An Urban Solution in a Suburban Setting

Urban public housing police have been so successful that suburban agencies are now trying them out

First published in Police & Security News, July/August 2002

Open-air drug sales. Gangs. Violence – domestic and otherwise. Vandalism. Those familiar with public housing know that these and other problems have given “the projects” a bad reputation. Mention ideas for garden shows, bicycle rodeos, and homework/computer labs, and you’d probably hear laughter – and a dozen reasons why they wouldn’t work.

Or would you? In recent years, such events have been happening – without incident - in public housing communities nationwide, and the criminal activity has been decreasing. Why? Housing authority resource officers.

Urban police departments have invested officers in public housing since the mid and late 1980s. Many cities, including Boston (Massachusetts), Chicago, and Washington, D.C., have their own public housing police departments. Their job, much like school resource officers’, is to dedicate their time and energy to these specific community segments. As with schools, other patrol officers respond only when needed, and housing officers act as liaisons between residents and other law enforcement personnel, like detectives.

Urban public housing police have been so successful that suburban agencies are now trying them out. And while suburban housing officers aren’t as common as their school counterparts, four officers in Seacoast New Hampshire’s “Tri-City” area show that even a few adjacent officers benefit police, housing residents, and communities at large.

The officers and their communities

The Tri-City population comprises the cities of Dover, Rochester, and Somersworth and roughly 67,000 people, which is only a small fraction of Boston’s, Washington’s, and Chicago’s individual populations. All three cities grew up around manufacturing; many of the old mills still stand, some converted into office or apartment buildings. The cities’ nearby situation to Interstate 95 via the Spaulding Turnpike provides easy access to Boston, Portland (Maine), and a host of New England tourist attractions.

Each city has several public-housing communities for both elderly residents and families. Dover’s family housing area, Mineral and Whittier Park, is largest in the area and second largest in the state, with 184 units. Rochester’s Cold Spring Manor has 60 units; Albert J. Nadeau Homes, in Somersworth, include 56 units. Although elderly security issues are important, and the housing officers do address them, the majority of problems have come from the family units – so that’s where the officers concentrate.

Dover Officers Mark Leno and Brian Cummer, Rochester Officer Tony Triano, and Somersworth Sergeant David Pratt all volunteered as housing officers when local housing authority administrators sought proactive, rather than reactive, police assistance. Having worked in patrol for a number of years, they’d responded to plenty of public housing calls. “When the position opened in 1989,” says Leno, “community policing wasn’t yet a buzzword, and the Housing Authority had only asked us in for a year. I knew the residents needed a foundation to trust the police, and I had an idea of how to create it, so I volunteered.” (The program was so successful, says Leno, that when the year ended, a number of residents petitioned the Dover Housing Authority and the police department to keep it going.) Pratt’s and Triano’s starts were similar; their interest in juvenile issues drove their decisions.

What they do

When the officers first arrived, controlling the crime was job one. Problems like drug dealing and domestic violence were endemic in the communities, though not widespread. As in many population groups, 20 percent of the residents were causing 80 percent of the problem. Residents also weren’t reporting crimes; as Pratt puts it, “They didn’t want to be seen as the ‘project rat.’”

Leno’s first act, thus, was walking door-to-door, introducing himself and handing out resident surveys. Triano also conducted surveys, asking residents for their opinions about the problems, who and what caused them, and how the residents were willing to help prevent them. Crimewatches were established, and soon reports started flowing. “Our full-time presence shows the residents that we care about their problems,” Triano says. “They report things they otherwise wouldn’t.”

The reports enabled the police and the Housing Authority to weed out troublesome residents. “Public housing is supposed to be temporary, so its lease requirements are very strict,” says Triano. “HUD [the federal office of Housing and Urban Development] has a zero-tolerance policy on domestic violence and alcohol- and drug-related offenses, so evictions were relatively easy to obtain.” Now, prospective residents must undergo police checks in order to move in. Once approved, part of the informational package the Dover residents receive is a brochure outlining the community officer program. “They know about us from Day 1,” Leno says.

Policing remains integral to the officers’ work. Although public housing is the officers’ sole beat, and they walk more frequently than they drive, they still respond to residents’ calls for service. They also participate in, or at least stay abreast of, neighborhood-related investigations; their close community ties often enable them to provide leads. Pratt, for example, recounted helping to shut down drug dealers. “I reported to my captain, who’s also the detective captain, about a house I suspected was a base for drug sales,” says Pratt. “He took the report to the state drug task force, whose undercover operation cleaned the dealers out.”

