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GARY EICHTEN: More than 27 million people are expected to take part this evening in National Night Out, an anti-crime program designed to encourage residents to strengthen their ties to their neighbors and to the police who serve their neighborhoods.

The program began 11 years ago. And experts say it has made a difference. In St Paul, for example, there are now about 1,000 neighborhood block clubs. That's nearly double the number just a year ago.

Of course, the police have argued for a long time that they can only do so much that without such active cooperation from the community, they will never be able to control crime.

Later in this hour, we're going to take a closer look at those community involvement efforts. We'll be talking with Minneapolis police crime prevention specialist, Lucy Gerold. But first, during the hour, we're going to focus on what's called community policing, a concept designed to help police bridge the gap between citizens and the police.

Supporters say the community policing marks the beginning of a revolution in police work. And not only have both the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments adopted so-called community oriented policing programs. They say they intend to expand those programs.

Critics, meanwhile, continue to argue that community policing is nothing more than the latest law enforcement buzzword. Community policing program in Lansing, Michigan is considered a model.

So Minnesota Public Radio's John Biewen and Stephen Smith went to Lansing to prepare a Special Report on the concept. The report is called "A New kind of Cop" and was originally broadcast late last year. The narrator is John Biewen.

EDWARD FORREST: I can deal with your children.

SPEAKER 1: But you can't deal with them.

EDWARD FORREST: I'm serious.

SPEAKER 1: That's not fair.

JOHN BIEWEN: Policeman Edward Forrest is gently trying to shoo visitors from his office at the Mt. Vernon park community center, a low-income housing project on the edge of Lansing, Michigan.

Officer Forrest has decorated the room with crayon drawings from local children and anti-drug posters from the FBI. Three used bicycles lean against one wall. They're donations from Mt. Vernon residents who can't afford bikes. Forrest offers a purple one to Harriet Conner's shy young daughter, [INAUDIBLE]

EDWARD FORREST: Can you ride a bike?

SPEAKER 2: Yeah, but this one's so big.

EDWARD FORREST: Well she's big.

SPEAKER 2: Come on, [INAUDIBLE]

EDWARD FORREST: A couple of months, you'll be growing out of it. Probably give her a set of car keys.

JOHN BIEWEN: Lansing, Michigan is an industrial city of 125,000 people with its share of Rust Belt poverty and crime. About 130 families live in the Mt. Vernon project in two storey townhouses. Edward Forrest is their cop. His job is to patrol the six block community, tending to whatever problems come up.

EDWARD FORREST: I know you didn't get your math done.

DE'ANTHONY JONES: What math?

JOHN BIEWEN: For example, 11-year-old De'Anthony, who didn't do the homework required of all boys who play in Officer Forrest's basketball League.

EDWARD FORREST: I know you didn't get the math done that you supposedly were working on when we had that last game.

DE'ANTHONY JONES: Yes, I didn't get it done.

EDWARD FORREST: It wasn't right.

DE'ANTHONY JONES: I had most of them wrong.

EDWARD FORREST: That's what I just said, that you had it wrong. That's De'Anthony Jones. He's a bright young man. He's a little misguided. Probably, I guess his most difficult problem is his mom has beat him for the stupidest reasons.

But when he should be corrected, she doesn't. He's out late quite often 10:00 or 11:00 at night. When I take him home and she has absolutely no clue that he's gotten out of the house.

JOHN BIEWEN: Most police spend their patrol time in squad cars reacting after crimes are reported. Chances are you'll never speak to a conventional cop unless you're a suspect or a victim.

Community policing, in theory, is radically different. The idea is to get cops immersed in neighborhoods, where they come to know people personally, just as Officer Forrest knows De'Anthony.

Community cops are supposed to look for the seeds of crime-- kids with weapons, disputes between neighbors, alcohol or drug problems, and work with citizens to prevent those seeds from sprouting.

Once Edward Forrest parks his cruiser at the Mt. Vernon projects, he spends his shift in his office or out walking the sidewalks and stopping in on residents. He's part enforcer, part older brother.

EDWARD FORREST: This is Beverly Smith. Frank 16, I'm going to be out at 3520 North Way.

JOHN BIEWEN: Forrest checks on a young woman who was beaten by her boyfriend.

EDWARD FORREST: Hey.

BEVERLY SMITH: Hi.

EDWARD FORREST: How you doing?

BEVERLY SMITH: Fine.

EDWARD FORREST: Just stopping by to see if everything's OK.

BEVERLY SMITH: Yeah, everything's fine.

EDWARD FORREST: Have you heard from him?

BEVERLY SMITH: No, I haven't.

JOHN BIEWEN: Lansing's community cops have been walking the beat in the city's housing projects for three years. The department says crime is down there, especially the drug dealing that used to be rampant. The cops worked with residents and landlords to get dealers and other troublemakers evicted.

At Mt. Vernon, no one's been arrested for drug dealing in more than a year. In all, Lansing Police Chief Jerome Boles has assigned community cops to 14 troubled neighborhoods.

