Police Chief Advisory Board Focuses on Community Policing, Cinco de Mayo Weekend Maybe First Test

Cinco de Mayo in downtown San Jose, 2010.

The Police Chief Community Advisory Board held its first gathering at the police station on Monday April 24, 2011. Roughly 18 community members – representatives from neighborhood associations, religious institutions, community service providers, and academia – are participating in a running dialogue with the Chief and selected staff, which will convene once a month over the course of a year.

Participants first went around and answered the perhaps obvious, but important, question: “Why are you here?” Police staff answered the introductory question too, as well as the City Manager who was present at the beginning of the meeting. The recurring theme in the responses circled back to parents talking about the San Jose they want their kids to grow up in. As the facilitator Chris Block reflected, it implied, “An inherent belief that the future reality can be different than the present.”

The rest of the discussion all revolved around the idea of “community policing” – what it means, its current obstacles, the economic realities it would have to operate in. The reality is, whatever community policing approaches that are employed will be happening with a smaller police force. Just the day after this first meeting, 106 police officers were given lay-off notices.

From the descriptions given that evening, and from previous mentioning of the term in forums during the police chief selection process, community policing seems to have an elastic definition. It is less compartmentalized policy, and more department-wide philosophy that can direct the culture, decision-making, and structure of a police force.

When asked for what a standardized definition of the term, Reverend Moore pointed to the Department of Justice definition, which states, “Community policing is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques, to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime.”

Captain Goede shared how when an officer in San Diego, she saw how the embracing of a community policing approach greatly improved the realities on the ground for both officers and residents. When asked for their own personal definitions, community members said: “Mutual respect”; “Even treatment no matter which side of the town you are in”; “When officers see themselves as members of the community.”

The discussion became a bit weightier when a representative from the Vietnamese community brought up the death of Daniel Pham who was shot by police in his home on Mother’s Day 2009.

The point she was making was that in the framework of community policing, having a police force that reflects the diversity of the residents can be an important standard, as well as having a department that understands the particular needs of those with mental health concerns. Both hopes, she commented, may be in peril as budget cuts reduce the size of the police force. From De-Bug’s perspective, we brought up that a real obstacle is going to be a certain measure of skepticism from our communities, given the tense dynamics that came to boiling points during the Davis era. Meaning, not only the high profile cases that received media attention, but the daily interactions that came to define police-community experiences in a way that eroded trust.

The response then would be that community policing philosophies will have to be obvious, tangible, and have enough gravity as to give people the confidence that measurable change is coming. The improvement of the towing policy for example -- which allows those driving without licenses to park their car and have a licensed driver pick up the vehicle, rather than having it towed with excessive fines for 30 days – is a step in the right direction.

One community member analogized the measuring stick of community policing to his kid’s soccer team that he coaches. He said that during practice, everyone plays well, but the real test is during certain pressure filled moments of a game. Meaning that the most authentic way to evaluate performance is during those times. Chief Moore agreed, repeating what he has said in forums across the city, “Don’t evaluate me now. Judge me six months from now.” The commitment to, and the value of, community policing as well may be judged during those difficult times. A hovering question is: Can a community policing model prevent a tragedy such as what happened to Daniel Pham? In a video De-Bug//Coalition for Justice and Accountability made of Daniel Pham’s father, Vinh Pham that was his message. He wanted this next chief to learn from his loss, so other families do not have to experience what his family did.

A game time test may be coming up soon, in the form of Cinco de Mayo weekend. Though the Mercury News reports that the parade has been cancelled the weekend may still likely be a hive of downtown celebration and social gatherings.

The event, which draws families and youth particularly from communities of color to downtown, has historically been a tense time for police and residents going downtown to celebrate. It is a weekend where accusations of wrongful arrests and complaints of over-aggressive policing permeate. San Jose Peace and Justice President Sharat Lin has conducted studies with photo documentation on the arresting practice on the weekend, and reports in 2010, “During Cinco de Mayo celebrations, residents of San José faced daytime checkpoints, citations, and arrests on a scale not matched by any other festival of the year.” His report goes on to examine two half-hour intervals on seven blocks of Santa Clara Street, where there were at least nine different cars stopped by San José police. Over the past couple of Cinco de Mayo weekends, De-Bug has received calls from people and immigrant advocacy organizations who said they were ticketed for having too large of a Mexican flag on their car. By comparison, we have never calls from people saying they were ticketed for too large of flags on Fourth of July weekend.

The next Community Advisory Board meeting is after Cinco de Mayo weekend, so we will have something to look at – rather than examples from the pre-Moore era, other cities’ examples, or future hypotheticals. Community policing can be applied in the here and now.

The television evening news on the day of our first meeting said the committee was assembled to “change the department’s image.” From the discussion, the intent and hopes of this board are much more substantive than a mere cosmetic “make over” of the SJPD’s image. This group, including the police representatives in the room, sees the current challenges as opportunities for real change in police-community relations. As Chief Moore said, in light of the budget cuts the city is facing, it will take all voices to contribute to a healthy era of public safety for San Jose.

Raj Jayadev is a member of the San Jose Police Chief Community Advisory Board, and a member of Silicon Valley De-Bug and the Coalition for Justice and Accountability. On this blog various commentators will be blogging about community-police relations in San Jose.