Community Policing in Chicago, Year Four: An Interim Report

• NCJ Number: 172221
• Date Published: 1998
• Length: 149 pages
• Grant Number(s): 95-IJ-CX-0056
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description

Annotation

This is the fourth in a series of reports that examines the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS), a community policing program that began in April 1993, when an experimental program was inaugurated in five police districts.

Abstract

This report presents an overview of evaluation efforts since the release of the last report in Fall 1996. The first section of the report summarizes recent trends in crime in Chicago. The next section examines citizen involvement in CAPS. Chicago's community policing effort features several roles for the public, and this section examines the extent of citizen program awareness and participation. It also describes trends in beat-meeting attendance and changes in the city's strategy for involving the general public in neighborhood problem-solving. The longest segment of this year's report examines the implementation of CAPS. The evaluation focused on specific program elements. Using a variety of data sources, the evaluation assessed how far along the districts are in implementing each element, as well as what the obstacles to change have been. Another section of the report takes a "ground-level" view of community policing. It details how CAPS operates, drawing upon extensive field work and surveys in 15 police beats. The final section summarizes several special initiatives that have occurred during the year. These include developments in crime analysis, new police training efforts, the inauguration of a formal planning process in the police department, the work of the Strategic Inspections Task Force, the 11th District's "super block" initiative, new roles for prosecutors in community policing, and plans to reorganize security arrangements for the city's public housing developments. 12 figures and 5 tables