As crime heats up in Chicago, Supt. Brown turns to community policing — Dallas-style

Chicago Police Supt. David Brown greets community activist William Calloway in West Woodlawn on Friday morning. | Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

What’s worked in Dallas, we hope and pray, can work in Chicago. Let’s give it a chance.

There is a potential gem in Chicago Police Supt. David Brown’s recent announcements about restructuring his forces to better respond to what has been a historically violent summer.

Brown is creating “a specialized citywide unit to tackle violent crime and create community partnerships in some of Chicago’s most challenging areas.”

The plan, parts of which were detailed Friday, sounds reminiscent of the Neighborhood Police Team concept he created while chief of the Dallas Police Department.

If so, we’re all for it.

In Dallas, officers assigned to teams worked to build better relationships in the city’s toughest communities. That effort has been cited — along with other initiatives — with helping the city achieve a 50-year low in crime rates from 2009 through 2015.

Chicago, caught between a rising number of homicides and legitimate calls for police reforms, desperately needs an approach and results like those.

‘Make us feel safe’

Created by Brown in 2012, the 80-officer Dallas Neighborhood Police Team significantly increased foot patrols. Officers got to know the residents on their beats and helped them form neighborhood crime watch groups. They attended community functions and addressed lower-level concerns.

“As long as they come and talk to guys, and make us feel safe out there, that’s the main thing,” Dallas salon owner Michael Evans told a local TV station, WFAN, in 2016.

Once trust was better established, residents reportedly began cooperating more with the police, alerting them to gang and drug activity — including pointing out drug houses.

“When citizens realize that we are genuinely here to help them with their problems, no matter how small, then many of them, in turn, start helping us,” Joshua Shipp, a Neighborhood Team officer assigned to southeast Dallas told Texas Monthly in 2016.

“They start giving us tips about illegal activities that they know are taking place,” Shipp said. “They give us a chance to clean up their neighborhoods so that they can feel safe.”

In Dallas, Brown did something else we’d like to see here: He created the 30-officer Youth Outreach Unit. Cops assigned to the unit did things like coach sports and help out in community gardens. One officer gave kids guitar lessons.

Along with better community relations and less crime, excessive force complaints against Dallas police officers dropped by a staggering 80%.

And cops shot fewer citizens.

This isn’t to say the Dallas program — or its officers — was without problems. Amber Guyger, the white Dallas officer serving a 10-year sentence for killing Black accountant Botham Jean in his own apartment in 2018, was one of those neighborhood team officers.

The shooting happened, though, after Brown had retired from the department.

Good intervention ‘goes a long way’

Brown has begun assigning his citywide summer mobile patrol unit to participate in once-a-week community service projects, mostly on the South and West sides, in a bid to build trust while fighting crime. More than 200 officers will be assigned to the unit by the end of next week.

Weekly assignments will include the police participating in prayer circles and peace marches. Officers will also do things like deliver food and face masks to seniors.

And how’s this for making a point? Brown announced the new program in the Woodlawn community, where he had come to participate in a neighborhood cleanup.

Brown’s latest efforts offer hope, if only because they recognize that it’ll take more than specialized police suppression teams, “flooding the zone” with cops, the aggressive clearing of street corners, and other typical law enforcement tactics to solve Chicago’s violence problem.

Sure, those methods are dramatic and highly visual. They can produce results. But taken by themselves, they can reinforce the idea of the police as an occupying force.

Retired veteran Chicago Police Lt. Robert Angone, who writes to us on occasion from Florida, warns against an approach to policing that emphasizes swooping in when an area gets hot but fails to build relationships.

Once cops and the people in a neighborhood develop trust, Angone said, the police are in a position to gain “valuable intelligence” on those who are doing the shooting.

“When was the last time anyone asked why they are shooting each other?” Angone asked. “Of course it’s dope and territory, but intervention by neighborhood cops could go a long way.”

What’s worked in Dallas, we hope and pray, can work in Chicago.

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