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8.20.2000 00:15
Policing
Rhode Island, Day One: Strength in numbers?
 Putting more officers on the streets may not be the answer to reducing crime, according to an analysis of each city and town's police, population and crime statistics.
Crime and police: How your town compares
How the numbers were crunched
See Day Two of this two-part
series: Number of police arrests fluctuates dramatically among R.I. communities
By BRUCE LANDIS
Journal
Staff Writer
When you call the cops, or just think about calling them, do you ever wonder how many cops are there to call?
And how does the number of police officers compare with the number of people and crimes in your town?
The strength of your police department varies a lot depending on where you live, shows a Journal study of 1998 Rhode Island crime statistics.
The Journal looked at the size of police forces throughout the state, crime and arrest rates, and the number of violent crimes.
The study is based on the state's official crime statistics for 1998, the last year available, published by the State Police. Crime and law enforcement experts said the study is unique in Rhode Island.
The study suggests that some communities have, perhaps unknowingly, made sharply different decisions about how to police themselves by the number of officers they hire.
Yet the relationship between the size of the police department and the crime rate is all over the lot. And interviews with police officials suggest they have different theories on major questions, such as how important the sheer number of officers is to reducing crime.
Hiring more officers doesn't necessarily buy less crime. For example, East Providence, a more
urban, working-class city, had many fewer police per capita in 1998 than the wealthier suburb of East Greenwich, but it also had a lower crime rate.
Police strength varies enormously. The number of officers per 10,000 population ranged from a dozen or so in Rhode Island's small towns to almost three times that in Newport, which had 35 officers per 10,000 population, more than Providence.
Most Rhode Island cities and towns have 20 or fewer police officers per 10,000 population, and many have 16 or fewer. There are a dozen communities with fewer than half of the 35 police officers per capita as Newport.
DOES NEWPORT
need even more police, per capita, than Providence?
The city's police chief and city manager say it's appropriate, because Newport has unusual law enforcement problems.
Although it has a huge influx of visitors, particularly in the summer, Newport is actually a small city, with only about 24,000 year-round
residents. And despite its glamour, it's also a relatively poor city, the state's sixth-poorest community in estimated median household income.
In 1998, Newport also had the distinction of having the highest violent crime rate in all of Rhode Island, ahead of Providence and Central Falls.
The North End's out-of-the-way Tonomy Hill neighborhood is one contributor. The low-income housing development is one of those rare places where the local chief of police, in this case, Newport Chief David R. Kelly, said he wouldn't feel safe taking a walk.
In Tonomy Hill so far this year:
Two men were shot in the chest, one fatally, on Saturday night of Memorial Day Weekend on Chadwick Street.
In March, a Newport officer fired a shot that missed a suspect after the man pointed a gun at the officer behind the buildings on Cowie Street.
Eighteen people were arrested in February after a drug investigation aimed partly at the Tonomy Hill projects.
On paper, the project buildings are largely occupied by very poor, single women with children. But Housing Authority Executive Director Daniel W. Marvelle Jr. said that boyfriends and former husbands tend to move in, illegally, and get in trouble.
Earlier this year, Marvelle kept a list of people whose arrests were published in the Newport Daily News. In 10 days, he said, he put stars beside about a dozen names -- people who gave addresses in his projects when the police arrested them, but who aren't his tenants and shouldn't be living there.
Drugs are not a new problem in Newport. Kelly's predecessor, former Newport Chief Stephen Weaver, remembers being "welcomed" to his new job in 1987 by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which told him that Newport was the principal crack cocaine supplier for Southeastern New England.
To these problems, add all the bars, festivals, boat shows and other attractions for outsiders. Newport's crime rises in the summer, Kelly's statistics show, when there is "that concentrated crowd walking up and down Thames Street all night."
Kelly said this contributes to a seasonal jump in aggravated assaults, disorderly conduct, larcenies and vandalism, among other crimes.
But the bars are open all year, attracting more visitors -- and perhaps more troubles -- year-round.
Kelly estimates that the recent Tall Ships' visit attracted 75,000 extra people -- equal to the entire population of Cranston -- on each day of the four-day festival. That would mean quadrupling Newport's population, making it temporarily the second-largest city in the state.
So at times, Newport police are really policing a much bigger city. Then the question becomes, does Newport have enough police?
"During the summer, probably not," said City Manager Michael D. Mallinoff, "and during the winter, more than enough." The city tried using part-time, seasonal officers in the summer, but gave up in the late 1980s because of training and insurance problems, said Chief Kelly.
PROVIDENCE POLICE face a similar problem. Like the Bay, Providence has two tides a day: the thousands of workers who flood into the city in the daytime, and the flood of amusement-seekers who fill the restaurants, bars and theaters in the evening. Providence has many more potential victims and criminals than its population suggests.
The FBI statistics say that Providence had slightly more than 30 "serious" crimes a day in 1998. But Providence police say they also have problems unlike those of other Rhode Island communities.
For example, when you have as many drug dealers as Providence does, one officer said, you attract a criminal unlikely to turn up in most towns: fake drug dealers who rob would-be drug buyers, who are drawn to Providence seeking drugs.
Providence is difficult to compare with other Rhode Island communities because it's so big and has so much crime, Rhode Island police chiefs say. Compared with New England cities of similar size, Providence had slightly fewer police per population. Where Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport had between 33 and 36 officers per 10,000 population, Providence had 31.
By another measure -- the number of crimes per officer -- the Providence police force is seriously understaffed.