JEROME BOLES: Their duty time on duty is to work in a given neighborhood, usually less than a 20 square block area, to bring the neighborhood together, to provide that cohesive factor, to bring the neighborhood back to a level where people take pride in their area, where they're committed, where they're concerned, where they want to become a driving force in their own quality of life within their neighborhoods.

JOHN BIEWEN: The neighborhood cops make up only 6% of Lansing's 255 member police force. The rest of the force is devoted to special units or conventional reactive patrol.

Modest as it is, Lansing's community policing program is considered one of the nation's most ambitious. It's been an effective public relations tool, bringing the city attention, not only from public radio reporters but from ABC's Prime Live.

MALE REPORTER: This is a drug raid for cocaine.

FEMALE REPORTER: In fact, Prime Time was there when Christie, acting on information from his neighborhood, pinpointed this location next door to Sparrow Estates, where illegal drugs were found.

SPEAKER 3: That's crack cocaine.

FEMALE REPORTER: Community policing is working in Sparrow Estates.

JOHN BIEWEN: Besides drawing media coverage, the growing interest in police reform has also spawned a cottage industry for community policing experts who tour the country trying to win converts.

CHRIS BRADEN: Police officers spend about 2% of their time with the victims and witnesses of crime. Yet victims and witnesses of crime, by far and away, are your best source of ever getting a lead, a kickstart to help you solve the crime.

JOHN BIEWEN: Consultant Chris Braden was a cop in Edmonton, Canada for 32 years. The Irish immigrant was an architect of that city's community policing program. Braden says community police are not really a new kind of cop.

Until World War II, police walked neighborhood beats. But after the war, anti-corruption reformers put cops under tighter control from Central headquarters.

Braden argues that with increased training and technology, cops who had once been citizens with badges evolved into something else-- professional crime busters sealed in the skins of their squad cars.

CHRIS BRADEN: Much of conventional policing exists on myth. The myth that driving around in a police car prevents crime. The myth that follow up investigation after the fact solves much crime, solves a minuscule amount. Information is a lifeblood of policing, information leads. And the public got a lock on it.

JOHN BIEWEN: Politicians and law enforcement officials across North America are buying that message. Most cities of all sizes are trying some sort of community policing or plan to. But skeptics say community policing is nothing but traditional law enforcement in a glossy new package designed to make police chiefs and mayors look innovative.

County Commissioner Mark Grebner of Lansing contends that community policing is popular in the city because the neighborhood cops provide extra protection in some neighborhoods at almost no cost. Most of the community cops are funded by temporary federal grants.

MARK GREBNER: In the end, community policing has to mean reducing the commitment to other kinds of policing. I mean, those neighbors that you've talked to haven't proposed eliminating patrol in other areas.

JOHN BIEWEN: Advocates insist community policing can be done without cutting emergency response or spending more money. But they say a department doing community policing citywide would have to get by with fewer patrol cops and use them more selectively.

Residents would have to be content reporting non-threatening crimes like theft over the phone. People calling the police about a loud party or a barking dog might be told to deal with it themselves. In return, the argument goes, residents would get community cops working to strengthen neighborhoods and prevent crime.

Criminologist Lawrence Sherman of the University of Maryland says cops should certainly get involved in neighborhoods, but only to focus more closely on suspected criminals, repeat victims, and crime locations. In a recent speech, Sherman argued that's not happening.

LAWRENCE SHERMAN: Rather, community policing has been concentrated on bells and whistles, gimmicks and public relations. Grin and wave, ride the bicycle, ride the horse, walk the foot beat in the residential neighborhood, where nobody's home during the day, anyway, to see the police officer.

DAVE EMMONS: Right now, we're in the southern area of my neighborhood, down Bailey and Mt. Hope area. How you doing? Good.

JOHN BIEWEN: Lansing Police officer, Dave Emmons is one of those bike riding community cops. Emmons starts his late evening patrol, pumping the pedals of a 21 speed mountain bike through a poor, frayed neighborhood known as Baker Street.

Emmons carries the standard gun and radio, but also wears a special reflective jacket and a helmet. He covers a 12-block beat with head and tail lights switched off.

DAVE EMMONS: Hey, cookie? How you doing, bud? At night, it's real nice. You can sneak up on a lot of situations. I still have the availability to the people. I still have the speed, but they don't see me coming, like they might see a roller, a marked unit. There's a lot that we've come across or they never saw us until we're right down on them.

JOHN BIEWEN: Emmons and another patrolman climb off their bikes to peer around the corner of a house at a suspected drug dealer standing down the street. Problem is, the reflective jacket lettering that makes the cops visible to motorists helps dealers see them, too.

DAVE EMMONS: There's a little problem over here, but this guy just can't see the alley. I think he's going to burn us when he goes by the guys over there tell him that we're over here. And he went by, the other guys, the Five-Os out here. And they're all taking off now. So we've been burned.

JOHN BIEWEN: Community cops say don't measure them by conventional standards like arrests or rapid response time. In Lansing and other cities with community policing, crime statistics have gone up at first in neighborhoods assigned to community cop.

