ST. LOUIS • Police Chief Dan Isom boasts about how his officers have been successful in reducing crime, but he admits that nobody knows why.
"We look at the data and throw 10 different things at a neighborhood to reduce crime, but we really don't know which one worked," he says.
Isom, along with Mayor Francis Slay's office, is hoping a partnership with criminology researchers from the University of Missouri 50¶È»ÒÊÓƵ — approved during Wednesday's Board of Police Commissioners meeting — will answer those questions and lead to other crime-reducing strategies.
The relationship, dubbed the 50¶È»ÒÊÓƵ Public Safety Partnership, is an unconventional move for the police department, historically one of the city's most insular institutions. But it's one Isom believes will help make better use of its time. Use of academics has proven helpful in other cities, he said.
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"We have the resources here to draw down deep into what we're doing and see if it's actually working," said Isom, also an UMSL alumnus.
Although the police board vote was unanimous, Commissioner Bettye Battle-Turner asked about the cost before throwing her support behind it the plan.
Slay said the university has volunteered its help for now. He said any long-term costs that arise would be covered through private funds, grants or money saved within the city's $250 million public safety budget by efficiencies the researchers identify.
It's also going to involve some buy-in from the officers, said Richard Rosenfeld, an UMSL criminologist.
"The last thing we want to do is tell this department what it should and should not be doing," Rosenfeld cautioned. "We want to assist this department by enhancing it's existing strategies."
Starting next month, a researcher from the university will spend 20 hours a week embedded at police headquarters to begin examining crime-fighting strategies.
One that Rosenfeld said has proven effective is "hot-spot policing," which focuses officers on a crime-spike area.
It's "beyond the ‘flavor of the month' stage," he said. "But we'll be asking questions such as, ‘Is it more effective in reducing burglaries than drug sales? Is moving into an area and making arrests the best way to respond or is just police presence, being very visible and refraining from making a lot of arrests a better way to go?'"
The strategy gets down to the precise number of minutes an officer should spend in a given area, and eliminates traditional district boundaries, Rosenfeld explained.
Rosenfeld's group also will work with other public safety agencies, including probation and parole, corrections and the circuit attorney's office.
The city spends $250 million a year on police, prosecutors, courts, corrections, probation and parole, Slay said. "We want to make sure we're putting those resources into things that work and not on things that don't work."
He said he expects one target will be cooordinating the efforts of separately managed public safety agencies.
Rosenfeld said another proven strategy is a "focused deterrence" that gives an ultimatum to known offenders to stop committing crimes or face harsh consequences. That approach is based on the "Ceasefire" model, which originated in Boston.
"There will be skepticism," said Eddie Roth, the mayor's chief performance officer and former member of the police board. "But part of the legitimacy of it is that the community is saying we know who you are and is stepping up to appeal to their morals and say, ‘We love you, but it's over. You can't live like that anymore and neither can we.'"
Another strategy, known as "Project Hope," has shown success in Hawaii, where parolees are given precise and gradual sanctions that include enhanced monitoring and short jail terms for minor violations instead of being sent back to prison.