Safe Streets Initiative

By David Pepper

Other cities have found that building concrete partnerships in high crime areas is the best way to make those communities safer. My "Safe Streets Initiative" proposes a concrete way for communities and law enforcement to partner in increasing safety.

Today's National Night Out events appropriately recognize the crucial role of police-community partnerships in making our neighborhoods safe. But our city must act on this philosophy year-round. To do so, I propose what I call a "Safe Streets" Community Partnership for selected high-crime areas of the city.

Two facts bear remembering as we contemplate the recent rash of crime in the city:

1) crime in Cincinnati and elsewhere is generally highly concentrated, with a few "hot spots" suffering from a huge portion of overall criminal activity (national research shows that 50 percent of crime occurs in 3 percent of geographic locations);

2) as Boston and other communities have shown, community-oriented policing and true community-police partnership present the most effective way to make communities safer. These efforts only succeed if driven by the community itself.

With these two observations in mind, I propose that the City put into place a comprehensive Safe Streets Community Partnership-where community, police and government (city, state and federal) work together to solve community safety issues in targeted Safe Street Zones. The program would require each of the partners to play an important cooperative role in creating safe neighborhoods.

Eligibility: using crime statistics and the CAGIS system to assess which neighborhoods are crime "hot spots," the city should select a range of neighborhoods that are eligible to be Safe Street Zones. Ultimate participation will depend on which neighborhoods choose to satisfy certain participation criteria.

Community role: · Each community must create a Safe Streets Task Force that convenes and writes its own "Safe Streets Strategic Plan," including the identification of priority problems and areas and the selection of tools to solve problems. Tools might include: o Rapid response solutions to identify and root out particular types of crime; o Nuisance abatement and blight removal efforts; o Youth prevention and rehabilitation; o Community mobilization efforts, such as Citizens on Patrol, Adopt a Block programs, and the like; o Comprehensive gun- and gang-reduction efforts; o Environmental/streetscape design-adding lights, cameras, etc. to troubled areas; and o Community crime-prevention awareness and education. · Enlist a core number of dedicated community volunteers to help implement the Safe Streets initiative-these people must be appropriately trained and have attended the Citizens Police Academy; · Identify a location in the Safe Streets zone to be used as a Community Policing Center-where police and community volunteers create a resource center for community safety issues, work together to solve crimes and the problems that lead to crimes, and implement and coordinate other aspects of the Safe Streets Strategic Plan. The community policing center could include converted police substations, or entirely new locations; and · Raise funds from local businesses and residents to help support Safe Streets efforts.

City role: · The city's primary role would be to enlist the apparatuses already in place-CNAS, neighborhood cops, substations-to support the Safe Streets initiative · Other means of support would be to: o Provide additional targeted and matching grants to support certain aspects of the program; o Provide regular training and technical assistance for community policing volunteers; o Provide funding for additional police presence in Safe Street zones; o Work with state and federal officials to create additional cooperative relationships to serve Safe Street zones (community-based prosecutors, parole, probation, prevention, drug treatment, and other officials etc.); o Work with local business and foundations to raise additional funds, technical assistance and participation in the program.

Police role: · Offer police and law enforcement expertise to assist each community in putting together their Safe Streets Strategic Plan; · Bring law enforcement technology and technical assistance into the community, sharing key intelligence and strategy with Safe Street community leaders; · Maintain regular presence in community policing centers, both through neighborhood officer and beat officers; · Enlist all officers whose beat includes the Safe Streets zone in assisting in implementation of the strategic plan; · Work in tandem with other state and federal bodies to accomplish priorities of the strategic plan; · Provide additional neighborhood police presence in Safe Street zones based on goals of Safe Streets Strategic Plan-walking the beat, engaging with youth, etc.

Other Community Members (Businesses, churches, etc.) · Provide support, technical assistance, volunteer efforts, and in-kind support for Safe Streets efforts

In addition to targeting certain high-crime areas, this program could serve as a pilot for what should ultimately be a more widespread community-policing partnership in Cincinnati-where citizens and officers work together to ensure the safety of our streets and neighborhoods.