The police say that's because residents start trusting cops and report more crimes. Community policing experts say, later, when prevention efforts kick in, the crime rate goes down. Neighborhood cops also claim intangible results, such as reduced fear.

Studies show the fear of crime often outruns the actual risk, in part because urbanites are so isolated that they come to fear everyone. Bob Trojanowicz is a professor of urban affairs and criminal justice at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

He's a leading advocate of community policing. Trojanowicz says neighborhood based policing reduces fear by getting people acquainted with a cop and with one another.

ROBERT TROJANOWICZ: It often works the best in those areas that are infested with crime, that are having problems and having difficulties. And that's because most of the people, even in the highest crime rate areas, are law abiding people, often trapped and imprisoned in their homes.

And when the police department makes the move to personalize the policing, put the officer in the neighborhoods, the citizens accept it. They want it. They're willing to have this leadership so that they can have a vision for the future rejuvenation of the neighborhood.

SPEAKER 4: How come his bed is better than--

JOHN BIEWEN: Officer Emmons drops by to see Julie Teed's family. A teenage son teases the cop while a toddler streaks through the house in her diaper. Julie Teed and her husband used to feel besieged by crime in their Baker Street home.

Drug dealers did business on the Teed's sidewalk. A bullet pierced their living room wall one day, leaving a hole the size of a quarter. Julie is now active in the neighborhood group that works closely with Officer Emmons.

JULIE TEED: Oh, now it's much better. I mean, we know all the good people and we know who the bad ones are. And like Dave, he's out there every night and days. He's looking for the bad guys. And they know who he is.

And they know who not to get involved with and who not to mess with. And I'd say that the drug traffic is really down a very large percent. We still see some bad guys, but that's typical in any city. They know that we mean business. And they don't come here looking to sell like they used to.

JOHN BIEWEN: Some critics caution that putting police at the service of a neighborhood could lead to abuse, such as cops harassing an innocent person because the majority doesn't like that person's habits or skin color.

Community policing advocates counter that there's no sign of such problems. And civil rights laws should guard against abuse. Officer Emmons pauses in the yard of a Black family for a friendly chat. He says his goal is to improve the Baker Street neighborhood for all of the good people.

DAVID EMMONS: When you get your own neighborhood like this and you get a commitment to the neighbors and the good people here, you end up taking it a lot real personal. It becomes your baby. I mean, you're the one that's ultimately responsible for it.

SPEAKER 5: Go to the house. Go in the house, Sam.

DAVID EMMONS: See you, buddy.

SPEAKER 5: See you later.

JOHN BIEWEN: Not all cops are interested in adopting a neighborhood.

BRUCE LANKHEET: It's more fun to run from call to call to call and say arrest the dangerous criminal. And, I mean, that's what most people hired on to do.

JOHN BIEWEN: Bruce Lankheet is president of the Lansing Police Officers Union. His view is not unusual. The strongest resistance to community policing often comes from cops themselves.

Lankheet estimates half of all Lansing cops support the new approach. And half are opposed or unconvinced. He says some cops dismiss community policing as soft, a lot of meetings and neighborhood relations. But almost in the next breath, he admits it's actually hard.

BRUCE LANKHEET: I haven't tried it. And I haven't been willing to try it either. It's an awful lot of work, tremendous amount of work. They all take their jobs home with them at night. I'm not sure as though I can dedicate that much time like they do.

JOHN BIEWEN: Lankheet concedes that community policing has more support among the rank and file than it did a few years ago. The department plans to build the neighborhood problem solving concept into everything the force does by the end of the decade. But County Commissioner Mark Grebner doubts that will happen in Lansing or anywhere else.

MARK GREBNER: One of the interesting things about community policing is, at this point, it has no opponents. It's in the very early stages of the fad, frankly. I mean, eventually, there will be right wing speakers going from place to place making fun of community policing.

JOHN BIEWEN: In fact, cities like Houston and Tulsa, Oklahoma slowed or backed off their early community policing efforts when politicians calling for get tough, back to the basics policing took over.

People who think community policing is long on PR and short on crime busting have plenty of ammunition, at least on the surface. One Lansing neighborhood cop said he made only 30 arrests in the past year and attended 60 neighborhood meetings.

SPEAKER 6: OK, now we're going to officially open the cards meeting.

JOHN BIEWEN: Vivian Stoffer presides over a suppertime meeting of Caring Active Residents, a coalition of three Eastern Lansing neighborhood groups. The groups were all organized at the impetus of community police officers.

About 100 people have shown up at a meeting hall to eat a meal and socialize, discuss neighborhood problems, and plan events for the holidays.

SPEAKER 6: Many of youse know about the love barrel we have out there that we are trying to fill with toys for Don and his wagon, or sleigh, or whatever we come up with this year to take around the neighborhood so that each child gets a toy, at least one toy in our neighborhood.

JOHN BIEWEN: This neighborhood's community officer, Don Christie, says some of his fellow cops compare him to an entertainment director on a cruise ship. Residents insist that under Christie's leadership, they've transformed the neighborhood they once wanted to escape.

