and that the neighborhood had become a better place to live. Moreover, and quite unexpectedly, the amount of property crime was noticeably reduced.37Ibid., p. 48
This has proven to be the result of COP programs throughout the country; higher confidence on the part of residents, and reduced crime rates.
The St. Louis Police Department has recently implemented COP programs in three St. Louis neighborhoods. Although too early to show results, the programs were enthusiastically greeted by people living in the neighborhoods.
Col. Lauer of the St. Louis Police Department notes that the department has a strong commitment to the COP concept, and believes it would benefit many St. Louis neighborhoods. However, the primary constraint to doing so, and to focusing more resources on SCAT-type programs, is a limited budget; the number of officers provided for in the budget is not sufficient to allow extension of the COPs program.
Over the past ten years, the crime rate has risen in St.Louis.38Information provided by St. Louis Police Department Yet the number of police officers on the streets has dropped in that time, from 4.2 officers per 1,000 population in 1981 to 3.9 officers per 1,000 at present. Although a small drop in percentage, this translates into a substantial drop in the number of officers on the streets.If the same percentage had been maintained, there would be an additional 115 officers on the force (1666 vs. the current 1551). Consequently, the officers on the street must be devoted to the task of responding to radio calls; it is estimated that an officer receives one radio call every six minutes while on patrol duty.
Next: COPs Program