Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) is a community driven policing strategy designed for the Chicago Police Department that aims to bridge the gap between the police force and the citizens of Chicago. CAPS started in 1993 as a pilot program in five of the 25 police districts in Chicago - Englewood, Marquette, Austin, Morgan Park, and Rogers Park - after a realization that the community and police were becoming increasingly isolated from one another throughout Chicago since the early 1960s. The original five districts, characterized by high crime rates and cases of extreme poverty, provided the Chicago Police Department with an initial benchmark from which to determine the program's strengths and weaknesses. By 1995, the Chicago Police Department implemented CAPS across all Chicago neighborhoods with the goal of blending traditional policing strategies with alternative strategies aimed at encouraging community members and police to work together in order to prevent and control crime. The program's motto, "Together We Can," emphasizes the need for increased lines of communication between the community and the police, so that together they could come up with solutions for chronic neighborhood problems.
Implementation The CAPS Implementation Office was created and staffed by civilian community outreach workers who organized court advocacy programs and coordinated city services in support of CAPS related programs. The implementation includes five strategies: problem-solving, turf orientation, community involvement, linkage to city services, and new tools for police. Other features of the implementation strategy include support from other government agencies, enhanced training, computerized crime analysis, updated marketing and communications techniques, stricter and more quantitative evaluation metrics, and long-term strategic planning.
Problem Solving The problem-solving initiative requires officers to develop proactive policing strategies beyond responding to calls, such as identifying the concentration of crime in certain areas and entering those communities to diffuse and prevent future crime. Between 1995 and 1997, most of the police force in Chicago in addition to 10,000 civilians received training to aid their ability to recognize hotbeds of crime and understand how such areas come to be in an effort to prevent more from arising.
Training involved recognizing a problem as a persistent issue affecting a significant portion of the population in the area and following a five-step plan: Identify the issues in the community and decide an order of addressing each, Analyze available information on the issue at hand, Design out of the box solutions with preventative stress, Implement the solutions while coordinating with the respective city offices as well as the community and Evaluate effectiveness. This problem-solving method was supplemented in Chicago by re-design within the Chicago police department, such as a complete restructuring of the 911 system and a more teamwork friendly hierarchy.
Turf Orientation Turf Orientation is a strategy used to familiarize officers with certain communities within the city. Chicago was split into 279 beats, or districts, with roughly 8–10 officers assigned to each beat. The Turf Orientation implementation proved difficult, as it required officers to stay in a certain area to build trust within a community over an extended period of time, leaving fewer officers available to respond to the high volume of 911 calls. This forced the city to hire more officers, ensuring that the force was not short-staffed, and that trust between the officers and communities was not completely severed.
This technique was deemed moderately successful in a 2002 report. Increased rapid response teams unattached to a specific beat combined with improved methods of communication and technology allowed for a more efficient strategy. As of 2002, this method led to officers staying within their beat for around 66% of their calls, near the 70% goal. Beats that were closest to the goal tended to be more high-activity areas although, in those same areas, officers found it difficult to keep up with all activity. Just 30% reported having enough time for preventative efforts with the community.
Community Involvement Community involvement allowed the police force to be more responsive to the needs and requests of the public, which not only aims to help alleviate crime but also to solidify relationships between communities and officers. Individuals became involved by attending local beat meetings. Meetings generally take place monthly at a regular time and are generally held in a community area, such as a church, park or school. A CAPS facilitator runs the meetings, running the meeting according to an agenda and calling on community members to ask questions. The police are active members and play a major role in all discussions.
Another major component of meetings is the special role played by a small group of dedicated beat meeting activists. These activists come to meetings frequently in their beats, driving up attendance and CAPS related activism. CAPS related activism includes marches, rallies, prayer vigils, and smoke-outs (group barbecue at gang or drug-infested sites). Community members who attend the meeting have the chance to ask questions and voice concerns about crime-related problems in their neighborhood, hear reports by the police on crime activity in their beat, and meet neighbors who are also concerned about the safety of their community. Attendance is generally higher where it is needed. The beat meetings where attendance is the highest are usually areas with bad housing, high levels of crime, and poor schools. Citizen awareness of CAPS has increased over time, but several studies have found that awareness is highest among African American residents of Chicago.
