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0 CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT

PAX 501 MattL.Rodrtguez, Superlntendentof Pollce

VOLUllE94 lJULT 1994 NUllBER. 2

A NEW RESOURCE FOR UNDERSTANDING CAPS

The Citywide implementation of CAPS is well under way. Officers in all districts are

working steady beat assignments. supervisors have received CAPS management training,

District Advisory Committees have been organized. and all districts are now on-line with the

CAPS City services request process. Many districts have begun to hold regular meetings on

the beat, and this summer all zones will begin converting to the new CAPS dispatch policy.

As CAPS continues to expand, it will become increasingly important for all of us to

understand our new strategy and to be able to answer questions from the public about it. A

new resource-a series of nine CAPS training bulletins-will be available this summer to

assist you in this regard.

For beat and rapid response officers, the training bulletins will be presented as part of

a nine-week program of CAPS Roll-Call Training that begins this month. But as I emphasized in

Together We Can, all parts of the Department-including investigative, management, and

support functions-must act in a unified manner for our strategy to succeed. In the future, the

Department will develop training materials that focus on their unique roles and how these

other units contribute to CAPS. In the meantime, the new training bulletins should help all of

you to explain and answer some basic questions about CAPS.

I am including the first of the training bulletins with this PAX 501 because it gets to the

heart of why we are changing. The Chicago Police Department is changing because over the

last 30 years society and the nature of crime have changed dramatically, but our policing

model has not. As a Department, we have excelled at the traditional model of policing, but the

traditional model has not al lowed us to have a lasting impact on crime or the public's fear of

crime.

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• Does this mean the Department is totally abandoning traditional policing? Not at all. )

CAPS combines the best elements of traditional police work with new, more proactive

approaches to fighting crime. Police officers are still responsible for vigorous and impartial

enforcement of the law and rapid response to serious crimes and life-threatening

emergencies. But CAPS also gives officers new tools and new resources (including those of

other City agencies and, importantly, the community) to fight crime and neighborhood

disorder.

What, then, is CAPS, and how is it different from community policing strategies in other

cities? Like many community policing strategies, CAPS emphasizes problem solving and

partnership with the community. But unlike most other comparable strategies, CAPS has the

support of the entire City government. Furthermore, the responsibility for implementing our

new policing strategy is not being relegated to a few officers or a special program: the

Department as a whole has been committed to CAPS. Problem solving, partnership with the

community, support of other City agencies, and Department-wide change-these are the

essential elements that make CAPS the most effective strategy for Chicago.

The nine CAPS training bulletins cover many other questions you or the community may

have. Understanding our new strategy is an important first step in successfully implementing

it-this is true for both the police and the community. But understanding is only a first step.

Change will not take place simply because the Department has articulated the vision or the

ideal of what CAPS is. Change begins with you, and with your willingness to work with the

community in making the ideal of CAPS a reality in Chicago.

Matt L. Rodriguez

Superintendent of Police

CAPS training bulletins will be distributed at roll call to district law enforcement personnel

throughout the summer. For other members, copies are available from the Research and Development Division.

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0 A resource and training tool for carrying out the Chicago Alternative Po licing Strategy

Rationale .2 Change Why Are We Changing? The Chicago Police Department is changing-not because we

haven't excelled at what we've been doing for the last 30 years~ut because our best

efforts have not had a lasting impact on crime or the public's fear of crime.

How Are We Changing? Together We Can is the Superintendent's vision of

what changes are needed. It describes the scope and nature of these changes. CAPS-the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy-is the Department's answer to how we get there.

The Scope of the Change

Everyone has heard the com­ment, "CAPS is nothing new. Many of us have been doing community policing for our entire careers."

It is true that some of the prin­ciples and techniques of CAPS and community policing have

.....-----------------------------, been used in isolated situations

Three Critical Reasons for Change 1. The causes of crime have changed and become more complicated. Many are based in social conditions and institutions over which the police have traditionally exercised little control.

