City’s community policing receives more high praise
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
By Gregory Smith
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Prof. Herman Goldstein, whom Police Chief Dean M. Esserman calls “the father of community policing,” dropped by police headquarters yesterday.
Goldstein’s internationally influential book, Problem-Oriented Policing, is mandatory study for supervisors vying for promotion in the Police Department.
His thesis is that policing is so difficult and complex that the problems the police confront must be broken down and analyzed, and a body of knowledge accumulated that can spur well-informed action.
During the visit, Esserman prevailed on Goldstein to attend an award ceremony at Riverside Park that was being held to jointly honor Olneyville Housing Corporation and the Police Department for the revitalization of a significant section of Olneyville. Millions of dollars in housing was built, crime was slashed and a park was developed.
The concept of community policing is the department’s driving philosophy. It adheres to some basic principles:
- The decentralization of police work.
- Intense collaboration with community groups, citizens and other agencies inside and outside law enforcement.
- A concentration on problem-solving and prevention rather than reaction to crimes and calls for service by the public.
What has occurred in Olneyville, in many respects, is “a perfect example” of problem-oriented policing, Goldstein said after the ceremony. Rather than repetitively respond to crimes at the dens of prostitution and drug-peddling and prosecute their habituÉs in the criminal-justice system, according to problem-oriented policing, it is much preferable to take steps to eliminate those dens.
In a chat in Esserman’s office, Goldstein cited another classic example
of problem-oriented policing. For many years robberies of bus drivers
were rampant, he recalled, but the problem was solved by requiring
passengers to have the exact amount for their fare. No longer would a
driver have money to make change.
The street workers deployed by the Institute for the Study and Practice
of Nonviolence are still another effective application of
problem-oriented policing, according to Goldstein.
“You can often take steps to eliminate a problem,” Goldstein said of the police. “Or you can have other people [the institute] take steps to eliminate a problem.”
Goldstein, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Law School and a Madison, Wis., resident, was in Rhode Island to visit his brother Sidney, a longtime professor of sociology and a demographer at Brown University, who lives in Warwick. He met Esserman years ago at a forum at Harvard University and the two men have stayed in touch.
Goldstein published Problem-Oriented Policing in 1990, after many years
as a criminologist and law enforcement researcher. He began his career
as assistant manager of Portland, Maine, and became acquainted with
criminologist O.W. Wilson when Wilson came to Portland as a consultant
in 1951.
Goldstein’s public-management career took a sharp turn when he became
intrigued with Wilson’s work and began to participate. From 1960 to
1964, he served as executive assistant to Wilson, who had become the
reform police superintendent of Chicago.
“I have one foot in academia and one foot in policing,” Goldstein said.
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