They spruced up the area, chased out the drug dealers and prostitutes, even gave the neighborhood a name, Sparrow Estates. Reported crime has dropped by 2/3 from its peak in 1990. But Ray Garcia, who lives just a block away from Sparrow Estates, complains that drug dealers still operate openly on his street.

RAY GARCIA: They move around a lot. If the police starts patrolling this street here, they'll move to the next neighborhood. If they ease off, then they come back.

JOHN BIEWEN: Sparrow Estates resident Shelton Tyson says criminals won't be able to just migrate a few blocks if Lansing expands community policing to the whole city.

SHELTON TYSON: Sure, they're going to move from one neighborhood to another, but eventually, they're going to see that there's no place for them to go.

JOHN BIEWEN: In the meantime, Lansing's community cops insist they're doing more than just pushing problems around. They work with school officials and social service agencies to get help and support for troubled families. They say their efforts may change the lives of some young people who would otherwise become criminals.

The Hill Vocational School in Western Lansing acts as an alternative school for some of the city's toughest kids, those who've broken laws or been kicked out of other schools. A couple of 14-year-olds from neighborhoods patrolled by community cops seem unimpressed by the program.

SPEAKER 7: All they're doing is being nosy, man.

SPEAKER 8: They want to know everybody.

SPEAKER 7: I know y'all are trying to set somebody up.

SPEAKER 8: I think they're just trying to keep people off the streets.

SPEAKER 7: All they doing is trying to get some people in there, hoping maybe they'll say something that might incriminate themselves.

SPEAKER 8: Most kids our age, they don't like to talk to cops a lot. Cops automatically think they're doing something wrong or something. So they really don't pay no attention to cops.

JOHN BIEWEN: The overall crime rate has inched downward in Lansing for the last few years, but the city suffered a spate of drug related murders this past summer. County commissioner Grebner says when so many people in inner cities can't get jobs to support a family, all the community building in the world won't stop some of them from turning to crime.

MARK GREBNER: We have created a country in which drug trafficking is a substantial industry and attracts a very large fraction of young men in center cities. And we have a country where we have approximately as many handguns as we have adults.

And we have-- in the drug trafficking world, when disputes arise, they get mediated with handguns. Throw a policing officer into that, a community policing officer. And how exactly does the community policing officer deal with a dispute between two drug dealers over the purity of cocaine?

JOHN BIEWEN: Supporters of community policing agree that the concept has limits, even if it were to be implemented on a broad scale in this country. Lansing Police Chief Jerry Boles.

JEROME BOLES: We cannot physically or economically take over the function of the family, or the neighborhood, or the church, or anything else. We're just being thrown into the bridge right now to try and slow the bleeding. And if the other institutions don't come back and take on their role, we're doomed. We can't hold the line. We can't do it alone.

JOHN BIEWEN: Community policing proposes a new kind of cop, one who takes a broader role in responding to crime. But most crime experts agree that mending the deep fractures in society that lead to crime would take a massive effort, an extraordinary commitment, not just by police, but by government, business, social institutions and the residents of each neighborhood in every city.

DAVID EMMONS: It's a call of a domestic upstairs. No one's answering the door just yet.

SPEAKER 9: Hi.

SPEAKER 10: How are you?

SPEAKER 9: Fine.

DAVID EMMONS: Hey, Shirley.

SPEAKER 9: Hi.

DAVID EMMONS: Got a call of a domestic up here.

JOHN BIEWEN: "A New kind of Cop" was produced by John Biewen and Stephen Smith. The editor was Dan Olson. Technical director, Craig Thorson. This is John Biewen.

SPEAKER 9: And ain't nothing else going on.

DAVID EMMONS: Yeah, she's saying every time you talk to her, you threaten her.

SPEAKER 9: I don't threaten her. Every time I talk to her, I ask her not. Do you know where she going?

GARY EICHTEN: "A New kind of Cop" was originally broadcast late last year here on Minnesota Public Radio. We should point out, by the way, that one of the people you heard in that documentary report, Robert Trojanowicz, Director of the National Center for Community Policing in Lansing, Michigan, died last year.

Lucy Gerold is the director of the Community Services Bureau for the Minneapolis Police Department. As such, she is involved in the community policing program in Minneapolis and the city's community crime prevention efforts as well. She has been involved in this work for 17 years, did you say?

LUCY GEROLD: That's correct.

GARY EICHTEN: She's been good enough to come by to talk about both aspects of bringing the community and the police together. I suppose the place I'd like to start tonight is National Night Out. What, 27 million people around the country are supposed to participate. Is it a pretty big deal in Minneapolis as well?

LUCY GEROLD: It's a very big deal in Minneapolis. In fact, Minneapolis has been one of the first, second, or third place winners in terms of its overall strategies the last several years. Minneapolis is expecting 1,400 blocks to participate in about 700 events, close to 30,000 people, which is a tremendous number.

And probably the most, greatest impact those kinds of numbers have is allowing people to see that in their fight against crime and in their community building, they aren't alone. That there's hundreds and thousands of other people that are out there doing the same thing. And that's tremendously empowering for people to keep going.

