National COPS Evaluation of St. Paul: 2000
FORCE (Focusing Our Resources on Community Empowerment) Unit
The FORCE Unit became a core component of community policing in Saint Paul in that it was designed to respond to public and safety priorities set by residents themselves, and in particular to reach out to neighborhoods experiencing drugs and drug-related problems. As one officer explains, "…people call us and know us by name, know more about us than they ever would if you drove around in a squad car. And you get to know them…. It's truly community policing, what this unit does as opposed to anywhere else in the City, other than maybe a beat officer out there…."
FORCE was similar to (and some contend an outgrowth of) the Street Crimes Unit developed by Chief McCutcheon earlier in the 1980s. City Council President Bill Wilson was the first to learn about and investigate personally the Tampa, Florida, QUAD (Quick Uniform Attack on Drugs) Program that was initiated in 1989, and would provide the model for SPPD's creation of FORCE. In reading reports of research on communities and policing, Wilson found a description of the Tampa Bay program, and went down alone to observe it. Soon after, he also went to visit an expedited drug prosecution program in Chicago in which:
…they could expedite the prosecution of cases...target and expedite. What I found different and interesting was…in Tampa the process had more to do with disrupting and not so much apprehending. I was interested to see if you could combine the two. But it turns out in St. Paul, of course, the prosecution's done by the county attorney…so I talked with him (Foley) about how we could expedite processing cases when we got them. How do we insure that there are good working relations between the county and city—the county prosecutor's office and the city's police department? This was all before the program was created—kind of a mind's eye of what could happen here. If we involved the FORCE officers without getting them all tied up in the court system, because they needed to be out in the streets not tied up…whereas the officers who do the final apprehension and confiscation of drugs—they could. So you had to have officers who would be willing to let other officers handle that kind of detail and give up the case…. And that's something the department had to work out. And so that began to tie into the liaison between the FORCE unit and the substations.
Chief McCutcheon then worked with Wilson to raise money for FORCE, which began in the fall of 1992 as a plan to combine crime prevention efforts and block groups with a direct link to police officers who could respond quickly to specific problems—especially the narcotics trade.28
When Finney became Chief, he had funding, but no extra staff for FORCE. He was able to use sergeants and officers from the Emergency Communications Center as a personnel pool, moving them out of the ECC and replacing them with tele-communicators who could be promoted to dispatcher. By December 1992, FORCE was up and running. Chief Finney appointed Lieutenant Gary Briggs as the first commander of FORCE, and was able to establish the (civil service) position of community crime prevention specialist, who would generate and coordinate more block clubs. Briggs recalls:
…one of the things that we learned from the block clubs was that the police department's priorities were not necessarily the community's priorities. We tend to focus resources towards the big cases, the big homicides, and all those kinds of things…and the community was interested in small things, the quality of life issues.… The thing they were telling us that they were most concerned about was narcotics and gangs….and we recognized that there are basically two groups out there. You have got the dealers that move big money…and all these small time kids on the street corner….What we were going to do was focus on those kids out selling the dope and coordinate with them [Narcotics] and free them up a bit so they could focus on the bigger players. We were going to work with the block clubs on the kids, and a number of other issues…some prostitution….
Three types of strategies were—and continue to be—employed. The first was crime prevention: initially, two crime prevention officers and three crime prevention coordinators (civilians) worked with citizens, neighborhood groups and the District Councils to organize block clubs throughout the City. A big part of the job is public education. By the end of 1993, 915 block clubs were active; by 1997, there were 1452. Adopting the Minnesota Crime Free Multi-Housing Program, FORCE has trained landlords, tenants and property managers to prevent and control illegal activity on rental property using the basic principles of CPTED. As part of Graffiti, Inc., which began in 1993, FORCE officers and crime prevention coordinators have taken the lead in a collaboration with private agencies, City departments, and citizen groups to abate and remove illegal graffiti, educate the community about graffiti vandalism, and identify and redirect taggers to legal environments for painting.