Once major problems like this were eliminated, Crimewatch meeting agendas turned from crime control tactics to crime prevention strategy. Still working to foster residents’ trust, the officers organized community cleanups, believing that visibly improving the communities’ quality of life was critical. For instance, says Triano, Cold Spring Manor had become a “dumping ground” for unwanted vehicles. “Abandoned cars were everywhere,” he says. “We started monthly sweeps and fined the offenders.” Now, the area no longer looks like a junkyard. To this day, community cleanups in all three areas happen regularly.

Beautification, however, is only a small part of the officers’ community policing. Their primary focus, which some would say is the program’s heart and soul, is on juveniles – not just juvenile crime, but also juvenile needs. It starts with the “Safe Haven,” an afterschool program that’s based on the Japanese koban, a police kiosk or ministation built into the community it serves. Among the Safe Haven’s juvenile-targeted interventions:

• Homework/computer labs give kids a place to turn for help with schoolwork. The kids earn points for the homework they do, which count toward rewards like field trips to tourist or educational attractions.
• Dover’s Safe Haven additionally sponsors a range of activities for kids ages 5 through 18, including creative exercises like moviemaking and cooking.
• All three communities sponsor Police Athletic League basketball teams. PAL officers use the opportunity to educate the kids about drugs, alcohol, and other dangers.
• From Somersworth, some teens attended a police academy-style “boot camp” sponsored by the New Hampshire Chiefs of Police Association and the New Hampshire Police Academy.
• Annual bicycle rodeos let the kids show off their “wheels,” and allow the officers to teach them about traffic safety.
• Spring and fall community cleanups help teach the kids about civic pride and responsibility.
• Block parties let the whole community enjoy a summertime street-style party with barbeque, contests, and games.
• Pratt combined housing authority duties when he took some kids to visit Somersworth’s elderly housing residents. “They made crafts together. They had a great time,” he says.

The Safe Haven concept isn’t just about fun and games, though; it’s meant to supplement schools’ and parents’ efforts. “The [nonprofit funding grantor] Milton Eisenhower Foundation requires Safe Havens to run a mentoring program,” says Melissa Silvey, Civilian Director of Mineral and Whittier Park’s Seymour Osman Community Center. “Our community center’s staff members mentor a total of 50 kids. We meet with them regularly to talk about their grades, their short-term goals and objectives, and how to plan for the future.” This aim in mind, Pratt and Anastra Madden, Civilian Director of Nadeau Homes’ Safe Haven, have begun taking young teens to the nearby University of New Hampshire, “to show them that higher education is accessible.” Pratt has also served as a mentor to many of the adults in the Nadeau Homes, helping them through Adult Education or into steady jobs.

Mineral and Whittier Park’s Safe Haven further helps prepare juveniles for society through “conflict resolution and experiential learning programs.” These include separate boys’ and girls’ groups; a “Mini-Society” that teaches them how to set up and run businesses or governments; and a “Kids’ Court” in which “plaintiffs” and “defendants” plead grievances (not juvenile criminal cases) before a “judge” and “jury” of their peers, helping to “instill and enhance a sense of accountability” in children. In the future, the Osman Center staff wants to develop a delinquency prevention program that will draw together parents, schools, the community and other concerned parties.

None of it would work, says Silvey, without the officers’ willingness to volunteer. “It’s critical for the officers to be sensitive to the residents’ issues with earning low incomes and living in public housing,” she says. “And the crime statistics reflect what kind of officer the community is dealing with.”

How they work

First, the funding. Money for the police program comes from a number of different sources besides city coffers, according to Dover Housing Authority Director Jack Buckley. These sources include HUD, the Department of Justice, and the Milton Eisenhower Foundation. Local corporations, like Rochester-based computer firm Cabletron, donate items like computers. And states might have their own funding sources, like PlusTime New Hampshire, which funds afterschool activities for kids between the ages of 6 and 18. Further, non-housing-specific crime prevention grants, like the Justice Department’s Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Formula Grant, can help officers like Cummer, who works almost exclusively with “at-risk” youth.

Silvey says that a major funding source, the HUD Drug Elimination Grant, will be phased out next year. HUD is proposing an 8 percent subsidy to replace it, but that will still leave the Osman Center with a budget shortfall. Buckley says DHA will do what it needs, however, to ensure the program stays, taking money from its capital or operating budgets to pay for Leno’s and Cummer’s positions and relying on other grant sources for the rest of the program, including the facilities, programs, and civilian staff.