GARY EICHTEN: What kind of activities-- for people who haven't participated in the past, what kind of things are planned for this evening? Citizens going out arresting bad guys or what happens there?

LUCY GEROLD: Each group of blocks or network really need to tailor what they want to do to the needs they have, for example, if there's a major problem property or problems on their block or their area, they might use tonight as a time to solve that problem or begin some problem solving.

They may use tonight as a celebration of solving a major problem or shutting down a couple of drug houses. They may use it just to gather with neighbors and celebrate the fact that they're working together and know each other.

And the celebrations take a variety of forms, from parades, to anti-crime marches, to races, to contests, to potluck dinners, to simple picnics. So it's a variety of reasons and purposes.

GARY EICHTEN: Is there any sign that National Night Out and activities like that have had much of an impact on the crime rate? Because it seems like-- if the crime rate hasn't changed a lot in the last 10, 15 years, the fear of crime has increased a lot. You would think it would be the other way around.

LUCY GEROLD: Well, it is very difficult to attribute any one thing to reductions in crime, simply because there are so many factors that create the atmosphere for crime to occur.

And if you look at the advent of community involvement in crime reduction and fear reduction, primarily from the late '70s, you really see a flattening of burglary rates and property crime rates, which are the kinds of crimes that community involvement tends to most impact.

So community involvement has had an impact on crime more anecdotally than anything. Some neighborhoods have taken crime stat maps where crimes are placed on a map by type.

And they compare the blocks that are organized, where they have a lot of community involvement with those that aren't organized. And through their comparisons, we have seen a tremendous difference in crime rates based on who's organized and who's not.

GARY EICHTEN: And are there some commonalities between the groups that tend to organize? Is there a reason why some neighborhoods can't seem to get themselves organized well whereas others can? Is there strong leadership, financial wherewithal, anything like that?

LUCY GEROLD: It's a variety of things. I think that some neighborhoods are catalyzed by big problems. If they're having major problems, major issues, and they're fed up, it seems like nothing can stop them from organizing and taking some kind of action.

Other neighborhoods where there's maybe more time by the adults in the community, maybe they're not working outside the home and there is more time for the leadership, they can be better organized.

I would say, in communities where we have a lot of single parent households, a lot of people working outside the home, and other life stressors like unemployment, that it's more difficult to organize because there's other priorities in people's lives. So then we need to look at other ways to support the community working together with the police to really address their problems.

GARY EICHTEN: Our guest today is Lucy Gerold, who is the director of Community Services Bureau for the Minneapolis Police Department. We're talking about community involvement in crime prevention and also about community policing.

I want to go back to the community policing documentary that we heard. There are programs both in Minneapolis and St. Paul to get the police involved in the community. Early reviews, how is it working?

LUCY GEROLD: Well, I'm going to ask to correct the language on that and to say that our perspective is more that it's a philosophy or way of working, a way of doing business than it is a specific program.

In other words, the expectation is that every officer does their job in a way that is community oriented, that is oriented towards a variety of tasks and activities, not just enforcement.

And it has to do with how we deliver service, how we do follow up. There are officers whose full time job is to work with the community, to do problem solving, to really implement some of the concepts of community policing. And it's easier to maybe look at the results in those areas.

Early results would suggest that some segments of the community are very, very pleased with it. The fact that they've got a name and a face to put to that uniform or a crime prevention specialist that is a name and a face that they know they can work with, and rely on, and get information to and from, and support from is very, very helpful, supportive.

Oftentimes with the response of police to 911 calls-- and they're going from call to call to call. There's not an opportunity for the residents to get to know the police nor the police to get to know the residents. And with that anonymity, information often isn't exchanged. Help isn't sought.

So simply from that interaction, where trust is built, and problems identified, and solutions developed, there's a tremendous sense of accomplishment and result from that kind of work, which is satisfying both to the police officers, as well as the community.

GARY EICHTEN: What's the downside of this? What do you give up when you move to that approach to policing?

LUCY GEROLD: Well, it depends on how much of your resources you put into community policing efforts. And this is taking the extreme to make the point.

But if we were to ask all officers to spend a good portion of their time on responding to problem addresses and creating longer term solutions, which meant they worked with other resources in the city and county to do more than just respond to the immediate crisis, we would have a very slow response time because we couldn't get to our 911 calls because officers would be doing other things.

So in some ways, you could trade off response time. You could trade off certain calls maybe don't get responded to by the police because they're spending time on problem solving. I think we make that trade off every day when we have officers assigned to investigations as opposed to patrol or looking at it another way.

I mean, if you have officers assigned to patrol, they're not investigating, if they're assigned to investigations, they're not patrolling and responding to 911 calls. So it's always a matter of prioritizing how you're going to use your resources. And the more you have in one area, the less you have in another.

GARY EICHTEN: What kind of response have you gotten from the police officers? Do most of them think this is a good idea? Or do they see this as a new age, squishy, feel good approach to law enforcement?

LUCY GEROLD: I think there is a very mixed reaction by police officers to community policing. Some officers see the only solution to crime is enforcement, and good law enforcement-- arrests, tags. And they don't necessarily see the long-term solution as the approach.

