The Boston Strategy > Players > Police

	Mayor
	Police Commissioner Paul Evans Supt. in Chief, Ret. Faherty Supt. Paul Joyce Lt. Det. Gary French Sgt. Robert Merner Det. Tito Whittington Ptl. Mark Buchanan Ptl. Greg Brown
	Probation
	Prosecution
	Academia
	Clergy
	Streetworkers

Commissioner Paul Evans
Boston Police Department

I can put in place the strategic planning and I can send the grant money, but when you actually have gang cops who start establishing relationships with clergy, that's where the trust is built.

I think a lot of things started happening when we decentralized, when we set the tone that we're about partnerships. This was when the police and the community sat down. The focus throughout the entire city was on kids.

Now, a lot of our commitment has been to keep the same officers in the same neighborhood, so they know who the kids are, and we build up relationships so that if we have a problem tomorrow, we have a pretty good idea what's going on, and we can successfully intervene. Contrast that with the late '80s and '90s when we were just going around picking up bodies.

When we had a problem in the old days it would have been, "OK, we're going to do warrant sweeps, do an awful lot of vehicle stops, do a lot of saturation patrols–typical police strategies." Now it's more likely to be, OK, "Who needs to be at the table? Let's get the Streetworkers, let's get the clergy, lets get the school officials."

I point to the officers who had the initial idea of "We have to show, in many ways, that we care about the kids, that we're not just interested in locking them up." And it came from officers who had extreme credibility in the organization. These officers were looked upon as some of our best people. And in many ways, they were role models. When they started sending the message out that, "You know, we have to look at this problem differently. We've got to look at different solutions." That, at the time, rang incredibly true because we'd been through some of the worst years of violence and turmoil in our city's history. So it was these very dedicated, committed police officers saying there's a different way of doing business. It was the right time, and the right place, and we were fortunate enough to have the necessary committed business partners, academia partners, to pull it off.

We didn't have all the answers, so in desperation, but not willingly, but we said "Hey, we need help here." So we started partnering with the DEA, the ATF, the US Attorney's office, the Attorney General's office, the State Police, local probation and parole, and we started the Youth Violence Strike Force. We had some very committed people at the heads of the agencies, who were just interested in getting the job done. They put the egos aside, and would sit around the table. Rather than send their delegates, they would sit personally around the table and listen to problems and say, "OK, how can we help?" or, "Hey look, we work together, and you do this, and I can do this. And maybe we can work together and come up with some creative solutions."

Well, sometimes leaders will be afraid to give away power. But one of the tenets of neighborhood policing, or community policing, is decentralizing power, putting more power into the hands of the officers on the street. And one of the things we found here is that the people closest to the problems are the ones that are most likely to come up with the solutions that are required. And that's the type of thing that's happened here. Give officers a little liberty, freedom, and they'll come up with those solutions. And again, I think to their credit, the agencies heads were just as committed: "Let's get the job done." And there was a willingness to come forward, put egos aside, and say "Let's not worry about who's going to take credit if it goes well. We'll all accept the blame if there's a problem, but let's just be about getting the job done."

We began a 'Summer of Opportunity' with John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance, a business group which was going to supply jobs for kids. Northeastern University was going to help us educate the kids. We were going to do mentoring by police officers. But I thought that was a big step. And it was a step that came from our police officers. In a bureaucracy like the Police Department, if the Police Commissioner said that this was a good idea, I don't think it would have had the type of credibility. It was coming from the police officers who worked with the kids, who were committed, who spent time with these kids. It was their program. And it was an incredible program sending all the right messages. When cops were saying, "The solution is jobs," as opposed to locking them up, all of a sudden the clergy looks and says, "You know what? We've been saying that for years." And I think that step, for me, was a small step but in many ways, it was a big step for this whole comprehensive approach, and the department really began moving towards prevention as being absolutely critical and not just the traditional police response.

It's not just all about gangs; it's all about, how do you treat domestic violence? How do you bring partners to the table on domestic violence? We now have police, probation, social workers, identifying high-risk batterers, getting them into programs. So the strategy is not a youth strategy; it's a violence strategy.