THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Wednesday, November 23, 1994           TAG: 9411230477
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: NORFOLK                            LENGTH: Medium:   67 lines

NORFOLK ADVISED TO EXPAND FOCUS OF PACE THAT WOULD BETTER FIGHT CRIME, A CONSULTANT SAYS. HE ALSO WOULD CUT POLICE HIERARCHY.

To make greater strides in preventing crime, the Police Department should expand community policing from a program in targeted areas to a citywide philosophy, a consultant said Tuesday.

The consultant, Craig Fraser of Police Executive Research Forum, said community policing works because it gets at the real cause of crime and helps neighborhoods solve their own problems.

Fraser's recommendations were the summary of a report Police Chief Melvin C. High and the city commissioned at a cost of $69,000. Police Executive Research Forum, of Washington, took a year to complete it. With High at his side, Fraser delivered the report to the council Tuesday night.

Some of the recommendations could draw opposition from citizens and police officers. High said he will study the report and decide how it meshes with his own analysis.

The report's recommendations include:

Put more officers on the street. The city should expand the number of patrol officers from 282 to 315.

Eliminate several layers from the police hierarchy, including about 50 corporals, the first rank above patrol officer. Under this plan, corporals would either move up to sergeant or become patrol officers with greater responsibility, High said.

Don't send a uniformed police officer in response to every call by a citizen. Police could answer some calls by taking a report over the phone or through some other method. This would save time for problem-solving efforts emphasized under community policing.

Improve substandard or overcrowded police facilities. This might include, for example, creating better gym facilities for officers, Hill said.

Train police and residents in how to work together on crime problems.

The PACE - or Police Assisted Community Enforcement - program, although officially in effect throughout the city, focuses on 10 poorer target neighborhoods.

Community policing attempts to recreate a modern version of the cop on the beat who knows the streets he walks and the problems there. Norfolk has won praise for its PACE program. But some police officers have resisted it, saying it turns them into social workers.

High on Tuesday credited PACE for a 10 percent drop in the city's crime rate as reported to the FBI over the past 10 months.

The City Council generally responded favorably to the report.

``For too long, citizens have surrendered responsibility for law enforcement to police and stopped taking responsibility for their own neighborhoods,'' Mayor Paul Fraim said.

Councilman Mason Andrews said the report puzzled him because he believed the Police Department was already doing much of what the consultant recommended.

In an interview afterward, High said his department might need outside scrutiny to help it put community policing more fully into practice.

``The reason we asked them to do this was that we wanted to move to the next level,'' High said. ``We needed some outside stimulus to do that.''

High became police chief 18 months ago. He came from Washington, where he had a strong background in community policing.

KEYWORDS: NORFOLK POLICE DEPARTMENT

by CNB