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Mr. J. Pimentel
Letter to the Editor
SF Examiner
October 5, 2009
Dear Editor:
Cause for
amusement is found in your Oct. 5 editorial title about
Police Chief George Gascon's "community-policing" push
regarding the Tenderloin drug and the Sunset marijuana
growing operations. Frankly, I don't know anyone who
would call the Chief's actions "community policing" when
as you state, they involve "crackdown targets" and
improved arrest rates. That's the type of policing
action and results more commonly known as heavy-duty law
enforcement.
True community policing requires
service-oriented, participatory policing. It starts by
police listening to residents and businesses to
determine priorities, and focusing on quality-of-life,
reduction of fear, and early-intervention crime
prevention via consistent, visible patrols in localized
neighborhoods. That's the type of policing that will
insure the peace after the Chief's necessary, but
heavy-handed, law enforcement actions end. That's the
type of policing that requires more responsive and
respectful policing than is possible by
enforcement-oriented public police. In San Francisco we
need and deserve both.
Luckily we have both
--including the Patrol Special Police which is a police
force already serving and able to provide consistent
neighborhood policing over time. Patrol Special Police
can be hired by residents and businesses at truly
reasonable hourly rates to augment safety and to free up
public police to concentrate on the law enforcement we
need and deserve. Two such officers already serve in the
Tenderloin for years, and have this past May been lauded
for meritorious policing service to the entire community
by their SFPD sergeants; see: http://www.sfspecialneighborhoodpolicing.org/commendations.html
I think it's wasted effort and taxpayer dollars to
keep trying to re-invent 'community policing' in our
City. It hasn't worked in the past starting with the
ill-conceived Community Policing Unit back in 1962. I
doubt that even the enthusiastic new pilot community
policing program in the Ingleside District will ever
obtain funds to continue or expand its model throughout
the city, since federal funding initiatives have about
collapsed in our free-falling economy. On August 17 at
the Public Safety Committee of the Board of Supervisors,
I heard Supervisor Mirkirami say: “Community
policing gets lots of points at the conceptual level,
but suffers at the implementation level...We are chronic
sufferers of lack of community policing in San
Francisco. Everyone talks a good game, but we have
nothing policy-wise or practice-wise to prove we are
actually doing it.”
In view of the
increasingly violent nature of crime (note how many guns
are now being confiscated in police stats), the rise of
personal assault crimes if not murder (and we know
crimes are underreported, something even the police
admit time and again at police commission hearings), and
the advent of terrorism on the scene of policing, isn't
it time to let our public police do what the Chief has
demonstrated they do best, while at the same time
promoting the neighborhood policing by the Patrol
Special Police, and help make them more effective to do
the kind of policing that they do best?
Ann
Grogan, J.D.
2921 Diamond St., Ste. 239
San
Francisco, CA 94131 |
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