In 2000, the United States Department of Justice found that beat meeting attendance rose steadily with levels of civic engagement, rising to more than 40% among residents involved in at least three kinds of local organizations. Church involvement showed a high correlation with CAPS involvement as well; one explanation proposed for this is many CAPS meetings are held in churches, especially in African American communities where both CAPS and church involvement are particularly strong.
Linkage to City Services Linkage to city services allowed the police force to communicate and coordinate with other city agencies to streamline responsiveness. For instance, an interagency database was created to provide access to all city employees regarding crime areas, high-profile criminals, and even police activity. Additionally, the police coordinated with other city agencies regarding graffiti removal and abandoned car removal, as residents expressed those two issues as major frustrations within their communities.
New Tools for Police New tools for police introduced a handful of new strategies for curbing crime in Chicago. New crime-mapping software was developed to encourage the routine distribution of crime-related data to both the public and those who regularly attended beat meetings. Specific task forces were created to enforce anti-gang and anti-drug house ordinances throughout the city. The Chicago Police Department collaborated with building, health, and fire inspectors to ensure that any identified drug houses were kept under control and within the city building codes. Additionally, local prosecutors and county attorneys placed a greater emphasis on cooperation with the CAPS in order to prevent reoccurring offenses.
Operation Chicago is divided into 25 police districts and further divided into 279 police beats. Beats are small geographic areas to which police officers are assigned. Rather than changing beat officers daily, CAPS assigns the same officers to a particular beat for at least one year in order to encourage partnerships and problem-solving at the beat level, and to allow officers to develop relationships within the neighborhoods in which they work. The Office of Emergency Management and Communication (OEMC) dispatchers use a call priority matrix, often assigning the "nearest police unit" to respond to calls.See directives. chicagopolice.org , for information on how the police department really works This strategy, coupled with attrition shorts from under-staffing the police department, may result in officers spending most of their day off the beat.
The Chicago Police Department solved this dilemma by creating teams of rapid response officers in each of Chicago's 25 Police Districts.These rapid response officers still use the traditional methods for emergencies and rapid response, and are able to take most of the emergency calls in their sectors, which are groupings of three to five beats. Aside from responding to emergency calls, the rapid response officers were put in place to not only provide backup to beat officers who may be assisting the community elsewhere, but to help each beat officer maintain a solid presence in his or her respective beats. Each month, community beat meetings are held in all of Chicago's 279 beats, without the participation of any off-duty (not working) police personnel. Individual residents meet with their beat officers and other police personnel to discuss neighborhood problems and hopefully develop strategies to address them. Beyond the community, CAPS heavily relies on city agencies and services to prevent crime. The City of Chicago has set up cooperative efforts with the Mayor's Liquor License Commission, the Department of Streets and Sanitation, the Department of Buildings, and other agencies to ensure the police have support from the city to handle smaller issues, such as abandoned buildings and graffiti, before they lead to more serious crimes. CAPS has no underlying criminology theory as its basis, and no rigorous academic studies have shown CAPS as an entirely effective or efficient anti-crime tool.
District Advisory Committees In addition to the monthly beat meetings, there are also District Advisory Committees (DAC), which meet regularly with the District Commander to discuss district affairs. The members of the DAC are generally community leaders, business owners or local community activists. The goal of the DAC is to discuss district priorities and develop district-wide strategies with community resources. A 2004 Northwestern University report, Caps at Ten, claimed that many members were frustrated with their ill-defined mandates, leadership problems, and inaction. Many DAC members argued that CAPS had taken the shape of a more bureaucratic organization, instead of an overall guide for the policies of the Police Department. Community members and researchers have isolated a handful of problems with DACs that have caused them to become ineffective and untrustworthy: lack of a clear mission, weak subcommittees, lack of independence from the police force, and members who are generally out of touch with the community and demographically unrepresentative of the community they represent.
Results and assessments From 1991 to 2002, overall violent crime in Chicago dropped 49%. City officials reported that, as of 2002, both violent crime and property crime dropped in each of the 25 police districts. However, most reports find it difficult to conclude that CAPS is the leading variable responsible for the overall drop in crime. In certain beats, citizens actually experienced increases in crime rates, proving that that strategy was not entirely successful, according to a Northwestern University study. Policing strategies often get little to no rigorous evaluation or assessment, leading to a lack of data and evidence regarding the efficacy of the program.