National COPS Evaluation of St. Paul: 2000
Implementing Team Policing Citywide: 1977
Planning for implementation began near the end of 1976, with July 1, 1977 proposed as the implementation date. The Patrol Division was divided into north and south sectors in September of 1976, and a federal grant was formally awarded at the end of October. It was anticipated that the federal grant would continue for three years, at which time the City would provide continuing funding. The grant-specified goals for team policing included: first, organizationally, increasing administrative accountability, increasing participation and responsibility in decision making at lower command levels, improving internal communications, and improving job satisfaction. Second, the community involvement goal was to increase interaction between police, and citizens and community groups.
From the beginning, SPPD assumed that considerable lead time would be necessary to move into a full team policing mode:
It was anticipated that approximately three months would be required to work out the basic operational problems in the team mode. An additional three to six months would then be needed to determine the particular desires and needs for police services by the communities and citizens of each team area and—with the participation of all team personnel—to devise appropriate service strategies in response to those particular needs and desires. So long as basic patrol services—essentially having enough patrol cars available to assure timely response—continued to be provided in each team area, each lieutenant was to be given considerable latitude in this means of assessing community needs and of program response. In essence, the first nine months of team policing were expected to involve a considerable amount of on-the-job training for the lieutenant and his team members.19
In January 1977 the team boundaries were finalized, and an ambitious training process, to occur in "organizational waves," was begun. This process centered first around the "management team"—the Chief and four deputy chiefs—that would lay out the ground rules and parameters of decentralization; commanders at the team level (two captains and the lieutenants) would then meet to develop specific proposals for implementing guidelines. Later, sergeants assigned to teams, and each team lieutenant, were to meet and plan details for team management and functioning. Finally, patrol officers would be brought into the team training process.
Before this process could be completed, however, fiscal problems surfaced in the City with the threat of an increase in property taxes. By April, the team policing implementation process was halted: all City departments had been ordered to cut their budgets by at least 5%. Although Mayor Latimer remained firmly in favor of team policing, many believed that the City could not afford to fund the program in the original grant proposal when federal funds would be terminated at the end of 1979.
The program that emerged was therefore a substantially reduced version of team policing: each sector was headed by a deputy chief (with an administrative assistant who was a captain); six teams would operate (with a lieutenant in each) rather than eight, necessitating a redrawing of team boundaries; the teams would not have sergeants to conduct follow-up investigations of property crimes (thus requiring fewer promotions to supervisory positions). Investigative responsibilities were greatly curtailed: investigation of serious property crime would remain with the central unit, with the teams responsible for investigating minor crimes. Some sections of CAPROP (Crimes Against Property) and the Juvenile Units nevertheless assigned their personnel by teams in order to facilitate coordination with the Patrol Division team mode—thus the original goal of integrating some investigative functions within the Patrol Division and improving patrol officers' initial investigative functions was not altogether abandoned. Additionally, the training process was drastically cut back. While top management had been involved early on in the planning process, and three of the lieutenants had had experience in previous team policing efforts, the lack of training for sergeants in management techniques was later seen as a serious loss. 20
In July 1977, although cut back from earlier projections, the team command structure was implemented in Saint Paul. Six teams had been created, based upon a combination of geography and calls for service:
A1 – today's Western Patrol District North
A2 – northern half of what is now Central Patrol District
A3 – what is now Eastern Patrol District
B4 – now Western Patrol District South
B5 – smallest area, but high crime--Summit University area (in today's Western District)
B6 – downtown and West Side (the southern half of what is now Central Patrol).
An evaluation of the first two years of citywide team policing (required as part of the grant) provides some indication of what was actually taking place following the decentralization.21 Documenting early achievements, the evaluation found that within two months, most scheduling, dispatching, communications and fleet maintenance problems in SPPD had been overcome. To facilitate communications between team offices and central headquarters, an Operations Unit had been established in the Communications Center. A citizens volunteer program, called Neighborhood Assistance Officers (set up before team policing), had been integrated into the team command structure: trained to assist SPPD in minor matters such as traffic control at accidents, temporary custody of lost children, and checks of vacationers' homes, NAO volunteers were placed under the direction of team lieutenants in the area where they resided when team policing was implemented.
Taking a longer range view, the Team Police Evaluation Unit of SPPD found, more significantly, that
[The new] command structure appears to have led to the intended increase in accountability and initiative within the Patrol Division. All team lieutenants, and especially those with prior supervisory experience within the Patrol Division, indicate that they now have a clearer definition of their role and responsibilities than before. In all teams there have been examples of aggressive reactions to specific crime problems, ranging from the use of patrol officers on bicycles to a highly coordinated effort to search for an active rapist. The team structure also provides the opportunity to experiment with alternative management strategies…. While it is not being suggested here that previously nothing was done in reaction to serious crime problems, nor that innovations were totally lacking, there is some evidence that these kinds of activities are more likely to occur in the team structure and that they are more readily coordinated within the on-going routine of patrol operations.
