In support of foot patrol

I received this email last week.

Finished the book a few weeks ago. I've got nine years on the job & it seems to track pretty well with my experience. Got some further thoughts (all good) but I'll save that for another time. My reason for this little message was a piece I came across in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about rookies being assigned to foot patrol.
Interesting personal aside. I started out with the Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority Police, where everybody walks a foot beat. There's no substitute for the type of demands it makes on a new officer, most all of which are ultimately good. You learn very quickly and very well how to talk to people. A year of high-density foot patrol is equivalent to 8 to 10 years of motorized patrol experience when it comes to interacting with the public. If you're paying attention & doing it right it definitely makes you a better officer.

Sgt. [name withheld on request]

Is foot patrol right for you?

Foot patrol may not be right for everyone. How do you know if foot patrol is right for you and your neighborhood? Ask your mailman. If your mail is delivered in a cart pushed by a walking mailman or woman, police should be on foot. If your mail is delivered by truck, foot patrol may not be right for you.

Side effects of foot patrol include decreased fear, better quality of life, fewer broken windows, more fit police officers, greater interaction between police and neighborhood residents, and generally improved police/community relations.

Policing Green

Cops want more money. Citizens want more foot patrol.

We can have both. I call it “Policing Green.” Give cops the gas money for their shift if they agree to patrol without a car for that shift.

The environmental link is mostly just a clever title to sell the idea, but it really would be green and save gas. At its core, though, it’s about policing.

In an informal survey of my police officers students, every one of them would walk foot for their gas money. At least when it's not raining.

Police cars in the city probably go through about 6-8 gallons per shift. That’s $28-$32 right now. And even with giving this to police officers, departments would save money on cars upkeep in general. And as long as it’s the officers’ choice, everybody wins!

Rather than asking what foot patrol does to improve matters (I believe it does, but it's hard to prove), letting cops walk foot would shift the burden to asking what cars do to improve policing (and it's been proven cars don't improve patrol). Simply placing the burden on defending car patrol would be a huge and productive shift in police culture and patrol.

Even better, you would let patrol officers determine the best way to police without cars. From the top down, it would never work. From the ground up, this could be effective.

Here’s the system: at the start of the shift, officers either take the car keys or don’t. Anything else is up to them. They can grab their keys any time they want. But if they do, they don’t get the gas money for the day. They’re welcome to get a ride to their post. But they’re not allowed to team up with another officer in a car and split the gas money. That’s the only rule.

Brilliant or crazy?

Car vs Foot Patrol

There's a good discussion I've been contributing to in the comments section from a post in marginal revolution.

Demand More Foot Patrol

More foot patrol is always possible. Back in the days, all patrol was foot patrol. Our almost complete dedication to cars responding to dispatched calls is a choice we make... or maybe a choice made for us. But if we really wanted and demanded more foot patrol, we could have it. Police departments need to defend car patrol with something better than tradition and response time. Here's an op-ed I wrote a few years back for the cause.

One of my favorite pictures shows how it was done in 1911 New York City, at least in theory. Maybe today cops shouldn't stand in the middle of intersections like bowling pins, but the idea is better than any patrol done today.
(If anybody knows the source of this picture, let me know. I got it from an old Yale Alumni Magazine. They could only tell me they thought it was public domain.)

I [heart] foot patrol

The smart folks at Marginal Revolution mentioned my book again. There's nothing I like talking about more than foot patrol.

The following are taken mostly from a comment I wrote to this post.

The Kansas City Preventative Patrol experiment is the most amazingly ignored police study ever. For police and crime prevention, it’s one of the few scientific studies ever (meaning there was actually a control group). It showed that a post with no “randomly patrolling” cars has no more crime than a post with twice as many cars. Cars don’t matter. Cops only need to be in cars to backup other police officers. Almost everything else could be done by foot and bike.

And yet the Kansas City study changed nothing. It’s ignored because police officers like cars and the police department is tied to radio dispatch. Culturally, it’s almost impossible to get police out of cars. Policing on foot is hard work. It’s usually punishment. So even cops who liked foot patrol, like me, didn’t want to do it.

In cars you can stay dry and warm (or cool) and listen to the radio. You can also more easily avoid crazy and stinky people that want to talk to you. Why do you think police hang out in cars in the back of remote parking lots?

People don’t feel safer with more police cars driving around (or sitting in parking lots) Putting more cops on foot *does* make people safer. See the Newark Foot Patrol Experiment (Police Foundation 1981) and common sense. It’s very debatable if foot patrol reduces crime. I think it does. But I may be wrong. But if people want more foot patrol (and they do), why not give it to them?

When patrol cars first hit the street, cars were supposed to save money (and oh yeah, eliminate crime). That didn’t happen. More foot patrol is not a matter of needing resources; it’s a matter of priorities and will. It’s not the citizens or the politicians who want car patrol, it’s the police.

My idea to get police officers out of cars is to give patrol officers, if they patrol on foot, the gas money they saved. Police model Crown Vics go through about 3/4 of a gas tank per shift. Cops don’t want to walk the beat, but $30 per shift could change that.