There are other officers that, after years of patrolling and responding to 911 calls and seeing few results, that think this is a tremendous way to impact the community and impact crime because they see results.

They see calls for service at problem addresses go down or are eliminated because of the action that's been taken. And they see very satisfied community residents that no longer have to put up with a drug house on their block.

So there's a range in between those two descriptions also, but there's mixed results. I think the best way of increasing officer support is to have them experience some successes with this approach.

GARY EICHTEN: We're talking with Lucy Gerold, who is a community services director for the Minneapolis Police Department. Tom from New Brighton is on the line with a question or comment. Hello.

SPEAKER 11: Yes, this is my first time ever calling MPR.

GARY EICHTEN: Congratulations.

SPEAKER 11: I would just like to comment that it seems like the community is always concerned about the police, but I don't see the community ever concerned for the police.

The press will cover bad stories about the Minneapolis Police. They'll splash it with the sorrow deal, with the rape indictment on one of their officers. And it's self-defeating because it's like you're saying, yes, we need the police to be more exposed in the community, but we really don't like you guys. And we think you're a bunch of thugs.

And until the city starts saying we have good cops-- I mean, it's like the police are a minority who are being discriminated against. I mean, if they were to show minorities-- Blacks, Chinese, anybody in the same light that they show the Minneapolis Police, you'd get lawsuits.

GARY EICHTEN: What response do you think, in general, the Minneapolis Police receive from the community? What support or lack thereof?

LUCY GEROLD: Well, it's very different than what you see portrayed in the media. I would say that, on average, we get, in the chief's office, three to 20 letters a week in the Community Service Bureau, one to two letters a week praising and supporting a particular interactions with the police, actions that the police took in certain situations.

We hear from the community all the time about the great work that officers are doing. And it just is not portrayed that way in the media in any way. And it's very demoralizing because they're-- on average, the majority of the police officers are out there doing very, very good work every day and are really unsung heroes for that.

Do we have problems in the department? Yes, I think like any organization. And we believe we're addressing them. But I think what goes really unnoticed is, as this gentleman's describing, very, very good work that's done by the vast majority of officers.

GARY EICHTEN: John from St. Cloud is on the line with a question or comment. Hi.

SPEAKER 12: Hi. I have a question. I live in St. Cloud. And the area I live in is right next to St. Cloud State University. And it can be a pretty rowdy neighborhood and a lot of-- with the sofas on the porch and a lot of alcoholic parties going on pretty loud into the night. I'm wondering if she has any success or any thoughts on getting a college community joined up together.

LUCY GEROLD: I think in any problem process that all of the parties that are involved need to be identified and brought together to develop a range of solutions and options.

And in Minneapolis, we've had the same problems around the university area. And the frat houses and sorority houses have been involved in developing solutions to the party problems there.

And each of those houses has a designated individual who will take responsibility should things get out of hand. We also have an ordinance in the city of Minneapolis which limits loud parties and music and certain activity after 10 o'clock.

And if that activity is exceeded, the police can be called and people can be tagged for violating what we call the noisy party ordinance. It's also important to work with the residents of those places in letting them know what the standards are in the community.

I think that there's a misnomer about who sets standards. The community sets the standards. The police only enforce them. And so the community has to decide what it will tolerate and work towards seeing that those standards are met.

Oftentimes, we'll work with rental property owners about the activity taking place and let them know what's expected of their renters or tenants. And that if that behavior does not exist in terms of the things the community expects, that action will be taken to either tag them or work with the landlord to see that they meet the standards or leave.

GARY EICHTEN: I'm glad you brought up the question of loud parties because that's something that came up during the documentary as well. The suggestion being that one of the trade offs that you have with a community policing approach to law enforcement is that residents may have to do a little more work themselves.

They may have to take care of the barking dog or the noisy party and try to get things settled themselves rather than calling the police in. And I could see where, in some instances, that would be fine, but that's fairly dangerous work, is it not on occasion?

LUCY GEROLD: Yes, it can be dangerous work. And we don't ever want to suggest that we expect the community to go into a dangerous situation. As in many, many discussions, issues can get polarized or become black and white. And I think there's a lot of gray in this area.

When you look at the issue of noisy parties, I think there are some things that the police can do that the citizens can't. And there's things citizens can do that the police can't.

If there is a noisy party or any other kind of situation that a resident would feel threatened to go in and deal with, we expect people and suggest encourage them to call the police and get a police response.

However, once that incident is over-- again, let's use the example of a noisy party. What is extremely helpful is for residents and neighbors to call the landlord if this is taking place in rental property and saying, this is what we experienced last night, the night before. And we won't tolerate it in our community. And we expect you to do something about it. And also offering to work with the landlord about some resolution.

If it's a property owner, same situation. Contacting them that night, the next morning, with a bunch of neighbors, not just one or two. And letting them know what's expected and what will be tolerated. So there's some prework and some postwork maybe the community can do, but in the enforcement situation, they need to call 911.

