TITLE
Recommendation to direct City Manager to invest in Community Policing by working with Long Beach Police Department to provide options in the FY23 budget for structural funding of the Neighborhood Walks program, and
Direct City Manager to work with Long Beach Police Department to provide options in the FY 23 budget for an expansion of LBPD’s “Bicycle Beats” program, including assigning at least 25 more officers to the program.
DISCUSSION
The US Department of Justice defines community policing as “a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies that support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime.”1
Community Policing represents a step back from the policing tactics of old that have caused rifts between communities and their police departments, focusing instead on regular beat-walking and the visibility of officers in the communities they serve. This strategy places more emphasis on engagement with local community members and organizations, investing upstream crime prevention rather than purely responding to calls, and allowing community input on prioritization of open cases.
In March of 2021, in response to an increase in shootings in early 2021, LBPD launched its most successful community policing initiative to date, the Neighborhood Walks program2. The program, which saw first use in the Washington Neighborhood, involved the city providing overtime hours to allow officers to simply walk around in a given relatively high-crime area of the city, rather than responding to calls to service.
The program’s impact on the Washington neighborhood was immediate and strongly positive - reported shootings dropped 40% during the program’s lifespan, from March to April 20213. From there, it expanded to North Long Beach from June - August, where the program resulted in an 20% decrease in shootings fr...
Click here for full text