Good Police and Happy People

[PrinceofLowLight]

I've been roped into writing an essay on improving public relations for police forces, through means I'll not go into. This seems like a good place to look for ideas...

Basically, what would all you wonderful people suggest for a more "positive relations between the NYPD annd the many cultural and ethnic groups in New York City"?roll: My original idea was "If the people are safe, they'll be happy and we don't need to pander to cultural stereotypes to have an effective police force that people trust", but that doesn't fill up 5 pages.

Help...

[salm]

they could stop checking us more often when i´m on the street with my buddy and his girlfriend. his girlfriend is black.

[Queeb Salaron]

In the early '90s, there was a rash of violent crime in both NYC and Boston. The two cities handled it very differently. NYC increased police forces on the streets, doubled up on nightwatches, patroled residential neighborhoods, and were told to investigate anything suspicious at all. Crime did go down a bit (not a whole lot, but just enough to please the taxpayers who looked at the stats alone). The interesting part was, though, that reports of police brutality skyrocketed. People felt as though they were constantly being watched, constantly suspected for crimes that they would never commit. From 10-year old boys to 85-year old women, it seemed as though every demographic was represented in the filings of complaints to the police.

At the same time, about 400 miles away, Boston was experiencing a similar rash of violent crime. The Boston Police Dept. implemented a sort of city-wide neighborhood watch program (the name of this program escapes me at the moment). Basically, residents of Boston were told to report crimes or suspicious activity to the police whenever they saw it, and to keep an eye out for it. Instead of the police placing the whole city under surveilance, a job that cost NYC an enormous amount of money and manpower, the residents kept their eyes out and reported what they saw. The result? Violent crime plummeted. There were more than 200 murders in 1991. In 1996, there were less than 30. Boston's system became the model for the nation as far as crime prevention was concerned.

Might wanna throw that in your essay.

EDIT: As for the Bostonian's relations with the police: the incidents of police brutality have remained exceptionally low in Boston, and everyone that I've talked to has nothing bad to say about the BPD. Indeed, they're some of the nicest people you'll meet in Boston, which is saying a lot considering we're a generally amicable town.