The officers and the Housing Authority staff receive outside staffing help, too. At Cold Spring Manor, occupational therapy interns from the University of New Hampshire came for six months to help start a homework lab; in Somersworth, AmeriCorps volunteers help run the lab. Members of local fire departments, emergency medical services, and the National Guard members have taken time to help educate residents about various public safety concerns.
While the three police programs share characteristics, distinctions exist. In Somersworth, Pratt shares an office with Housing Authority staff in the Safe Haven building, rather than work from a substation. His uniform and cruiser are colored gray, a color his chief felt would make him more approachable, and say “Housing” rather than “Police Department.”

Triano, unlike the others, lives in his housing community. The HUD grant that pays him makes a provision for any one officer to live in public housing for three years at minimum rent. Triano, who’s taking advantage of the benefit to save money for a house, says his living arrangement is both a blessing and a curse. He’s on site to help residents when they need him; however, even though his neighbors are “pretty good” about leaving him alone when he’s off duty, he says he still feels as if he’s never really away from work.

Mineral and Whittier Park is the only community with two officers, one to staff the substation and handle resident reports, the other at the community center and Safe Haven. Leno, who says that handling both tasks in such a large community would be a strain for one officer, likes the opportunity to be truly proactive. “I can take time with the reports, not just responding to them but also analyzing them to determine trends,” he says.

The officers set their hours in response to the communities’ needs. Officers working in the Safe Haven generally start in late morning and end in early evening, when children are most likely to be there. They also adjust their schedules in response to reported problems, e.g. vandalism happening late at night. So as not to lose touch with their patrol colleagues, they encourage other officers to tell them about calls or investigations in or affecting the communities.

The officers’ training combines community-policing workshops with national conferences for housing officers. PlusTime New Hampshire provides local workshops, as does the Regional Policing Institute of New England. Whatever previous training and experience they bring helps too: for instance, Leno’s three years of detective work, and his crime scene technician certification, gives him a valuable advantage when crimes happen in his community. Informally, the officers reap the benefit of close proximity when they share information about their respective jobs, much as they would on an interjurisdictional case. Dover’s program, the oldest of the three, has been an “invaluable” resource to Pratt and Triano as they started their programs.

The impact

The housing officers’ impact is largely subjective. In fact, the officers facetiously say that if administrators went by numbers alone, they’d probably yank the officers: numbers of reported crimes have actually increased! However, the officers stress that this is because the residents no longer fear reporting. They note that serious crimes have virtually disappeared (drug dealing still exists, but is underground, with the residents more likely than not to report suspected activity). Residents are quick to report minor problems, like juvenile vandalism – and almost all of these cases get solved.

Pratt says that sociological researchers from UNH are working on a prospective, long-term evaluation of the housing officer and Safe Haven programs. “Their numbers will come from our activities,” he says. “They’ll be looking not only at the crime numbers, but also tracking the kids’ goals and career plans, and what happens to them after they turn 18. They also want to assess the area immediately surrounding the village.”

Leno believes the job affects the officer, too. “The results you get reflect on you,” he says. The officers say many of the residents view them as friends. “Which is tough,” says Pratt, “when you respond to, say, a domestic violence problem at their houses.” But the mutual trust also makes it easier for them to intervene in such situations.

Triano says that when he first started the job, many of his colleagues felt it would negatively impact them. “They saw it as taking an officer off the street, that they’d have to spread themselves thin answering calls,” he says. Before he arrived, the frequency of police responses to Cold Spring Manor was disproportionately high compared to other areas of the city. Now, because he works directly with so many residents, that frequency has dropped. “My job has made their jobs easier,” says Triano – to the point where some colleagues have expressed a desire to see similar ministations in other areas of the city. Leno’s experience was similar: his work with Mineral and Whittier Park encouraged other officers to start their own community policing initiatives, including school resource officer programs.

Leno cited two instances where his work helped show the community at large that “the projects” were no longer to be mistrusted. The first incident involved a jogger who was struck by a paintball as he ran through the neighborhood. Interviews of nearby residents revealed that a teenager in the area owned a paintball gun. Leno found this teenager was, indeed, responsible for the attack. “I called the jogger and told him we’d found out who was responsible, and that we were taking the appropriate measures,” he says. “He still jogs through the neighborhood.”

The second incident involved a weekend theft from the office trailer of a construction firm working on a nearby highway project. Residents saw some local juveniles break into the trailer and come back out carrying property. They notified Leno, who investigated the report and made an arrest that same weekend. “I called the construction company Monday morning, before they even had a chance to report the crime,” he says. “I told them we’d made an arrest and recovered the property. They were astounded.”

When asked what ultimately makes a housing officer successful, the officers believe partnership – cooperating with the people they serve – makes all the difference. “We don’t tell the residents what to do,” Leno says. “They know what the problems are; they know what they want. It would be counterproductive to come in and decide what to do without having their input.”