• More than one·third of Chicago's children are growing up in poverty

• Child abuse and neglect have increased

• Half of Chicago's public school students drop out

• Drug and alcohol abuse is more widespread

2. The nature of crime has changed--crime is more violent Md indis­criminate.

3. Resources have not kept up with demands-not only for police, but for social services that directly impact crime and neighborhood safety. The gap between demands and resources is widening-forcing us to "do more" and to "work smarter."

and programs. What has been missing is a Departmentwide commitment to the principles of community policing. CAPS will change the way the entire

Chicago Police Department operates.

Some of the changes are already evident at the District level­officers have been given steady beat assignments and all dis­

tricts are now on-line with the CAPS Service Request process. Changes that go deeper into Department policies, proce­dures, and systems will evolve over the next three to five years .

...-----------..... CAPS-and the changes that CAPS Roll.Call Training Bulletin, No. 1 come with it-will affect Produced by the Research and everybody in all units of the Development Division, · in conjunction with the Training Division, Department. There are no Chicago Police Department "CAPS officers, " because every Matt L Rodriguez, Superintendent .___ __________ _, Department member is a part

of CAPS.

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A resource and training tool for carrying out the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy

The Limitations of Traditional Policing

Like most other urban police agencies, the Chicago Police Department has used the same approach to policing for the last three decades.

As individuals and as a Depart­ment, we have excelled at the traditional model of policing:

• Index arrests have increased 20 percent over the last decade.

• Drug arrests doubled in the 1980s.

• Our efforts helped push Illinois' prison population higher by 243 percent over the last two decades.

• The Department is handling 4 million calls for service a year.

Yet the Department's best ef­forts under the traditional polic­ing model have not produced the necessary results: (1) a lasting impact on crime and (2) an im­proved sense of individual safety and neighborhood well-being.

The problem has not been the Department's implementation of traditional policing-the prob­lem has been the llmltations of traditional policing itself.

The limitations of traditional policing are documented in re­search cited in Together We Can. Many in the Department have been around long enough to know they're true.

• Preventive patrol by automo­bile has produced inconsistent results as a crime-fighting activ­ity. The famous Kansas City Pre­ventive Patrol Study showed that doubling the number of squad cars patrolling the streets did not affect serious crime levels.

• Rapid response to calls for service does not significantly af­fect apprehension rates. What really matters is the speed with which a victim or witness con­tacts the police.

• Traditional policing has relied heavily on forensic technology. But citizen information, as much as technology, is key to identify­ing offenders and solving crimes.

• With traditional policing, the police have relied on index crime rates to measure success. But other indicators-including citi­zen fear-are also important in measuring levels of neighbor­hood safety and public satisf ac­tion with the police. Despite decreases in crime in the last two years, surveys show that citizen fear is up. When people abandon their streets, parks, neighborhood stores, and other local institutions in fear for their safety, they invite even more criminal activity into their neighborhoods.

• Finally, citizen fear is often more closely tied to neighbor­hood disorder (loitering, graffiti, abandoned building and cars, etc.) than actual crime levels. · Traditional policing downplayed order maintenance, not recogniz­ing its connection to fear and crime levels.

Not Soft on Crime

Does this mean the Department Is totally abandoning traditional policing? Not at all.

The Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy retains the best of tradi­tional policing. Police officers are still responsible for vigorous and impartial enforcement of the law and rapid response to seri­ous crimes and life-threatening emergencies.

CAPS is not soft on crime. In fact, experience from the proto­type districts suggests that ar­rests and other activity levels remain high. The quality of those arrests and of other traditional police work has also improved.

In addition to traditional policing methods, CAPS provides new tools, such as problem solving and the resources of the com­munity and other agencies, to fight crime and disorder.

CAPS Bulletins This bulletin is the first in a series of rolk:all training bulletins for CAPS:

Rationale for Change

CAPS Definition

CAPS Organization

Beat Integrity

Seat Meetings

City Services

Beat Profiling

Problem Solving

Team Building

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