National COPS Evaluation of St. Paul: 2000

Local Government and the Changing Community

For both the City and SPPD, the 1970s were a period of reflection, self-scrutiny regarding policing, early experimentation in neighborhood policing, and planning for reorganizing and improving policing services in light of social changes and increasing community diversity. Public animosity toward police had heightened during the 1960s, following the images of police televised nationally from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, and the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s. By the early 1970s, relations between African-American residents of public housing in Saint Paul and police were hostile enough that police were hesitant to enter the projects. In 1970, an SPPD officer was assassinated. Chief Finney himself remembers that both citizens and officers were angry: citizens, especially African-American residents, wanted police to be more respectful. They also wanted more African-American police officers. The first wave of immigrants from southeast Asia also began arriving in the early 1970s: in particular, large numbers of Hmong (a tribal agricultural people) from Laos would eventually settle in Saint Paul's public housing. The Lao Family Community of Minnesota, one of the first organizations established by Hmong refugees to assist in the acculturation process, began in 1977.

In spite of the tensions created by these changes, relative to many other cities Saint Paul was a fairly tolerant community. Unlike some others, it was never torn apart by conflicts that did arise over civil rights, the war, and a substantial immigrant population: the Police Department did not become the "enemy" of citizens. Nevertheless, early in the 1970s, SPPD was looking at what it could do differently. Bill Wilson, an early civil rights activist, member of the City Council during the 1980s, and Council President from 1990-93, recalls:

I can remember meetings held in the community by advocacy groups advocating for less intrusion…they stated that they were over-policed and underprotected…. These were basically student activists from the University of Minnesota. Because of the large demonstrations…there was a lot of concern about the anti-war movement and civil rights movement. So those two movements merged, blended, and spread out into the community….It was at that time that the whole idea of bringing the police closer to the community began to emerge as a strategy to offset conflict between police and the community….

And so then residents started talking about the need, in the community, for what they called storefront operations. Part of this came out of the Model Cities initiatives which allowed the community to use its funding to help support the programs that fit the needs of the community. Part of that funding was used to develop a storefront on Selby Avenue in the early 1970s.⁸ This was a novel demonstration…the idea was to have cops located in the community. But then it took a certain kind of police officer, a person who could work with the community as opposed to being there to apprehend and enforce, more so to relate to the community and share what policing was about and to make connections…while at the same time respecting the integrity of the community.

To meet these needs, SPPD formed the Police Community Relations Unit, and to bring in more African American officers, it created "quasi-cop" positions or Community Service Officers, hiring African Americans to fill them. Two of those hired—Samuel Ballard and Willie Hudson—eventually became police officers.⁹ But the most far-reaching change, and the one on which the Department pinned its hopes, lay in the introduction of team policing. SPPD team policing was seen as the answer to many of the deficiencies in professional, "tour mode" policing—in terms of improving the ability of police both to address crime problems, and to establish positive relationships within the community. By all accounts, the move into team policing (and later its extension into community policing) received support from within SPPD, as well as from City officials.

From 1976 to 1990, when team policing took hold in Saint Paul and then underwent a transformation to community policing, Democrat George Latimer was mayor. While campaigning in his first election in 1976, Latimer brought in Deputy Chief McCutcheon to brief him on the team policing pilot project that was taking place on the West Side of Saint Paul. Latimer was running for office in part to mobilize the business community: he recalls that crime was not a big issue in the City at the time, but he became a supporter of team policing, and pledged to extend it city-wide if elected, in essence "co-opt policing and crime issues by building on an already strong Department." A participant in the Executive Sessions on Policing held at the Program in Criminal Justice, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, early in the 1980s, Latimer was knowledgeable about new developments in policing and an early proponent as well of the "broken windows" theory, recognizing the value of police attending to quality of life issues in neighborhoods.

As mayor, Latimer made it a policy to be publicly supportive of the Police Chief, and in his own words, pretty much "kept hands off the Department" when Rowan and McCutcheon were in office. During the 1980s, financial pressures in the City led to the contraction, and later reinstatement, of team policing under Chief McCutcheon. Nevertheless, the debate in the City never ended about "how to get more participation by the police in the community." By this time Bill Wilson was on the City Council. When the dialogue began to form around community policing, and (in Wilson's words) "…the discussion came to the City Council, there was general support, because it simply made so much good sense. There wasn't union opposition. There wasn't community opposition. There wasn't department opposition." But there was concern given to organizational questions: "Does it make sense from an organizational point of view? And then how do we finance locations or facilities that are sufficient beyond having a storefront?" Wilson remained actively involved in searching for answers to these questions and other policing issues, and continually engaged the police department. He developed a concern about gangs, far ahead of others in the City, and got people thinking more seriously about how to address gang behavior and gang-related crime, and about pornography. Another Council member at the time, current Sheriff Bob Fletcher, also participated in the discussions about developing police programs to address juvenile crime issues.

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⁸ Selby Avenue was an area with many African-American residents, and one in which crime problems were especially serious. The storefront opened after the assassination of SPPD Officer Sackett. It remains a focus for police efforts today in Western District.

⁹ Ballard still serves in the Department today, while Hudson later resigned and is now a minister.