Police force of 2,800 key to community policing, city experts say
The two experts recommending a Memphis Police force of 2,800 officers say more police officers do mean a lower crime rate, but only if the increase in officers is used to make more time for community policing.
“I think it’s important to mention early on in this conversation that the kinds of policing that are being recommended under the general rubric of community policing demand much more intensive and regularized interactions between police and neighborhoods,” Phyllis Betts of Strategic City Solutions said on The Daily Memphian Politics Podcast.
Betts and her husband, Richard Janikowski, also of Strategic City Solutions, are retired University of Memphis criminology and sociology experts. As the founding directors of two centers for community building – in the case of Betts – and criminology research – in the case of Janikowski – they were instrumental in shaping the city’s Blue Crush approach to crime-fighting during the administration of Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton.
“Memphis’s experience actually supports the interpretation,” Janikowski said of more police leading to less crime. “Crime began to decline after 2006 with growth in police staffing which occurred. And it was accompanied by those kinds of new police strategies on the deployment of police.”
The assertion was part of Jim Strickland’s successful 2015 campaign for mayor and his 2019 re-election bid. Some City Council members don’t see the correlation and the disagreement has become more visible in the wake of the Memorial Day death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
The reaction locally has included a slate of police reform proposals that include calls to redirect city funding from the police to needs related to crime such as mental health programs and anti-poverty initiatives.
Janikowski says such a reset of police priorities isn’t something consultants can determine for the city.
“That’s a question that has to be answered by the citizens of the city of Memphis along with the leadership in the mayor’s office and the City Council to determine what is it that the city -- in terms of its citizens -- wants its police department to do,” he said. “Consultants can help in elucidating best practices in evidence-based -- policing, research -- when asked about alternatives. But it’s fundamentally a different question from what does it take to have a full-service police department.”
Meanwhile, the council discusses a resolution Tuesday that would put the council on record as supporting a police force of 2,800 by the end of 2023. The resolution running counter to the police reform measures the council has considered and debated in recent months.
Betts cites the police Crisis Intervention Team as a bridge of sorts to exploring how to incorporate social workers and other professionals outside the ranks of the MPD to do what the team of police officers is doing.
That includes 24,000 calls for CIT’s 270 officers last year that ended with 500 arrests and 6,000 transported to mental health facilities.
“I think that that discussion in terms of Memphis data will fruitfully best take place by looking at what the crisis intervention team at the Memphis Police Department currently does do and the extent to which social workers without police protection are in a position to do,” she said.
Strickland has pushed back against a council proposal that would rescind the November citywide referendum on his plan to allow police and firefighters to live outside Shelby County in order to grow the police ranks from just under 2,100. The first goal was to get to 2,300 by the end of this year. With the Strategic City Solutions recommendations, the new number is 2,800.
The council takes a final vote Tuesday, Aug. 4, on rescinding the ballot question and Strickland has urged, in his two most recent weekly email updates, that the referendum should stay on the ballot.
He cites the possibility that 300 police officers could retire at any time because of the restoration of city benefits approved in a 2019 referendum by city voters.
“The workforce crisis we’re facing is real,” he wrote in his most recent Friday email. “And if something does not change, could result in an extremely low officer count of 1,800 to 1,900. If we get to these low numbers, history tells us that a significant increase in the violent crime rate would result.”
Earlier in the week, city Human Resources Chief Alex Smith kicked off the administration push with an op-ed in The Daily Memphian that made many of the same points.
So far, the administration’s arguments haven’t focused on community policing but on the difficulty of recruiting and retaining police officers as well as fears of a crime spike.
Community policing efforts backed by the U.S. Justice Department have changed greatly from the Obama administration to the Trump administration. Community policing efforts in the Trump administration have translated into federal funding for police hardware and ending federal probes of how local police departments operate.
That includes ending an extensive federal review of police procedures and arrests requested by Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings.
Janikowski and Betts say the challenge of a police department big enough to have time for community policing and a lower supervisor-to-patrol-officers ratio for meaningful mentoring is complicated in Memphis by the high concentration of poverty.
The city’s lack of density by square mileage combines with the diffusion of a highly concentrated poverty across 75% of the city’s territory. By their report, the diffusion was 50% of the city’s territory just 20 years ago.
The topic is among those addressed by Harvard research fellow Thomas Abt, whose latest book about urban violence, “Bleeding Out,” is on the reading list of several city council members.
Abt worked for a time in a Wharton administration initiative with Memphis-Shelby County Juvenile Court, and Janikowski has worked with Abt during his time in the Obama administration Justice Department.
Betts, like Abt, says crime and poverty are connected but that fighting crime should come first with community building or rebuilding following close behind. She uses the example of a goal of kids playing in a neighborhood park.
“You want to keep them focused on the goals that your family has set,” she said. “Then what happens in the park has got to be something you take into account right now when you are looking to improve the economic status of your kids, your family and the entire neighborhood. I don’t think we can just wish that away.”
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Richard Janikowski Phyllis Betts police reform police recruitment Daily Memphian Politics podcastBill Dries on demand
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.
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