Chicago police officials, Policing Project staff and program officers from our nonprofit funders met with NYPD Police Commissioner James O’Neill during a recent visit to New York.
The Policing Project recently hosted members of the Chicago Police Department during their visit to New York to learn more about the New York City Police Department’s Neighborhood Policing, the neighborhood-focused collaborative policing philosophy on which the Policing Project’s Chicago Neighborhood Policing Initiative (NPI) is modeled.
CPD members and Policing Project staff met with officers from several New York City precincts and visited NYPD Headquarters to see the Neighborhood Policing philosophy at work. The visit began on the same day that NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill announced his retirement. Meeting with the Chicago group, Commissioner O'Neill stressed his belief that Neighborhood Policing is not a program.
“Programs end,” the commissioner told the group. “Neighborhood Policing is a philosophy.”
Commissioner O'Neill’s message was that Neighborhood Policing is not merely a set of tactics put in place for a period of time, but rather a fundamental shift in the department’s approach to policing, one that centers the co-production of public safety. Neighborhood Policing emphasizes a commitment to a set of shared practices that value community inclusivity. The core of this philosophy is that officers are problem solvers and that engaging the community about what they identify as public safety issues is paramount to good policing. This is the philosophy the Policing Project aims to bring to Chicago through NPI.
Policing Project staff hosted the visitors from Chicago for a de-briefing lunch to discuss the progress of the NPI pilot program in District 25.
Chicago’s NPI began its pilot run in Chicago’s 25th District last winter, and expansion to the 15th District is beginning over the next few weeks. This initiative is based on NYC’s Neighborhood Policing philosophy, though with key difference. NPI relies on community members, known as “Ambassadors,” to help introduce District Coordinating Officers (DCOs) from CPD to the community. DCOs who have been on the ground in Chicago since last January are doing the hard work to make our initiative a core philosophy in Chicago policing.
As part of this visit, the Policing Project staff hosted Chicago officers for a debriefing lunch to discuss how the roll-out of NPI in the 25th has progressed. Officers, backed by preliminary data, reported an increase in positive interactions with community members, in line with the goal of improving trust between the community and police in the 25th’s neighborhoods.
“What we see so far is pretty reassuring,” one officer told the group. “What we’re measuring is change in how we are functioning daily, change in interaction with the community and changes in community perceptions of CPD.”
Chicago’s District 25 includes the neighborhoods of Montclare, Belmont Cragin, Hermosa, Logan Square and Austin. NPI’s expansion into the 15th District will bring NPI to more areas of the Austin community.