ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 25, 1996 TAG: 9608260086
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Lede
COMMUNITY POLICING was supposed to quell crime and help bridge the gap between police and residents. After five years in Roanoke's Hurt Park Housing Development, how well has it worked?
The teen-ager was walking through Roanoke's Hurt Park Housing Development one afternoon last year. He was a strange face to the community policing team patrolling the area. So the officers did what they were trained to do: they stopped him and asked for identification.
The teen-ager bolted; the officers pursued.
They tackled him at 17th Street on the porch of an apartment. As a crowd of bystanders watched, one officer stretched a rubber glove over his hand and reached into the teen-ager's pants to search for drugs. The officer found crack cocaine wrapped in plastic.
That's how police recount the event.
But eyewitnesses say the search went further and that the officer pulled down the teen's pants and exposed him in public.
One incident. Two perspectives. What the police saw as an aggressive arrest, residents saw as a humiliating experience.
When Hurt Park resident Gary Hancock talks about Roanoke's Community Oriented Policing Effort (C.O.P.E.) he describes that arrest. Then he uses words like inexperienced, unprofessional and degrading. He has no doubt the team patrolling the public housing neighborhood has been successful. But he finds their methods appalling.
"To catch him and find crack is what they are there for," said Hancock, who has lived in the complex 25 years. "But to pull his pants down oversteps their boundary."
Five years after C.O.P.E. began patrolling Hurt Park, the neighborhood remains a community in crisis. Unlike most of the other public housing complexes that C.O.P.E. patrols Hurt Park has no common voice. And some of its residents contend that C.O.P.E. has done little to bond with the community, focusing predominantly on drug arrests rather than getting to know the residents.
Hancock, 33, does not want C.O.P.E. to leave his neighborhood. He agrees that the team has been successful in quieting the streets. That is evident by the number of residents who feel comfortable walking about the mid-sized complex along Salem Avenue Southwest.
Incidents like disorders, trespassing and shootings appear to have decreased in the more recent years, according to statistics provided by the Roanoke Police Department. The stabbing death of Michael Dent last month was the first homicide in Hurt Park since C.O.P.E. began patrolling the area.
But Hancock, and others, say they want the officers to begin treating residents with respect rather than wrath.
"They come in here with a hard-core approach to run the drug dealers across the street," Hancock said. "But now they still have that hard-core approach against the people who called them in here."
Drugs remain the top concern of residents in the Hurt Park area, where C.O.P.E. patrols both the public housing complex and the surrounding neighborhood. Building a relationship while continuing to battle crack dealers is difficult, police say.
"Some days you throw a football. Some days you might arrest 20 people," said Officer Steve Orange, who has been C.O.P.E.'s liaison to Hurt Park eight months. "Before you become friends you have to get the scum out of it so people are not afraid to talk to you."
But the unit needs to move beyond that strike-force mentality and establish roots in the community, some residents say. They argue that C.O.P.E. members change so frequently that they rarely know the names of the officers who walk their streets. In the past two years, the unit has had a number of temporary positions and three different supervisors.
Residents question why there are not more black officers on the 16-member force. Two weeks ago C.O.P.E. added two black officers - the first the unit has had in more than a year.
And some, particularly young people, say police treat them with disdain, breaking up small gatherings, asking those they know are residents for identification and needling them about holding drugs.
Even the resident manager at the complex admits something needs to change.
"Somewhere along the line they've lost touch with why they're here," Cheryl Evans said of the C.O.P.E. team. "They're not here to assume that everyone is a suspect. I know it's got to be better than this."
Michael Harbor clamps on his headset whenever he walks outside his girlfriend's apartment. The music insulates him from the negative around him - the drugs, the bickering between residents, the second glances by police officers.
"When you hear the negative for so long - it's a slick move," he said. "I push the button and don't have to listen to it no more."
He is an ex-con who served 11 months in jail for grand larceny and burglary. A father of four, he lives with his girlfriend and their children.
He sees the problem between police and residents as a two-way street paved with stereotypes about poor black people and police officers.
"Black people see the police as a threat," he said. "They want their help when they need them; otherwise they have no use for them."
The police "look at a black man up here in the projects as a drug dealer," Harbor, 25, continued. "We're a violent person first and human beings second.
Harbor's advice: Open a satellite police station at Hurt Park to make the C.O.P.E. team more accessible to residents. Offer tours of the police department to educate residents about the day-to-day operations. Drugs arrests, he said, cannot be the only focus of the police.
"C.O.P.E. does more drug-deal patrolling than they do community policing," Harbor said. "The C.O.P.E. unit should spend more time easing tensions in the community than building them."
The goal of community policing is not only to curtail crime but to resolve the smaller problems that demean the quality of life in a neighborhood, like litter, abandoned cars and graffiti.
To do that, officers walk or ride bicycles through the neighborhood. They often stop and talk with the children, handing out baseball and football cards or playing a game of pick-up basketball.
But first they must gain the upper hand over troublemakers. In Hurt Park, police say, that struggle is still ongoing.
"For us to be effective we have to return the neighborhood back to the community," said Lt. Doug Allen, who began supervising the C.O.P.E. team last fall. "The ideal thought is to take the community from the criminal element, get the people to build trust in their own community so we can turn it back over to them. What we found out is that in theory that's nice, but that's really, really hard to do."
Police are finding that especially true in Hurt Park, where there is no residents' council and no community spirit to establish one.
Hurt Park sponsors more youth programs than any other housing project in the city, and one of the most innovative community projects: Project H.O.P.E. - Hurt Park Organization for Prevention and Education. The organizations's goal is to educate families on issues like teen pregnancy, substance abuse and job training. While the children attend, it has been difficult to garner support from parents.
