National COPS Evaluation of St. Paul: 2000
The Late 1980s and early 1990s: From Team Policing to Community Policing
While patrol officers were carrying out team policing on the ground, Mayor George Latimer was attending the Executive Session in Policing at Harvard during the early 1980s. A few members of SPPD's management staff were also making use of the materials supplied by the program, in effect participating from distance. Tom Reding, a special assistant to McCutcheon, studied the papers that were prepared for the sessions, communicated and worked with Bob Trojanowicz at Michigan State University, and briefed Latimer on developments in community policing. Reding notes that this was one avenue through which information and discussions about community policing made their way into SPPD.
By this time, SPPD was already carrying out (and in some manner had been since the 1970s) many of the practices proposed by community policing advocates at Harvard. Latimer himself describes SPPD as operating through "neighborhood deployment, with a pretty high level of sophisticated problem solving, and good use of technology (they were already tracking deployment of force according to incidence of crime in 1977)." Latimer's belief was that most people, with some exceptions, felt relatively safe in Saint Paul's neighborhoods: there was little apparent out-migration due to safety concerns. Although the question of whether to create a civilian review commission had been raised a number of times, Latimer had examined the issue and concluded that the City would not benefit from it. And he saw enough evidence of a responsive, problem-oriented team effort, supported by the community, that he didn't "force" the issue of community policing on McCutcheon.
Yet McCutcheon's top managers were clearly pursuing community policing: Captains Mike Smith and Larry McDonald went to Houston in 1988 to look at Lee Brown's model of community-oriented policing. The Department brought PERF in to hold training sessions for managers, and Chris Braiden came in from Edmonton to discuss problem-oriented policing. Larry McDonald, who worked with Braiden, comments, "what Braiden was talking about was no different from what we had experienced…basically it is trying to solve people's problems as if you had the problem." Bringing in Braiden, an acknowledged expert, an outsider, re-affirmed for SPPD managers that they were on the right track; Braiden would work first with top management. But by this time there was already a critical mass in terms of supervisors in SPPD with substantial experience in policing in neighborhoods, schooled in decentralized team policing and problem solving. No single leader pushed or pulled the Department into community policing at this time; rather community policing as a strategy was congruent with the principles and experiences of many officers in SPPD, at both line and supervisory levels, and for many, eventually would seem the next logical step to take.
In 1990, Latimer decided not to run again for mayor: he had won with 84 percent of the vote in 1986, and remained popular—it was simply time to move on. He was replaced as mayor by James Scheibel, a liberal Democrat. Under Scheibel's administration, general interest in community policing continued to grow. With assistance from outside the Department, two highly visible new programs—ACOP and FORCE—were in the planning stages, ready to begin operations. They would prove to be a significant plank in the Department's bridge from team to community policing.
A New Chief: William K. Finney and the Formal Move into Community Policing
Bill Finney recalls that when he first sought to join SPPD, in addition to being African American, he was "too tall, too educated, and wore glasses"—there were plenty of obstacles. Having grown up in Saint Paul, Finney attended Mankato State University, where he began working as a reserve officer in the Mankato Police Department. In 1971, after graduating, he returned to Saint Paul: he was hired provisionally at SPPD for ten months; this was followed by six months of probation. After serving for six years Finney joined the Army, and was commissioned. Returning to SPPD, Finney's upward progress was steady, albeit with a few lateral diversions: he made sergeant in 1978—the second African American to achieve this rank; he was the first African American to be promoted to lieutenant (in 1982); and to Captain in 1987. But his progress was not necessarily welcomed or facilitated by all in upper management in SPPD. Finney cultivated an attitude that he recalls having learned in the military: "Bloom where you're planted."
Finney was part of team policing in Saint Paul from his earliest days in SPPD. He walked the skyway as a beat officer from 1977-78, and then served as a team policing sergeant. When SPPD went to two sectors, with three shifts, in 1982, he became midnight shift commander in East Sector. At about the same time, Finney became active in Noble—although he had been a member since 1978—and his experiences with Noble were linked with his first serious exposure to community policing. Attending a Noble Conference in the summer of 1983, he was introduced to "the cutting edge of community policing." He recalls especially the discussions surrounding proposals to eliminate the use of deadly force by police officers; he met Lee Brown, and was "schooled" by Brown and his protegees. Finney came back to St. Paul looking for ways in which he could use what he was learning. When SPPD went back to four teams (Northwest, Southwest, Central, and East), Lieutenant Finney became an assistant commander in Central District, remaining there from 1984-86.25 He was ready then to work closely with downtown business representatives and officials.
In 1986, Finney was appointed to head the Parking Services Unit. At this time, he approached the Chief to request the creation of a Parking Enforcement Officer position that would facilitate the "affirmative hiring" of minorities, giving them four years to obtain their credentials for full hiring (including two years of college), and offering them promotional rights into the police officer ranks. By 1987, when Finney made captain, he had three more years before he could make Deputy Chief.26 Chief McCutcheon appointed him head of Training and Personnel Sections, and Finney then used his new position to begin to address diversity issues in training, and to convince the Chief that certain individuals—in particular some minority officers—should be promoted to acting sergeant positions from patrol officer. When Finney left Training, in about 1989, he was made executive officer for detectives. Finally, he was assigned to command Central District, which included three distinct neighborhoods: the West Side (Latino), the Rice Street area (with working class and poor white residents), and the downtown commercial area. This gave him an opportunity to become involved with BOMA, and to renew relationships he had formed many years earlier with people in the downtown area.
Nevertheless, after making Captain, during the late 1980s, Finney felt "stymied" at the top of the organization, as if he was being defined as "not ready for upward mobility within SPPD." He was already well-known in the City, to business and civic leaders as well as citizens, and began to look outside the Department. In 1989, Finney ran for and was elected to the school board. And he continued to develop professionally: in 1985, he applied for the position of chief of police at the University of Minnesota; in 1991, he was offered the post of commissioner in Cambridge, MA. He declined the first because he lacked twenty years service that would bring his retirement pension, and because former Chief Rowan convinced him to stay. Then in 1991, when the Cambridge offer came, his wife was established in the area professionally, and an editorial in the local newspaper urged him to "stick around." Finney stayed. He knew Chief McCutcheon's term would be up in 1992—if he didn't make Chief then, he would go.
But the Cambridge experience convinced Finney that he could "make it," and gave him the confidence to wait. In the meantime, he had been invited in 1990 to attend the FBI Academy's National Executive Institute, which he completed. He also attended the Police Executive Research Forum's Senior Management Institute for Police. Since then, as a senior executive and then Chief, Finney has served on numerous local and state government and law enforcement commissions and task forces, and as an executive board member for the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Executives, IACP, and the Minnesota Chiefs of Police. In 1997 he was Vice Chair of the United Way of Saint Paul.
25 In preparation for the move to four sectors, Chief McCutcheon approached the four lieutenants who were in line to be team commanders, in advance, to obtain their input and discuss where the boundaries would be. Finney was one of the four. Just before the teams were implemented, McCutcheon changed his mind and decided that captains would head the teams.
26 Soon after Finney was appointed lieutenant, the rules changed for ascending to Deputy Chief: in 1982, it had been a tested, civil service position, so that even detectives could take the exam, and if they passed, skip lieutenant and captain grades, to become Deputy Chief. After the change, the requirement was that an individual had to achieve the rank of captain, and then spend three years in the grade, before making Deputy Chief.
