Providence police officers Bobby Zabinski, left, and Gary Slater speak with a woman they had just put in handcuffs as they prepare to place her in a patrol car at Kennedy Plaza yesterday afternoon.

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

PROVIDENCE

Thanks to community policing, major crime is the lowest it has been in three decades, Mayor David N. Cicilline and Police Chief Dean M. Esserman announced yesterday.

There were 11 murders last year, for example, matching a previous low of 28 years ago, according to figures released by the chief.

At a news conference, they announced crime statistics for the past year as well as for the four years that Esserman has been chief.

Major crimes in 2006, compared with 2005, declined by 12 percent, from 11,190 to 9,829, according to figures that the police intend to report to the FBI. And major violent crimes fell by 18.1 percent, from 1,145 to 938.

Over four years, comparing 2002 with 2006, major crimes plummeted 30 percent, from 14,039 to 9,829, and major violent crimes, 26.8 percent, from 1,281 to 938.

“We have very good news to report,” a jubilant Cicilline said at a lectern set up in the second-floor atrium of the Public Safety Complex. “Today is really about … celebrating four years of community policing.”

Community policing entails, first, the decentralization of the police command to delegate decision-making authority to captains and lieutenants who are closer to the neighborhoods they patrol. Also, it calls for the enlistment of community groups, other agencies inside and outside law enforcement, and residents to help solve problems. The emphasis is crime prevention rather than crime reaction.

Patrol officers are supposed to interact closely with the citizenry, checking on petty crimes and taking care of quality-of-life issues one on one with individuals and in the meetings of neighborhood organizations. More serious crime is discouraged, according to this approach, by upgrading neighborhoods, getting the citizenry engaged, and reducing a sense of disorder.

“We are no longer a lone cowboy,” Esserman said in a recent broadcast TV interview. “I love John Wayne. I have seen every movie. I have been to his home in Iowa. … But the days of the lone cowboy are over. And this department doesn’t work alone anymore.”

The chief yesterday released yearly data on murders stretching back to 1971, when there were 11. That low of 11 was touched again in 1978, but not for a third time until last year.

Esserman said yearly data to back up the claim that all major crime has not been this low for three decades was not immediately available but would be released beginning today.

Providence bucks the recent trend in crime nationally, according to Robert Clark Corrente, U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island. His counterparts in other federal districts tell him that violent crime has increased nationally and in their regions.

Esserman has attributed the decline in crime in Providence to improved law enforcement strategy, such as community policing, and tactics, as well as an adequate number of police officers.

Community policing in Providence was partially initiated by former Police Chief Richard Sullivan, who was hampered by numerous vacancies in the Police Department and a lack of time before he was relieved of duty as chief in 2002.

But Cicilline promised community policing in his first mayoral campaign that year, and he delivered on the promise by hiring Esserman, an ardent advocate of the philosophy, shortly after he took office. Esserman then relaunched a comprehensive community policing program, after consulting his officers on how it should be done.

What the mayor and chief recite are figures for seven major categories of crime as defined by the FBI and called Part I crime: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft and larceny. They are the measures that law enforcement agencies use to compare themselves with their counterparts.

Part I crime excludes other substantial crimes such as arson, simple assault and drunken driving.

Under Esserman, the department has adopted a relentless focus on crime statistics, closely examining every crime complaint with an eye toward determining whether, in fact, a crime occurred and, if so, how it should be categorized.

Some police officers complain privately that the tracking of the numbers has become an end in itself. But Esserman and his top commanders insist that it is merely a means to an end: Accountability from every rank of the department.

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration at all,” Cedric Huntley, a director of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence, said of the glowing statistics after the news conference. “Those numbers are real for us, for community people like myself.” Huntley is executive director of the South Providence recreation center and director of athletic facilities at the Met School.

The institute has a group of 13 streetworkers who counsel youth and try to help their families, with the goal of heading off violence. The mayor and chief credit the city-subsidized streetworker program with playing a significant role in the reduction of crime.

“It’s not an accident,” Teny Gross, institute executive director, said of the reduction. “Sometimes we can rely on some good luck, but there’s a lot of hard, hard work that goes into stopping violence.”

In addition to the institute, another of the community groups that Esserman has enlisted was represented at the news conference. Margaret Holland McDuff, executive director of Family Service of Rhode Island, said the police have given her social-service agency “unprecedented access” to families struck by domestic and other kinds of violence.

“How do you stop further violence? You impact victims, you make sure that they get immediate response and immediate treatment and support,” she declared.

Family Service mental health clinicians are members of what Esserman calls “Police Go Teams,” quickly intervening in crises involving children.

The department currently is fully staffed at 494 sworn officers, with no vacancies, and Esserman thanked the mayor and City Council for providing money in recent years to keep up the police force. In addition, he has found ways to augment the department at no extra cost, by persuading the state police, for example, to send troopers into the city to patrol in teams with his officers.

Major and mid-sized police departments around the nation have suffered manpower attrition and seen crime go up, according to Esserman.

Crime experts caution that it is hard to pinpoint the reasons for the rise and fall in crime rates and that a variety of factors are in play, including social trends, regional economies and the number of convicts released from prison.

gsmith@projo.com