Police: Initiative Working, So Far

It’s been a few weeks since the for the neighborhoods just north of the South End, and Concord Police Department officials are excited by progress they’ve made with arrests and reaching out to the community.

The South End Initiative, as they are calling it, was a proactive opportunity to get into an area of the city that has seen an escalation in crime during the last few months. Officials moved resources around a bit, got officers out of their patrol cars, and had them interacting with residents on foot and bike patrols. The area being serviced with the expanded foot and bike patrols including the neighborhoods between West and Pleasant streets and South State and South streets.

Since the program was implemented, said the team has arrested 18 people, filled out 62 field cards, 100 written warnings, 23 summonses, 35 motor vehicle checks, with more than 221 people contacted.

A field card, Thomas said, was when an officer felt information he or she was receiving was worth jotting down, such as what kinds of sneakers or clothing a person might be wearing. Sometime down the road, there might be a match to a description of a perp from a future incident.

“You really can clearly see, when looking at tangible numbers out of this, (that) all of your numbers are at the beginning and beginning to dwindle down. A lot of the neighbors have been telling the officers, ‘We haven’t seen as much activity as we were use to seeing … in the last couple of weeks, it’s really started to diminish,’ so it’s really starting to impact that area.”

Thomas said it is unknown whether they activity has moved to another location of the city or state “or they aren’t bringing it out into the streets,” he said.

Thomas said he would be looking at the numbers in the surrounding areas of the South End Initiative to see if there had been an increase in illegal activities but he said he hasn’t heard or noticed any problems yet.

“In large part, police react to certain things,” said Chief . “This initiative is proactive and our goal and our aim was the change behaviors and to increase the quality of life for those people in those neighborhoods deserve. That may mean it gets pushed somewhere else. But I would argue that if it does, they will surface similarly in those areas and we’re prepared to act similarly as we are in this neighborhood. The message ultimately will be, police are not going stand by idly and allow behaviors that are illegal.”

Duval said the numbers showed that the mission of engaging the public with problem-solving strategies was working. He said he wasn’t surprised to see such great results so quickly and commended the staff at the department for taking it on, making it their own, and serving the citizens of the city.

“That is the primary ingredient I need from my department,” he said. “The challenge for us is allocating resources consistently.”

Duval said it would be his and Deputy Chief responsibility to make sure that Thomas gets what he needs to complete the initiative. He said that at 84 officers, with no cuts in the department this year, they should be able to get the job done. Duval said he hopes to transition the department into a different way of thinking about “the culture of policing” in the city that will be different than any other city.

The future

When asked whether or not the tactics of the South End Initiative could be moved to other areas, Duval said he knew this type of initiative works. The problem is budgeting and trying to balance all the needs of a department and what is the best way of policing a society in modern times.

Duval said what the initiative was showing is that old-fashion, get-out-of-the-car police work works. However, Concord is still “complex, mobile society” where the crimes take place on computer, against children, the elderly, and others. Those crimes, he said, take a different kind of police work.

“It’s finding a balance, around the city, to have the best of both worlds and to do it responsibly at a high level of success,” he said. “As we’re rolling this out, there are different types of problems all over the city ... one size does not fit all but we're a police department for everyone."

Thomas said his goal, would be to continue with the initiative and then, discuss different areas of the city to push other initiatives.

“We’ve got some very good, motivated folks who enjoy this type of work,” he said. “So it all comes down to having the available staff that is there for you.”

Thomas said the department is also working on putting together a community watch group for the neighborhood, which a number of residents and even a business or two have expressed interest in doing.

“These types of contacts the officers are having foster the people living in the neighborhood to be calling us when they see something,” Mitchell said.

A recent drug arrest in Fayette Park was a perfect example, he said, of where residents called to report the activity and the police arrived on the scene to make an arrest.