COPS KNOCKING ON DOORS WORKS
Prevention is a better way to reduce crime than pursuing perps after an offense has been committed.
That’s the commendable theory behind the Chicago Police Department’s “custom notifications,” an evolving effort to knock on the doors of warring gang members and their families and warn them to stop the shooting. The police teams also hand out contact information for job training and other social services.
The politically easiest thing for police to do is make a show of sweeping the streets. But the results don’t last. The criminals come right back.
What’s harder — but more effective — is to wear out some shoe leather canvassing addresses where the people likely to be involved in violence and their families reside. Gang members react the same way the rest of us do — they pay attention when somebody in authority comes to the door.
In the business world, they call it the Hawthorne effect: People’s behavior improves when somebody in charge simply shows an interest in them.
Chicago has tried various crime-fighting strategies in recent years, and they’ve made a difference. Sixteen out of 77 neighborhoods have seen declines in violent crime of 25 percent or more from 2011 to 2013. But more needs to be done.
“Custom notifications” began as a pilot program on the West Side about seven months ago. More than 50 people have been visited in six police districts: Wentworth, Calumet, Grand Crossing and Gresham districts on the South Side and in the Austin and Ogden districts on the West Side. Next, police would like to start bringing along other community leaders, such as pastors.
“The Chicago Police Department has really embraced this,” said David M. Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Preven- tion and Control at the New York-based John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which is working with Chicago police. “They are ahead of anyone on this nationally in terms of big city departments.”
The strategy is similar to that employed by the nonprofit group Ceasefire, except that it is police and social service representatives who talk to people identified as likely sources of violence instead of exoffenders.
Behind the strategy is the recognition that violence is driven by a very small, distinct group of offenders who are connected with some three-quarters of the killings in the city. Au- thorities try to convey the message to these individuals that the community cares about them, but rejects the violence, and that they and their associates need to stop hurting people. There is also the message that if they don’t listen, police are going to crack down with a special zeal on any and all crimes they and their friends are involved in.
The program focuses on individuals because authorities have dismantled the leadership structure of many gangs. Now, many shootings happen because people have personal beefs with each other rather than because some gang leader ordered them.
So far, the biggest complaint with the custom notifications program seems to come from people who want to know why their districts haven’t been included.
We can’t help thinking this idea has support in police ranks at least partly because Police Supt. Garry McCarthy is respected as a real-world cop who knows what it’s like to work the streets in violence-prone areas.
Custom notifications have been effective, but they have potential to do even more. It is a strategy that is making Chicago safer — and showing the nation just how it’s done.