GARY EICHTEN: When people get involved like that, what is the danger of reprisals at some later time?

LUCY GEROLD: Well, in my 17 years of doing this work, I know that we have heard repeatedly the concern about retaliation. And retaliation is very, very minimal. Usually, people are more concerned about the behavior or activity they're engaged in than they are interested in retaliation.

But retaliation also is a possibility. And people need to weigh each situation for what their vulnerability might be to retaliation. And if they think that vulnerability is significant, they should limit their action, or do it in an anonymous way, or engage a variety of people.

It's very easy to retaliate against one. It's much more difficult to retaliate against 20. So if it's a group of 20 or 30 people that are taking the stand on something, you really minimize the opportunity for retaliation because now it's a group. It's not an individual.

GARY EICHTEN: That's where the whole block club group activity business comes in, I suppose.

LUCY GEROLD: Correct.

GARY EICHTEN: Our guest today is Lucy Gerold, who is the director of the Community Services Bureau for the Minneapolis Police Department. We're talking about community policing and talking to you about what you can do to spiff up your neighborhood, protect yourself, and reclaim the streets as it were.

Tonight is National Night Out, and about 27 million people around the country are expected to participate in one fashion or another. You were noting earlier that the burglary rate has gone down a lot in the last 15 years or so, in part because of the block club approach and so on, community approach. How important is it to get those home security burglar alarm things? Does that help too?

LUCY GEROLD: I think the burglary rate is probably flattened more than it's gone down a lot. But again, you need to assess each situation and determine whether an alarm is needed. I think alarms are needed in certain situations and not in others.

Oftentimes, we'll see people possibly get an alarm, but they haven't improved the security of their doors and windows. And in many areas, good door and window security, any entry security is of prime importance. And an alarm is of secondary importance.

There are certain conditions when an alarm is much better. If you're in a remote area or an area not very visible to others, if you have valuable collections, if you're away a lot. There are some circumstances where you might want an alarm. But the basic physical security to a home and garage is what's of prime importance.

GARY EICHTEN: What is a decent alarm system cost if you're interested in one? Any guesstimate at all?

LUCY GEROLD: Boy, it depends on the kind of equipment you want. If you want a simple audible alarm with just door sensors, it can be very inexpensive. If you're going to have a central station alarm that's going to have door and window sensors, as well as interior motion, or infrared, or any of those kinds of things, you're going to be up into the thousands of dollars.

And then if it's a central station, you're going to have a monthly fee for that monitoring. So it really varies based on the system. And we encourage people to simply look in the yellow pages, and contact several alarm companies, and have them make recommendations based on their individual needs.

We also have, in the police department, a variety of information that helps people make that decision and direct them towards what might be best. But we won't recommend a certain alarm or brand.

GARY EICHTEN: One of our callers earlier mentioned what he thought to be the unfair coverage, the news coverage provided to the police. How do you see that changing? Any way at all?

I mean, most of what happens, I would think, the interactions between the police and the community don't seem to be the kind of things that are particularly newsworthy if everything goes the way it's supposed to.

And the nature of this business seems to be, well, if something goes bad, or wrong, different, then it gets covered. Any talk around your shop as to how this might change?

LUCY GEROLD: Well, I think we would like to see it changed. I have a little bit different view of the news. And my perspective is that the news should report the life and activity of the community.

And it should be balanced in terms of the life of that community. And whether that's the police department, the medical field, neighborhood life, that the reporting should reflect what is actually going on.

I know that news is to report the anomalies occurring as opposed to the everyday life. And yet I think that with so many negative things being reported, the good things are now the anomaly. And we need the reporting more of the good so that people have a better perspective on what is truly happening.

What we're talking about is we have a media specialist in the Minneapolis Police Department who works very, very hard to bring to the press's attention the positive things, the programming, the strategies that are occurring within the department.

I think that not everything certainly that is brought to their attention do they broadcast. I think all of this is taking place in a much larger context of what's going on in the United States and policing in general.

And maybe we're cycling through something we saw 20 years ago when I think the police were, particularly, seen in a negative light. And I think we're cycling through some of that. I think there's a lot that contributes to that. And as an organization, we're looking at how we can best project the balanced image of the Minneapolis Police Department.

GARY EICHTEN: We've got a caller from [INAUDIBLE] on the line with a question. Hi.

SPEAKER 13: Hi. I was wondering what protection does a dog give? Whether it's barking and noisy. What kind of protection is that?

LUCY GEROLD: Well, as with any strategies for crime prevention, we suggest that a variety of things are needed, not just one. So a dog can be helpful, but it shouldn't be your only means of security.

A dog can be helpful in that if it is a loud barker and a potential criminal perceives that the barking is going to draw attention to the crime, they may not commit that crime. If a dog is perceived as being particularly ferocious and might attack them, that also can be a deterrent.

But we've also seen burglaries take place where there's a dog present and the dog simply ignored. So I think that there are certainly advantages to having a dog, but it shouldn't be the only means of security. Again, you should still focus on having good door, window, and any other entry point security, and great good visibility of the buildings, and have it well lit.

