National COPS Evaluation of St. Paul: 2000
SPPD: Looking to the Future
Operations: the View from the Line
How do line officers and first-line supervisors experience policing in Saint Paul today? Sergeants report one big change in the organization that is apparent on the streets: officers didn't used to be trusted with telling the "company line;" the Department didn't want them telling citizens what the police were going to do. "Now they kind of trust police officers a little bit more to go in and say, 'Well this is the plan.'" Supervising sergeants also report that they see officers initiating more action—"…you don't have to be a sergeant or lieutenant to see what needs to be done. Now they're there [officers] and they're talking to people. People are telling them what the problem is, and 'okay, what are you going to do for me?' Now they have the opportunity to come up with their own ideas, rather than me just saying 'go do this.'"
And the change in what line officers can do produces new demands from citizens. Sergeants hear the reports:
…there is a lot of feedback from these people that you go out and meet with and talk to, because if an officer tells them something, they expect that level of service…. Sometimes you get feedback from them saying that the level of service they got exceeded what they originally requested and they would like to compliment the police department, or in particular some of the officers they dealt with. Or their level of service…didn't meet their expectations, so maybe we can have another meeting….
For some line officers who have been on the streets for twenty to thirty years, today's "community policing" is but another name for team policing, and it ultimately depends upon the availability of sufficient numbers of patrol officers:
When you talk about team policing and the other things, you can look at it at different levels—the patrolman [who] actually does the work, the level of the sergeants and lieutenants, and all the way…to the top. Each level has a different…concept [as] to what team policing is…. I've gone through all different types of programs they've had. This team policing, it's a fine idea I guess if you've got the manpower, and we don't have that—where you can take time out if someone has a problem and you think you can help, you can take 35 minutes, 40 minutes, more than what you wanted to normally…to get them in touch with an organization or group that would help them…. [Now] at least in certain areas of the city, you can't afford that time…. If you take…a report call…and [you're] out for two and a half or three hours…the other officers that are taking his calls are going to be irritated, so there's going to be peer pressure to say why were you out three hours on a call that should have been forty-five minutes?
A big gripe of these officers is the proliferation of special units under Chief Finney—bike patrol, storefronts, FORCE—and to staff them, "patrol is always the first place they take from." Some sergeants also notice this: they argue that patrol is getting depleted, more and more. Some of the special units—FORCE, and Downtown Patrol—do work that patrol officers and sergeants can see is actually contributing to a reduction in the workload of patrol officers. But other units don't contribute at all in their eyes. Another concern is that newer officers are being moved into some of these special units after as little as three or four years with SPPD, without having had the extensive experience on patrol that the older officers think is valuable.
Several accounts from both inside and outside SPPD suggest that the creation of the NSAs may be the biggest innovation in community policing under Chief Finney's administration so far. Specifically, it is cited as the only non-programmatic, turf-based organizational unit, operating on a twenty-four hour basis. Are line officers actually "buying into" the NSAs? Are they identifying with the NSA area, and trying to problem solve? At least one interpretation is that during the early 1970s, line officers did more problem solving and actual community policing, while administration didn't know much about it; now, according to this account, the situation has been reversed, and top management has "bought in" more than the line officers. As for the sergeants, many describe—and like—having more responsibility, being accountable for more, with the creation of NSAs. One concern, however, is paperwork—especially documenting the NSA projects: "I average I would say one day a week where I'm real lucky if I get out of the office. And if I do it's to run down here [headquarters] with the reports from the previous shift and run right back and get right back into it." Another comments, "They're restricting our time quite a bit. Yet they want us to be accountable for those officers and how they are doing and why aren't they handling this call right, and things like that. When we can't—they're not giving us enough time to go out there and supervise them."
Together, many differing reports and observations suggest that the extent to which line officers themselves are doing problem-oriented policing with the NSA as the primary focus varies considerably across districts. More than one officer (patrol officers as well as management) suggests that a very real impediment to more problem solving today is the increased level of violence on the streets, so that line officers have become concerned about different things than they were in the past.
Management
Chief Finney describes his first three to four years in office as a time in which he pushed through a lot of change in SPPD; then he sat back to "tweak" the organizational changes. He has accomplished his primary objectives: developing a new and positive mission; reaching out to the community; initiating creative new programs; and hiring people representative of the community. Now, Finney says, he is thinking about what more needs changing—for example, how to extend his mission further, and increasingly about how to increase and improve problem solving in the Department.
Chief Finney is admittedly demanding of his staff: he expects his officers to confront issues and implement the SPPD mission with the Chief's authority at every level. He expects mistakes, but also expects that his officers will learn from them. Attempting also to be accessible, the Chief has an open door policy after 4 pm daily, so that any officer can walk in and talk. (Reportedly, another good time and place to corner him is on Friday and Saturday evenings during the summer when the "classic cars" of earlier decades gather downtown, drawing crowds on cordoned-off streets.) Finney believes in giving his three district commanders plenty of authority, but holding them accountable. And he is moving accountability to ever lower levels—giving problems to NSA sergeants for solution, in a new model of problem solving and accountability that one commander sees as a far-reaching innovation, "so strong that it might last beyond the Chief even if he were to leave."
In recent months, SPPD has been undergoing a dramatic turnover in personnel with the speeding up in retirements of commanders, and lieutenants. Since September of 1997, Chief Finney has promoted and appointed three commanders in their early 40s, two of them females, to head the Districts. (He also has two female lieutenants.) Only half a dozen officers over the age of 55 remain in the Department, and within the next three to five years, about 75% of the department will have turned over under Finney's administration. While some officers have concerns that the change is proceeding too quickly, depleting the force of experienced older officers who can, they believe, provide stability and possess significant knowledge, the Chief sees this as a real opportunity—to create a more ethnically diverse police force, hire more women, and recruit better-educated officers who will be more committed to community policing.42
Perhaps one other aspect of this rapid turnover is worth noting: if the overall progression to community policing in Saint Paul began with experiences tied to team policing in the 1970s, and can be credited to the efforts of many SPPD officers who were part of that history, the torch is passing quickly as that group leaves. Bill Finney is one of the few who remain in SPPD with the ability to look backward as far as the 1970s, as well as forward. He is in a powerful position to shape the vision of community policing that his newer staff are developing as they take their cue from him, and less from the past.
42 Heron Marquez Estrada, "St. Paul Police Department Grows Younger," St. Paul Star Tribune, January 5, 1998, p. 1B.