Over 100 mayors, city officials and police personnel attended the Community Policing Workshop to Prevent Youth Violence at the 67th Annual Conference of Mayors in New Orleans on June 14. The workshop, moderated by St. Louis Mayor Clarence Harmon, focused on the important role of community policing in youth violence prevention and deterrence. In addition to a discussion by mayors and police officials, the Director of External Affairs at the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) at the U.S. Department of Justice, Tim Quinn, discussed the future of the COPS Program and offered his insights into the future of community policing. New Orleans Police Superintendent Richard Pennington also outlined the benefits of crime mapping to prevent crime.

"Over 11,000 communities have benefited from the COPS program through community policing grants," Tim Quinn told the workshop participants, "and we have seen a resulting decrease in crime rates in cities across the country. But the COPS program is like a sick patient right now, and we’re not really sure what Congress is going to do with the program. The cure may lay in mayor’s hands, because you have been on the front lines of COPS implementation and you have seen how this program works in your communities."

The mayors present were unanimously supportive of the COPS program and discussed the need to make their support known to Congress. "This program is critically important to the decreasing crime rate throughout the country," Fremont Mayor Gus Morrison said.

"We have seen a 48 percent decrease in murders, a 40 percent decrease in violent crime, a 27 percent decrease in non-violent crime and a 24 percent decrease in overall crime in the city of New Orleans," Police Superintendent told the session, "and there is no question that community policing has played a critical role in that decrease."

"St. Louis has adopted an approach to youth violence prevention that focuses on crisis intervention and prevention that is rooted in the philosophy of Community Oriented Policing, and it is significantly successful," Mayor Harmon told the crowd. "We know this works and we must continue to implement it."

"We come to the issue of youth violence at a crucial time for our country and our individual communities," Mayor Harmon said in opening the youth violence prevention discussion. "School shootings across the country, including Littleton, Colorado, signal that there is a crucial failure in our ability to identify potentially violent kids and get them the help they need."

"But if we are to treat the problem of youth violence we must look for ways to prevent it, being proactive rather than reactive. The question becomes - how do we collect all of these pieces of information - the opinions of friends, fellow students, principals, guidance counselors, teachers - prior to a crime so we can intervene and hopefully work to prevent it?"

Harmon then went on the describe St. Louis’ successful Gun Suppression Program, conducted by the police department. Under this program, specially trained officers who become aware that a youth may be in possession of a firearm visit the home of the youth and ask the parent, or adult in charge, for permission to search the youth’s room, promising not to prosecute on illegal weapons charges. If a firearm is found, it is confiscated and the parents are asked if they want a referral to a gang outreach program.

St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman then addressed the session outlining the need to embrace community policing as a philosophy and a frame of mind, rather than a program. "Your police need to become part of the fabric of the community," he said. "Our community police officers deal with crack dealers, but they also deal with bad landlords. They attend to all the concerns of the neighborhood which creates community buy-in to the overall effort the prevent crime. It’s the vigorous enforcement of graffiti, truancy, public drunkenness and other quality of life crimes that has a profound impact on other more serious crimes. We know what works! It’s been established in cities across the country. We need to provide the leadership needed to make sure that what works gets done!"

"We have invested $20 million in our public safety agenda, including police, fire and city attorneys," Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton told the participants. "We followed the lead of Boston, New Orleans and New York and implemented the COMSTAT crime mapping technology. We’re focusing on quality of life misdemeanor crimes and it’s working!"

To better serve her city’s young people, Mayor Sayles Belton established a Youth Coordinating Board to do an assessment of all youth-oriented activities in Minneapolis and survey the city’s youth to determine what they knew about these activities and the agencies that ran them. It was determined that kids had no idea what services and programs were available to them, and their parents were equally unaware.

So Mayor Sayles Belton initiated a Youth Hotline, staffed by young people, so that kids can call in to find out about the city’s youth programs. The hotline has been a tremendous success. So much so that Minneapolis’ twin city, St. Paul, asked to use the same model and line to promote its youth programs.

Salt Lake City Mayor Corradini stressed early intervention, outlining her city’s Success by Six program and Community Action teams. Under Success by Six, program personnel knock on doors looking for pregnant woman and offer them free pre-natal, post-natal and parenting skills services.

Her police force established Community Action Teams where everyone at the police department was responsible for a block district of the city, requiring them to go out and determine what the neighborhood in their district needed and who the neighborhood leaders were. "This established a collaborative effort that strengthened police-community relations and set in place the groundwork for strong community policing," Mayor Corradini said.

"Physical fitness is also critical," Mayor Corradini told the participants. "Art, music and physical fitness need to be brought back into the school curriculum! It has been proven that kids who are involved in sports, music and arts program stay out of trouble, and we need to promote these programs for our young people."

Boston Police Commissioner Paul Evans showed a ten minute video on his city’s Strategy to Prevent Youth Violence with a focus on the Boston Streetworkers program. He then shared Boston’s theme of partnership to prevent youth violence. "We have a three-pronged approach," Commissioner Evans said, "prevention, intervention and enforcement. Our 11 police districts jointly set goals and we have social workers within the police department. Our successful youth violence prevention programs - Operation Nitelite and Operation Cease-fire - bring as many people to the table as possible. We work closely with the clergy and community-based organizations to work with our kids. We ask people to step out of their traditional roles and look at the bigger picture and it’s working."