GARY EICHTEN: There was a time it was assumed that the time you were most vulnerable to burglaries was when you weren't home. Is that still true? Or do we have now a new class of criminal out there who doesn't care whether you're around or not?

LUCY GEROLD: Periodically, we see an increase in occupied dwelling burglaries, where people are home. But the vast majority, I would say that we're still 95%, 97%, maybe even 98% of our burglaries are unoccupied dwellings.

GARY EICHTEN: Caroline from South Minneapolis has a question. Hello.

SPEAKER 14: Hi. Actually, I have two questions.

GARY EICHTEN: OK, good.

SPEAKER 14: The first is the issue of the perception of crime. I live in South Minneapolis, quite near Powderhorn Park. And there is almost no crime in our neighborhood. And that is the truth.

My husband walks alone in the park every night. We sometimes leave our doors not only unlocked, but open all night when it's hot, et cetera, et cetera. And yet the third precinct police, who are our police officers, do such things as, for instance, there was a person down the street selling their house.

And a potential buyer called the third precinct and was told by an officer at the third precinct that she was crazy to buy a house in this crime-ridden neighborhood. And that she should either consider Southwest Minneapolis or the suburbs. And that's one of the problems.

The other problems having to do with this perception is that we regularly hear the police warning us of how terrible things are, what the potential for terrible things are, et cetera, et cetera.

So that much of the perception of crime in our neighborhood is created by the police misinforming people about what's really going on here. That's one problem. The other problem that I see that you have--

GARY EICHTEN: OK, very briefly, because we want to get to some other callers here.

SPEAKER 14: 99% of the police officers in Minneapolis are wonderful. They do their job. They're great. They're decent people, et cetera. They, for some reason, that I do not understand have chosen to enfold the few that are really awful.

So that police officers who do things that are clearly terrible characterize any attempt to discipline them as an attack on the whole force.

GARY EICHTEN: Let me get a comment here on this problem that she alludes to that the police themselves sometimes feed this perception of crime run amok in the community. Does that happen?

LUCY GEROLD: It's inappropriate for police officers to tell someone that they should move or that they don't belong in that neighborhood. And I think that we've got four great inspectors that command each of our four precincts and clearly don't support that. And if you hear that kind of comment, you should address it to the precinct commander. In your case, ma'am, that would be inspector Bill O'Rourke.

GARY EICHTEN: On the other hand, if crime is a serious problem in a neighborhood, don't the police have the obligation to be honest about it and tell somebody who calls up in a situation like that?

LUCY GEROLD: The way in which we handle that is we have an individual in the Community Service Bureau who is responsible for addressing questions. And anybody in the city should be referred to her. Her name is Denise Dodson.

And she will provide, for people, comparative statistics on crime rates from neighborhood to neighborhood and then let the individual draw their own conclusions about what kind of risk there is and their choice of neighborhood. We shouldn't be making that choice for people. We should provide them the statistics and let people make up their own mind.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's get a question from Chuck, who's calling from Lake Vermilion. Hello.

SPEAKER 15: Hello there. I'm concerned with two things. One thing has chased the younger people into crime because of the high rating on the minimum wage. We used to hire kids all the time. And now you can't do it. It's not profitable. They don't know enough to earn what they make in the minimum wage.

GARY EICHTEN: OK, and the other point?

SPEAKER 15: Apprenticeships. Do we have any apprenticeship program going? Is Dunwoody still going or can the state pursue apprenticeships instead of just raising the minimum wage and can't afford to hire the young folks until they know something? That's how I got my start, so I thought I'd spread it out.

GARY EICHTEN: Thanks for the call. Little off the subject. I think we have time for one more question on crime prevention, community work, and so on. George.

SPEAKER 16: Yes, I'm calling from South Minneapolis. I'd like your guest to comment on 911 calls and whether or not they're taking up a disproportionate amount of police time and energy that they could be devoting to other community activity.

GARY EICHTEN: OK.

LUCY GEROLD: I guess I don't know quite what you mean by disproportionate amount of time. The police respond to about 350,000 calls a year. And we prioritize those calls based on the severity or nature of that call.

And there are some nights when the officers spend 100% of their time going from call to call to call. There are other nights, days when there is-- could be wide gaps between calls for service. So it varies. And I would need more specifics from you to respond better about what you mean by disproportionate.

GARY EICHTEN: Well, as the police department moves, excuse me, toward the community policing concept that we were talking about earlier, is it of necessity-- is that going to mean that they're going to be able to respond to fewer 911 calls in the future? And is that a good thing?

LUCY GEROLD: There are certain things that the community has authorized the police to do and that only people carrying a gun and a badge can do. And we will always, as the Minneapolis Police Department or other law enforcement agencies do those things.

We will respond to in-progress calls. We will respond to emergencies and any kind of call that needs enforcement action. That will always be the priority. And then we will assign our resources according to what the other needs are. If we need more resources to do more work with the community, that will be the decision that elected officials will have to make.

GARY EICHTEN: Thanks so much for coming. Appreciate it.

LUCY GEROLD: You're welcome.