National COPS Evaluation of St. Paul: 2000
The First "Community Policing" Programs
While still new in office, Chief Finney invited Chris Braiden back to Saint Paul. Braiden worked with Finney's management team at a week-long retreat on community policing. Every manager then received three days of intensive training in COP, and each officer attended at least one day of training. But most in the Department recall the development of programs and concepts already in existence or else in the planning stages in SPPD as most significant in moving toward community policing at this time.
When he took office, Chief Finney inherited one program that many in SPPD identify with the initiation of "community policing," ACOP, and essentially developed another, FORCE, that existed only in skeleton form. Even in ACOP, however, the new chief made significant changes to bring it into line with his own goals and mission for the Department.
ACOP (A Community Outreach Program)
Beginning around 1990, SPPD had applied for and received three years of grants, totaling more than $1.8 to provide police services, interpreters and social workers to assist public housing residents solve problems and prevent and fight crime. The program began as the Asian Outreach Program in McDonough housing project, in the Central Patrol District. At the time nearly 90% of residents in public housing were refugees from Southeast Asia, mostly Hmong. About 90% of them were living in poverty. Most had no understanding of Western culture when they arrived in the United States, and continued to feel that their family had adjusted little to American life. Problems were arising from the clash in values associated with traditional Hmong culture and an American way of life; when young Asian children assimilated to American culture rapidly while their elders did not, these problems became acute. In addition, SPPD itself was struggling with how to provide better service, given the cultural and language differences that were present in the housing projects, and between officers and residents. Earlier SPPD projects in public housing provided a model. When a legal challenge was raised on the grounds that the program should address the problems of all residents, and not just Asians, it was transformed into ACOP.
From early on ACOP officers reached out to elderly and disabled residents living in several high-rise buildings that fell within their territory. When Larry McDonald began supervising ACOP operations, he and the other ACOP officers started storefronts in the high-rise buildings (in office space donated by the Housing Authority). Once the officers gained their cooperation, elderly residents began staffing the office, and monitoring a police radio placed there. ACOP officers began to carry pagers so that residents could reach them directly. McDonald recounts an experience when, after earning the trust of these older citizens, getting a tip from one panned out:
In the storefronts, I put a picture of every ACOP cop, I put his squad number and his pager number there, so if you had a favorite cop you could page him any time you wanted to…because you get favorite cops and you are not afraid to ask them for a favor…. When something went wrong we got tips—we had a lady that calls Jim and says, "this guy just ripped off this other guy and stole his TV and they are selling it for crack down the hallway…. Send Ray, because he is black and these guys are black." So Ray went down and talked to her…and we ended up taking her pop money (from the pop fund where we sell pop to our employees) to buy the TV back. I had to call another team to find a black female to make the buy…and she was four months pregnant and on the desk, and she volunteered. Then I had to call the FORCE Unit…because they have undercover guys that do all these stings. So this was a cooperative effort…. But I got in a little trouble because I did not turn the TV in, I gave it back to the guy—well, he was handicapped, and the only entertainment was his TV, and they wanted to hold it down in the property room for four months for trial. The city attorney gave me a good _____, and then the county attorney gave me a good _____, and I said well, the guy was really happy, he got his TV back…. We photographed it, took affidavits, serial numbers, everything we had to have…. Is community policing screwing your citizens to make a prosecution or is it…?
