Communication is Key
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years as a Chicago cop, it’s that police and community residents share a common concern for maintaining safe neighborhoods.
Beatrice Cuello, Deputy Superintendent of Patrol, Chicago Police Department
As commander of the 10th district, developing strong relationships with residents was critical in my ability, and that of my colleagues, to address quality-of-life concerns such as noise abatement and unruly conduct, as well as more serious crime and safety problems.
Establishing a “no problem was too small” policy went a long way in encouraging residents to keep us informed about what we were doing right, and wrong, in their neighborhoods.
CLEARpath, the police department website that allows residents to voice their concerns, is the latest chapter intended to strengthen police/community partnerships throughout the city.
That effort – an online resource that allows the police and residents to be in constant 24-hour communication – is central to the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) mission.
In fact, CLEARpath itself was the product of an extraordinary police/community partnership in which representatives from three Chicago neighborhoods worked with the department for several years designing a website that met their needs as well as ours.
A Chicago Police Officer works with the new CLEARpath website at its unveiling.
The police/community mantra isn’t just lip service. It actually works. And there’s a snowballing effect. The more people who get involved working with police, the better the neighborhood gets. And the better the neighborhood gets, the more people get involved. When residents observe the positive engagement among police and their neighbors, it is usually possible to encourage a stronger partnership that will build respect, cooperation and trust.
And it’s a two-way street. When communications between police and residents are good, we become aware of significant problems we might otherwise have overlooked. Identifying and solving those problems helps us decide how and where to deploy resources most effectively. This allows for organizational learning by both groups to share the successes and create new strategies that make neighborhoods better and stronger.
In my current position as Deputy Superintendent of Patrol, I’m committed to the notion of police officers and community members working together to solve problems. CAPS and CLEARpath are forums intended to encourage honest, unfettered communication among police and Chicago residents. We hope everyone will take advantage of them.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Working Capital, the quarterly newsletter of LISC/Chicago. See the entire issue, or back copies. For a related article, please click here.