FORCE's second strategy was targeting street level narcotics. For these efforts, FORCE has expanded from six officers in 1992 to 20 enforcement officers and three sergeants (one administrative and two who lead teams in Eastern and Western Districts, sharing Central) in 1997. From the beginning, Lieutenant Briggs made sure that his officers learned how to do search warrants as part of their routine activities. To facilitate receiving information from community members, officers carry pagers and give out their numbers so that they can be contacted directly.
The third strategy involved targeting and taking appropriate action on (or at times closing) problem properties by working with the Health Department, City agencies, and the County Attorney's Office, and relying on nuisance abatement legislation as well as the excessive consumption of police services ordinance.29 FORCE employs a full time Housing Inspector to condemn, vacate, and close housing units, moving dealers and addicts out of neighborhoods, and requiring residences to be repaired and brought up to code or else they will be placed on the vacant building list for possible demolition. In 1995 the Saint Paul Tenants' Union (SPTU) challenged FORCE's practice of having a housing inspector accompany the police on drug raids, contending that innocent individuals were being mistreated during the raids, and that entire families were being forced out of their homes when a husband or boyfriend was found to be dealing. The matter was discussed on the City Council and with Chief Finney, who directed that the commander of FORCE meet weekly with the SPTU and Council representatives: an accommodation was reached with SPPD agreeing not to have the inspector accompany FORCE on drug raids, and for FORCE to produce a brochure advising tenants of their rights.30
Because so many of FORCE's activities involve working with other City or County agencies, at the very beginning Lieutenant Briggs started monthly meetings in which FORCE officers would get together with individuals from agencies and departments all over the City, with a different host and presenter at each meeting. These meetings have been replaced by a more formal Information Exchange group, chaired by the Fire Department. Some reports suggest, however, that the informal setting of the previous meetings was more conducive to officers and other workers getting to know each other and sharing useful information. FORCE officers have sought and received training in CPTED and other strategies and skills useful to their specific activities.
How does FORCE interface with the rest of SPPD? On a day to day basis, as one officer reports,
We'll get a call from Commander Sturner [of Central Patrol District] who says, 'hey, there's drug dealings at bus stops during the daytime when people are coming to and from work and coming downtown to shop. Can you guys do something about that?' Well, we can, on a moment's notice, we can gather enough resources and bodies to say that for the next two days, we're going to work daytime hours at the bus stops and concentrate on this problem. Or if we get a call in a specific area, whether it be at the end of the month, beginning, or middle, if they're having problems with street level narcotics or prostitution, we'll get everybody together and we'll do a street saturation and we'll hit a particular area. We'll do patrol, high calls for service areas, basically what we do as street beat officers in the unit, whatever problem it may be, we'll go and deal with that in the community.
FORCE officers cooperate closely with the City Attorney on loitering and prostitution cases (one assistant city attorney is assigned to flag their cases, so that stay away orders are issued). FORCE also targets the Weed and Seed area—Railroad Island on the lower East Side (three new ones are starting up—another on the East side, and two in West—in which FORCE will also work). FORCE officers routinely field non-emergency calls from throughout the City—returning calls to people who have questions, doing background checks. And at times they are called out to respond to calls around the City.
FORCE officers report that one appealing aspect of their job is the high degree of discretion they are generally afforded by their supervisor:
He's got twenty-two years, and I've got eighteen, and we love police work but there's a point in time when, let's try something different…. When I came in, it was fun because it was more challenging, we're not so closely supervised. I have much more discretion on how to handle things, you have to be more creative…. It's hard to work with a boss that cuts down the discretion, in this situation, because you've got so many different things to do…it's kind of tough if you respect the people working for you, to make them clear everything you do with the Unit commander. Micro-management hems us in, because you can't do what you want with the public. You can't say the things that you think you should say.
28 Funds were raised by increasing the City's share of parking fines (proportionately with the County), and receipt of two Office of Drug Policy grants.
29 The Excessive Consumption of Police Services Ordinance is a civil statute permitting the City to charge individuals a fee for police services if there are more than five nuisance calls to a single address within a thirty day period. As it is enforced, the Police Department is attempting to change the behavior at issue or solve the problem rather than actually bringing suit.
30 Edward G. Goetz and Kirby Pitman, "Drug War in St. Paul," SHELTERFORCE, March/April 1997, p. 20.
