To build public support for implementing new police strategies across the city, Denver needed a successful demonstration project for its "broken windows" philosophy. It found just the place in the Westwood neighborhood, and Westwood was eager to participate.
Over the nearly six months of the demonstration, starting in late February, neighborhood crime dropped by 21.4 percent compared with the same period last year. For the first five months of 2006, the crime rate citywide dropped 7.4 percent compared with 2005 - a significant and welcome decline, but far short of the improvement in Westwood.
That's evidence that the city's policies are sound. The "broken window" philosophy holds that signs of public disorder - such as broken windows that no one bothers to fix - are an invitation first to petty offenses and, if those draw no response from law enforcement, eventually to more serious crimes. Therefore, attention paid to petty offenses means fewer serious ones.
Other parts of the program included careful tracking of crime reports, weekly meetings for commanders to decide how to redirect resources based on the reports, and, for the duration of the demonstration, a special crime attack team.
And not only did crime go down as a result of the more intensive police presence, but also, contrary to critics' predictions, complaints failed to go up.
Community buy-in is essential to success in this kind of policing, and the city was fortunate because Westwood had bought in even before it was chosen for the project. Responding to gang violence, Teresa Chavira, Claudia Perez, Brenda Chavira, and Yasmin Solis and others formed the St. Anthony's Public Safety Committee to research ways to make their neighborhood safer, and began promoting the "broken windows" strategy to everyone they could. So neighborhood residents didn't need a lot of persuasion to support the project.
Denver hopes to implement its strategies citywide over the next several years. And if the city needs ambassadors to other neighborhoods, we suspect the St. Anthony's committee will be glad to supply them.
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