When Chief Finney took office, he had some changes in mind for ACOP that he believed would make it more responsive to community needs. In 1992, ACOP was expanded with a new $740,000 grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to include one sergeant, eight officers, two social workers, and three interpreters/community liaison workers currently enrolled in law enforcement studies. Eventually it would cover four housing projects and three high-rise buildings. Late in 1992, the new chief approached Sergeant Dan Carlson about stepping in to head ACOP. Carlson, then an investigator in the Juvenile Division, had been named Minnesota Officer of the Year by the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association for his coordination of efforts to curb violence by Asian youth gangs. He had lived in Thailand, spoke Thai, was married to a Thai woman, and had significant ties to the local Asian community. Carlson had become something of a "catch-all" to whom any SPPD problem involving Asian residents would be assigned. Carlson himself had two ideas about how to improve ACOP before he even began: first, he wanted officers assigned who he thought would be effective as role models and who could communicate with residents. He asked the chief for a young African-American officer who could work days with African-American youth in public housing, and a female officer, since many of the residents in the projects were single mothers. Second, Carlson suggested that ACOP officers be available to represent and assist the Asian community outside, as well as inside, the projects. To this end, he proposed replacing Community Service Officers with Community Liaison Officers (CLOs) who would be recruited for specific language skills (many spoke not only Hmong but other Asian languages as well): eventually, the position began to serve as an entry route into SPPD for Asians with the necessary language skills who were prepared to study law enforcement and train to become SPPD officers. When the CLOs showed how effective they could be in handling calls from persons who did not speak English well, a three way patch was established with ACOP and the Emergency Communications Center so that calls coming in from around the City that required any language assistance—Ethiopian, Russian, whatever—would be sent through to ACOP. CLOs could take time with the caller to determine whether an immediate response was needed, and then get back to the ECC. The Asian community throughout the City benefited, but so did speakers of many other languages.
Since ACOP began operating, most ACOP officers have actively sought assignment to the program: once in it, they become intimately involved with life in the housing projects. Monthly meetings with resident councils are held in each housing project, but ACOP officers are regularly involved as well in dispute settlement among residents, dealing with problem properties from which drug dealing or other illegal activity emanates (sometimes with the help of the FORCE Unit), general problem solving (for example, reducing the number of unauthorized guests on the properties), crime prevention, drug arrests, and running swimming programs, sports teams, and homework study for youngsters. Close involvement with residents gives ACOP officers access to information that enables them to monitor youth involvement in gangs, and in collaboration with the Asian Gang Task Force in the City and County (which began in ACOP), to work at reducing gang violence. As one officer describes:
…even though a lot of the gang members have moved out of public housing…they [the Asian Gang Task Force] know all the gang kids and all the gang kids know them, and it is because of their close working relationship in the community—the kids talk to them all the time. The kids are always turning in guns to them, when the kids get in trouble and they know they are going to be arrested, they page them at home, 'come and get me.' When their house gets shot up, before they call 911 they will either page us or call the task force guys off duty and say, 'hey, can you help me? They are shooting at me, I have got squads outside my house and I do not know what to do,' and it is because they know us, that is why it works.
Recently juvenile and adult probation have joined the Task Force and ACOP in their attempts to reduce youth violence.
Although ACOP is not responsible for families once they leave public housing, the relationships that ACOP officers form often last long after a family moves away. ACOP officers are frequently contacted by former residents, some of whose youngsters are involved in gangs, to assist when problems arise. They handle calls within the housing projects, with back-up from the district squads when necessary, and occasionally will respond to calls for service involving Asian citizens outside the projects. ACOP also works closely in planning two major yearly events in the City—the summer Soccer Tournament (held over the fourth of July), and the Hmong New Year celebration. The Soccer Tournament attracts thousands of Asians from throughout the country: SPPD's success in reducing crime and violence surrounding the event in recent years has won much support from the Asian community in Saint Paul, including the Lao Family, which has worked hard to convince its members that they should cooperate with SPPD officers and set aside the fear of police that lingers from experiences in Southeast Asia. The Lao Family has also helped to recruit Hmong who are entering SPPD as community liaison officers, and has worked through ACOP to solve problems that arise between Asian residents and SPPD officers. For a time, the Lao Family provided training on Asian culture as part of the Police Academy for new recruits; this role has gradually been taken over by Hmong police officers themselves.
Many in Saint Paul see ACOP as the "flagship of community policing." Its effectiveness is widely recognized: when a federal housing grant failed to materialize a couple of years ago, the Public Housing Authority polled its employees to ascertain where cuts should be made. One ACOP officer remembers that PHA employees, from managers down to line employees, responded by saying "you cannot cut ACOP," and they laid off twelve people to save the program. ACOP officers themselves say the real benefit is "we have got time to work with the kids so they know us…and that makes a big difference. It is hard to measure prevention…but we know that when they do get involved…when there is a crisis, we become a resource then and are able to solve the issue, solve the crime, a lot faster because we know who the players are."
