Com­mu­nity Polic­ing and Get­ting Clar­ity on Chief Lanier’s Trans­fer of Dis­trict 2’s Lt. Lanciano

The FBA Novem­ber Mem­ber­ship Meet­ing pro­gram cen­tered on the topic of Com­mu­nity Polic­ing (CP).
About 35 res­i­dents lis­tened intently to the pro­gram which began with FBA VP, Jackie Lemire, greet­ing the hon­ored guests: MPD Police Chief Cathy Lanier, Assis­tant Chief Diane Groomes, and 2-D Com­man­der Matthew Klein , along with Kristo­pher Bau­mann, chair­man of the Fra­ter­nal Order of Police Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Depart­ment Labor Committee.

The pro­gram began with Lemire invit­ing ANC 2A Chair, Asher Cor­son, to read the ANC’s response to Chief Lanier’s expla­na­tion of her trans­fer of Dis­trict 2’s lauded Lt. Lan­ciano – after 11 years of superb ser­vice – to Dis­trict 6 where, unlike FB/ WE, he has no on-the-ground expe­ri­ence. The ANC’s let­ter cul­mi­nated in the respect­ful request for recon­sid­er­a­tion of this trans­fer that seems to con­tra­dict Lanier’s phi­los­o­phy of Com­mu­nity Policing.

Chief Lanier responded with an engag­ing talk about the chal­lenges of the Dis­trict polic­ing and the com­mit­ment, char­ac­ter­is­tic of Lt. Phil Lan­ciano, she so highly regards among her col­leagues. She stated that there is grow­ing pres­sure because of mount­ing homi­cides, which she are com­ing near to the Dis­trict level of 2007. She shared that the press is just wait­ing to jump on that.

Stress­ing that polic­ing is a part­ner­ship, Lanier said that “you made Phil Lan­ciano suc­cess­ful” and that she looks to the FB com­mu­nity to make the next offi­cer that good. Police in the neigh­bor­hoods need to learn to talk to res­i­dents, Lanier explained, rec­om­mend­ing that cit­i­zens take the ini­tia­tive and say hello. It’s such a depar­ture from train­ing and not always instinctive.

Maybe Lanier did need Lt. Lan­ciano in Dis­trict 6 as she claims. But ques­tions left unan­swered went to the core of her plat­form for CP. IF Lan­ciano was such a role model, why hasn’t he been men­tor­ing other offi­cers in the two years since her arrival? And if CP is the crux of her phi­los­o­phy, why then, would she move Lan­ciano and incur the pre­cious time and expense dur­ing a time of Dis­trict bud­get chal­lenges to train two officers?

While we have noth­ing but the high­est regard for the MPD, and the gains made under Lanier, we still reserve judge­ment on the mat­ter of Lt. Lanciano’s transfer.

WHAT IS COMMUNITY POLICING?
Com­mu­nity polic­ing is a phi­los­o­phy of full ser­vice per­son­al­ized polic­ing, where the same offi­cer patrols and works in the same area on a per­ma­nent basis, from a decen­tral­ized place, work­ing in a proac­tive part­ner­ship with cit­i­zens to iden­tify and solve problems.

Twelve Prin­ci­ples of Community-Oriented Polic­ing and Prob­lem Solv­ing use­ful in under­stand­ing CP have been out­lined by the Cal­i­for­nia Attor­ney General’s Office:

1. Reassesses who is respon­si­ble for pub­lic safety and rede­fines the roles and rela­tion­ships between the police and the community;

2. Requires shared own­er­ship, deci­sion mak­ing, and account­abil­ity, as well as sus­tained com­mit­ment from both the police and the community;

3. Estab­lishes new pub­lic expec­ta­tions of, and mea­sure­ment stan­dards for, police effec­tive­ness (e.g., going from solely 911 response time and arrest/crime sta­tis­tics to include qual­ity of ser­vice, cus­tomer (com­mu­nity sat­is­fac­tion, respon­sive­ness to community-defined issues, and cul­tural sensitivity);

4. Increases under­stand­ing and trust between police and com­mu­nity members;

5. Empow­ers and strength­ens community-based efforts;

6. Requires con­stant flex­i­bil­ity to respond to all emerg­ing issues;

7. Requires an on-going com­mit­ment to devel­op­ing long-term and pro-active programs/strategies to address the under­ly­ing con­di­tions that cause com­mu­nity problems;

8. Requires knowl­edge of avail­able com­mu­nity resources and how to access and mobi­lize them, as well as the abil­ity to develop new resources within the community;

9. Requires buy-in of the top man­age­ment of the police and other local gov­ern­ment agen­cies, as well as a sus­tained per­sonal com­mit­ment from all lev­els of man­age­ment and other key personnel;

10. Decen­tral­izes police services/operations/ man­age­ment, relaxes the tra­di­tional “chain of com­mand,” and encour­ages inno­v­a­tive and cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing by all thereby mak­ing greater use of the knowl­edge, skill and exper­tise through­out the orga­ni­za­tion with­out regard to rank;

11. Shifts the focus of police work from respond­ing to indi­vid­ual inci­dents to address­ing prob­lems iden­ti­fied by the com­mu­nity as well as the police, empha­siz­ing the use of problem-solving approaches to sup­ple­ment tra­di­tional law enforce­ment methods;

12. Requires com­mit­ment to devel­op­ing new skills through train­ing (e.g., problem-solving, net­work­ing, medi­a­tion, facil­i­ta­tion, con­flict res­o­lu­tion, cross-cultural competency/ lit­er­acy). —FBN