Accounts are mixed as to whether decentralization changed the basic orientation of patrol operations around 911 and responding to calls for service. As the evaluation notes, maintaining "basic patrol services—essentially having enough patrol cars available to assure timely response" remained the first priority. At the same time, under team policing the work of police officers was redefined to include a broader range of functions, to cover greater investigative responsibilities as well as an explicit prescription for increasing contact with and responsiveness to citizens. Some reports today suggest that line officers themselves were doing a significant amount of problem solving in neighborhoods, and carrying out many of the activities later promoted by community policing, while senior management staff who were more removed did not "buy in" to the same degree.
Retired Commander Larry McDonald provides an account of one type of problem solving that his officers carried out when he was Lieutenant in A3, under team policing. Late in the 1970s, problems arose around Harding High School with drug transactions taking place near the school, in full view of citizens. McDonald appealed twice to the Narcotics Unit downtown for help, but they wouldn't bother with such a minor problem. McDonald recounts: "I'm catching hell at this point from citizens in the area…. I told my Deputy Chief Griffin, who was on the school board at the time, I've got to get some relief. I'm going to put out my own patrol people, and reassign them, and we're going to carry on a surveillance, we're going to gather all the information." Deputy Chief Griffin reminded McDonald that this was really breaking with tradition—but told him to go ahead. McDonald set up his surveillance unit: he took officers out of uniform and had them gather evidence of marijuana use and take photographs; one young officer, working undercover, enrolled in the high school and lived in Roosevelt housing project (with help from some residents there). McDonald himself trained all the officers in proper techniques for evidence gathering. When they went before a judge, the evidence was so good that warrants were issued immediately for all the juveniles from whom buys had been made. Things were tense with SPPD's Narcotics Unit after this—and the school wasn't too happy at being kept in the dark either. But the outcome was so successful that the same strategy was picked up and utilized by other teams.
INVESTIGATIONS AND SPECIALIZED UNITS: As McDonald's problem-solving example illustrates, the tension between centralized specialized units and decentralized patrol, and in particular between centralized and decentralized investigations, persisted after the implementation of city-wide team policing. While lieutenants headed the Teams, captains generally ran investigations and other specialized units downtown. By many accounts today, these captains were less familiar with and supportive of team policing generally than the decentralized team officers.
Nevertheless, on the ground, patrol officers were expanding some of their investigation activities as part of solving problems. In surveys conducted for the two year evaluation of team policing, responses from patrol officers suggested strongly that they were spending more time investigating crimes under team policing. Two months after team policing was implemented, at a meeting of all unit heads in the Department, Chief Rowan decided that some increase in response time would be tolerated in order to achieve the goal of expanding the patrol role in investigations. In addition, the Department adopted the federally funded "Managing Criminal Investigations" program that provided for the introduction of revised report forms. These forms were explained to all patrol personnel during in-service training for team policing, and implemented along with it. An automated fingerprint identification system (MAFIN, Minnesota Automated FP ID Network) also became operational in 1979. Planning for the system included patrol operations, since patrol officers were (and are) responsible in Saint Paul for obtaining most fingerprints from crime scenes.
Nevertheless, the more serious property crime investigations, and most crimes against persons, continued to be handled centrally: robbery and burglary are investigated in the districts; while fraud, forgeries, auto thefts, homicides, assaults, and sex crimes are handled centrally.
COMMUNITY RELATIONS AND COMMUNITY RESPONSES TO TEAM POLICING: One of the most positive reported outcomes of the first two years of city-wide team policing occurred in the area of community relations:
In terms of citizen-police interaction goals, all teams have contacted numerous business and citizen groups… every team has held an open house…. Representatives of the teams have also attended less formal citizen meetings…all team lieutenants have publicized the availability and willingness of themselves and other team members to participate in any citizen meetings…. These contacts with citizens and business people have led to a number of activities by patrol personnel. As a result of requests from the business communities, many teams occasionally utilize a roving foot beat…there has been more rigorous enforcement of liquor and other park use regulations…. [T]eams have become more active in crime prevention programs…. [I]t was anticipated that team policing would be a two-way street requiring effort both on the part of police and on the citizens served; this interaction appears to have happened in St. Paul.22
Perhaps most striking was the finding that citizens overwhelmingly preferred team policing to the previous system. While overall calls for service increased in the City, complaints filed with Internal Affairs dropped, fear of crime appeared to decrease, and the attitudes of minority citizens showed large improvements toward police behavior in several areas (for example, perceptions of police prejudice toward non-whites dropped). Within the business community, nearly three-quarters were found to prefer team policing over the previous central office organization.23
20 Ibid., p. 22.
21 "Team Policing in St. Paul, Minnesota, An Evaluation of Two Years Implementation," November 5, 1979. Draft, prepared by the Team Police Evaluation Unit, SPPD.
22 Ibid., pp. 24-26.
23 Ibid., pp. Ch. IV, pp. 127-160.