"It's always been tougher to deal with" Hurt Park, said Anita Lee, resident development director at the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority. "For some reason there's a lot of strife within the community. I've never been able to figure out why or where it comes from."
Of the five public housing areas that C.O.P.E. patrols, Hurt Park is one of two without an organized residents' council. The other, Jamestown Place, recently disbanded its neighborhood coalition because they had been successful in eliminating their major problems, Lee said.
The disorganization in Hurt Park leaves the community open to the loudest - not necessarily the majority - voice, some residents say. So when police make an arrest or stop a disturbance, their actions often are open to misinterpretation and rumor.
In June, the Roanoke chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference mobilized residents and city officials after a 9-year-old boy said he was manhandled by a patrol officer. (The officer was not a member of C.O.P.E. and police found no basis for the complaint).
As a result, the SCLC led Mayor David Bowers and other city officials on a tour through the complex and talked about alleged harassment by C.O.P.E. But when Bowers threatened to pull the team from the area, some of the residents rallied on their own.
"If they get rid of the C.O.P.E. unit, this place will go out of control," said Hancock, who attended the mayor's meeting.
C.O.P.E. is not likely to leave the area any time soon. Only one complaint about the C.O.P.E. team has originated from Hurt Park in the past five years, police say. In that complaint, a young black man said he was wrongly stopped for a traffic violation.
In light of those statistics, Police Chief M. David Hooper said he has no evidence that there are problems in that community. The police department's image is "basically good," Hooper said. "I say that because I don't see any behavior, activity - or get complaints - to the contrary."
But building trust in a community is more than gathering statistics. It is a gradual and awesome task, say community policing experts.
In Madison, Wisc., it took a decade.
Madison is a city about twice the size of Roanoke. In the mid-80s it directed its community policing at neighborhoods troubled by drug-related crimes. The effort eventually spread throughout the city. Madison's 342-member force now includes 13 officers on "neighborhood resource teams" stationed in the areas they serve.
For community policing to work, there has to be an established line of communication between police and residents and a change in the mentality that police are an occupying force in a neighborhood, said Capt. Mike Masterson, who initiated the concept in Madison.
"We think so many departments only focus on the crime," he said. "If you do that you don't have to improve the quality of life. We need to be advocates for kids and the physical appearance of neighborhoods."
When some blacks in Madison complained that they felt targeted by drug interdiction efforts, Masterson said, the department's chief of police held a community meeting to talk to residents.
"We're changing police culture to recognize this is important," Masterson said. The question is: "Do you have enlightened supervisors, or are you still a closed shop that insists we're professional, we know the best?"
Many of the grandparents and young mothers in Hurt Park commend the C.O.P.E. team for changing their neighborhood and their children's attitude toward police.
"I always felt better when they've been around," said Mildred O'Neal, 77. "If we didn't have them up here, we probably couldn't stick our head out the door."
But young blacks - many of whom hang out on 17th Street Southwest - are the team's worst critics. Just because they look like the stereotypical drug dealer doesn't mean they are, they say.
"The way they treat us - the kids have no respect for the C.O.P.E. unit," said a 20-year-old man who asked that his name not be used. "We young. We black. And we be hanging out here. Drug dealers are up here. But just because I hang around like this doesn't mean I'm a drug dealer. ... There's never been a time when police can talk to you like a real person."
Ramona Martin said she remembers when C.O.P.E. officers stopped her son and searched his pockets. When she approached them, she said, the officer told her to get back inside and "shut up."
Her 16-year-old son, Karl Martin, and some of his friends say they would like the team to stop patrolling the neighborhood.
"They come up and search you," said Martin, who admits he has a criminal record. "They say stuff like, 'You know you're selling." They ask if they can check you. If you say no, they still go into your pockets."
Police say the ones complaining are probably the ones causing the problems. But they admit that the young people are the age group they most want to influence.
"One of the things I want my people to do is reach the kids so the next generation of police officers have it easier," said Sgt. Butch Steahley, who has been with the team for the past three years. "So that it's not this thing - 'Is the officer arresting my daddy?'"
Frustration, anger and disempowerment are emotions felt on both sides of the debate. But now it's time to move forward, resident manager Cheryl Evans said.
C.O.P.E. officers say they are committed to working with the area. Total Action Against Poverty has been enlisted to help organize a residents' council in Hurt Park, according to the housing authority. C.O.P.E. expects to be an integral part of that.
Lt. Allen said he has already requested that officers assigned to C.O.P.E. be permanent. But the elimination of temporary positions won't happen until February, because of short staffing at the department, he said.
The two-way street between residents and police can quickly become a vicious cycle if no one is willing to budge from their position. On that point, police and residents agree.
"People are going to treat police like the police treat people," said one woman who has lived in the complex for more than a decade, but did not want her name published. "And police will treat people like the people treat them."
WHO LIVES IN HURT PARK*
(To go with locator map).
Built in 1968
105 units; 308 residents
-5 vacancies as of July 1996
-there are 14 male heads of households
-there are 86 female heads of households
-number of children:
ages 14-17: 27
ages 7-13: 63
ages 3-6: 58
under 2 yrs.: 43
Race:
87 percent minority; 13 percent white
Income:
No one makes more than $20,000
The majority of families earn between $5,000 and $10,000.
46 families earn less than $5,000.
Residents pay 30 percent of their income. Rents range from $25 to $379 a month.
*Statistics as of July 1996, provided by Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority.
LENGTH: Long : 262 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Philip Holman. Hurt Park resident Lamar Rhodes, 11by CNB(right), chats with C.O.P.E. officer Eric Charles. Most of
C.O.P.E.'s patrolling is done on bike or foot. The result is a
higher profile in the community and a chance to develop a rapport
with residents. color. GRAPHIC: Map & chart by Robert Lunsford.
color. KEYWORDS: PROFILE MGR