The C-PACT Blotter

Thanks to Chief Robshaw for the following piece:

CRIME IS DOWN. WHY?

Crime in the Town of Cheverly is down some 30% from the previous year at this time, amounting to the lowest 1st Quarter total since the Department first began keeping such statistics electronically in August of 1979.

Quantifying our success is the easy part. The more difficult task is offering tangible reasons as to why crime is down.

I believe there are five such reasons:

1. An Active Community Response – Far and away, the biggest determiner of any jurisdiction’s crime rate is the extent to which residents take an active interest and involvement in crime issues. The more often resident’s voice their concerns, call in the their complaints, and contribute to deterrence, the more likely it is that crime will be positively affected by these actions. The key to crime reduction in any jurisdiction is resident involvement, and the outstanding response of Cheverly’s residents has contributed greatly to current crime reduction efforts.

2. C-PACT and Cheverly Watch Programs – C-PACT, Cheverly’s Neighborhood Watch Organization, and Cheverly Watch, Cheverly’s resident radio program, have harnessed the power of resident involvement into an outstanding partnership with the CPD. What makes these programs work is that they are both proactive in identifying and addressing the causes of crime; they both take advantage of resident’s intrinsic knowledge of community and neighborhood issues; and, both programs have established unique and lasting lines of communication between resident and police officer.

3. Specific Enforcement Schemes – The Department has long realized that random patrol is not an effective crime deterrence mechanism. In lieu of such efforts, the Department instead pursues a policy of concentrating its main focus on specific “hot spots” or areas that generally create the bulk of reported crime. It is this policy that makes Task Force operations, plainclothes enforcement, and high-visibility deterrence so effective.

4. Police Department Staffing – For the past three years specifically, the Department has made great strides towards attaining a maximum compliment of officers and civilian employees. With full staffing, the Department has increased its investigative response capability and enabled the formulation of the current Task Force to address specific crime problems.

5. Code Enforcement Efforts – The “Broken Windows” Theory is promulgated on the belief that if one allows “broken windows” (i.e., abandoned autos, poorly maintained properties, litter, infestation, etc.) to go on undeterred, a message gets reinforced that the surrounding community is accepting of such chaos and the resulting escalation of damaging activities. Code enforcement efforts in Cheverly have been established to instead project an image that Cheverly is a concerned and active community of residents who will not tolerate such infractions, much less the presence of any crime.

What he said.

(Plus the fact that this blog emits magical crook-repelling rays.)