Providence reported 24 of what the FBI considers "serious" crimes per officer in 1998, while towns such as Scituate, East Greenwich and Westerly reported only a fraction of that -- from 6 to 8 per officer. Among urban areas, the serious-crime workload varies dramatically. Woonsocket, East Providence and North Providence all had fewer than half as many serious crimes per officer as Providence.
Assuming police officers are working equally hard, Providence's high crime load had an impact beyond the crimes themselves. Officers in Providence and other high-crime-per-officer cities have less time for the other things that make up the bulk of police work.
That can mean defusing disputes before they become crimes or other public safety efforts. For example, around midnight one recent night, an officer driving up Eddy Street noticed a woman asleep on the sidewalk with her legs out in the street, where they could have been run over. The officer stopped, turned his car around, drove back and woke her up. She said she was waiting for the bus.
WEST WARWICK
had the second-highest number of violent crimes per capita, ahead of Central Falls and Providence.
"We're way up there," acknowledged West Warwick Police Chief Peter Brousseau. He said his department's efforts to prosecute domestic violence cases may contribute to a high number of assaults. West Warwick is an old mill town with inexpensive housing, Brousseau said, "and unfortunately that draws people" prone to involvement in crime.
BARRINGTON AND
East Greenwich are often mentioned in the same breath, largely for reasons related to their having the highest median household incomes in the state.
The statistics show, however, that they have different crime rates, and very different ideas about how many police they need.
East Greenwich had lots of cops, 26 per 10,000 population, tied for fourth-highest in the state. That's more than Central Falls, Warwick, Cranston or Pawtucket, and it's tied for highest among suburbs.
Barrington, by sharp contrast, had one of the lowest numbers of police per 10,000 population in the state -- 15. There were only three police departments with fewer officers per capita -- Burrillville, Glocester and Richmond -- and they are rural towns, not suburbs like Barrington.
Barrington also had an FBI crime rate one-third higher than East Greenwich, ranking 15th in the state compared with East Greenwich's 26th.
So, does East Greenwich have too many cops, Barrington too few, or something else?
Despite his comparatively large number of officers, East Greenwich Chief Lawrence Campion Jr. describes his department as "fairly bare bones."
Where outsiders may see East Greenwich and Barrington as just two rich towns that can afford to do what they want, Campion said they are really quite different. His town has bars, and Barrington doesn't. His town has more of a business district, a much more active waterfront, nightlife, some industry, and Goddard State Park. Every Saturday night, the chief said, "that Main Street's full."
Campion said his high number of police and his relatively low crime rate show that East Greenwich has found the right answer, although he also said he's doing things to reduce crime, such as using his computer system to learn where and when crimes are happening, to try to prevent them.
"I'm proud of us," Campion said, for having "an adequate number of police, and a nice low crime rate."
BARRINGTON CHIEF
John T. Lazzaro said that the town's crime rate is probably higher than it might be because his residents tend to report more crimes. For example, he said, when somebody steals a bike in Barrington, it's likely to be worth upward of $1,000, so they report it.
"Right now, I've only got two patrol cars on the road," Lazzaro said on a recent weekday. "It all depends on what the town wants. If they want DARE [an anti-drug program] in all the schools, we don't have enough men."
Lazzaro said his officers are well-trained and equipped, and a new $4-million police-fire station is being built to replace the department's current hovel.
But when pressed on whether he thinks he has enough officers, Lazzaro hesitated. If he said he had enough officers, his officers wouldn't like it, and he'd likely torpedo any hope of getting more money from the town. But if he said he doesn't have enough, he'd have implicitly criticized the town manager and Town Council, who hire him and set his budget.
"Do we need people? It's something that has to be studied," he said, although by the statistics, "it appears that we're low."
DESPITE THE
temptation for some chiefs to link the crime rate to the number of officers, the relationship is dubious, both in the Rhode Island statistics and in research.
"There's a substantial amount of research that shows no relationship between the number of police per capita and the crime rate," said Prof. Leo Carroll, chairman of the University of Rhode Island's Sociology and Anthropology Department and an expert on criminal justice issues.
"Overall, East Greenwich is a very well-to-do, well-heeled upper middle class community, and that is what influences your crime rate," Carroll said, not how many police are on the force.
Some police chiefs agree.
"I think the key is how you utilize the manpower, rather than the manpower you have," said Central Falls Chief Alan R. DeNaro. "Just pumping numbers of cops on the street doesn't affect your crime rate in the long run."
East Providence's figures support DeNaro's contention.
The urban community with the lowest crime rate, East Providence, also had the lowest number of police officers per capita among urban communities -- 19 officers per 10,000 population. Its crime rate ranked near the bottom, at 31st in the state, several places below East Greenwich's.
East Providence Police Chief Gary L. Dias agrees it isn't the number of officers you have, it's how you use them. Dias attributes the low crime rate to his department's relationship to the residents. "We have a community that gets involved," Dias said. "People report crimes, people report suspicious activity."
Dias's department has tried to further those ties by putting temporary substations in troubled areas, by creating a Community Police Academy, in which citizens learn about police work and are encouraged to help out. Police also look for trouble before it happens, Dias said. The department recently got an award for a program that teaches teenage girls how to avoid abusive relationships with boys.
WHAT CAUSES
communities to come up with such different answers to the question of how many officers they need?
Based on his and others' research into law enforcement, Carroll suspects that citizens respond to a "a sense of fear and threat." His research, for example, showed cities across the country hiring more police as their black populations increased, apparently because the white population feared the increasing number of blacks. When the blacks gained political power, and control over the budget, police spending dropped off.
So, how do you know the right number of cops for your town? Is there some sort of formula, some authoritative benchmark?
"Not that I've ever heard of," Carroll said.
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