Co-Active Policing in Action

An officer’s role in a community consists of developing a relationship with citizens and understanding what crimes are being committed in his community and assigned area. Identifying where a specific crime is being committed and finding the cause, will allow an officer to develop a plan to suppress crime. Establishing a relationship with citizens and businesses who have an investment in a crime problem, will create support for any initiative law enforcement facilitates.

For example, Mrs. Jones can’t sleep at night because of heavy traffic going in and out of her neighbor’s house from 9PM to 5AM in the morning every day. Headlights from vehicles shine into her bedroom and people are talking loud. She has called the police several times, but her neighbors continue with same activity.

Mrs. Jones contacts Officer Johnson who answered a past graffiti complaint. Officer Johnson asks Mrs. Jones to write down time vehicles arrive and leave, description of vehicles, and license plate numbers of cars coming and going from her neighbor’s house. Officer Johnson contacts city water department to find out who is receiving services at that residence and determines it’s being rented. Officer Johnson contacts owners of the property and finds out who is renting property. A check of National Crime Information database identifies persons renting have prior arrests for drug distribution.

Officer Johnson locates their past residence and speaks with officers who arrested them and patrolled their area. Officer Johnson was provided with license plate numbers from Mrs. Jones. Registered owners were identified as having a history of drug offenses.

Establishing a relationship with City Water department, home owner and Mrs. Jones provides Officer Johnson with additional resources and information that he didn’t have before. Interviewing other neighbors in area allows Officer Johnson to determine if this a problem for other community members.

Officer Johnson has several options to address this problem. For example, he can identify a registered owner of a vehicle who visits the residence who have a history of drug use. While conducting surveillance, identify based on documented times from Mrs. Jones list an approximate time the vehicle will most likely arrive. Follow the vehicle in an unmarked undercover vehicle from the residence (Best tactical approach would be to wait till vehicle is far away from target residence to initiate a traffic stop), initiate a traffic with a marked patrol car for a traffic violation. An officer would have contact with occupants and conduct an investigation. After drugs are located, have a narcotics unit interview occupants, to flip occupants (have them become informants). Narcotics unit has occupants of vehicle do a control buy from Mrs. Jones neighbor to document drugs are being sold from residence. (It’s good to do this same tactic with several vehicles leaving the residence). Identify when a load of drugs are being delivered to Mrs. Jones neighbor’s house to serve a search warrant, but don’t serve search warrant until doing a control buy (agents undercover buying drugs). Here a search warrant can be served and outside individuals don’t know Mrs. Jones neighbors were arrested from distributing drugs. Mrs. Jones neighbors are now flipped to take down their source.

Summary: Officer Johnson after being notified of an issue in his area of responsibility was able to identify the source of the problem, by establishing a relationship with several stakeholders. Mrs. Jones is able to sleep at night.

Coactive Policing Matrix:

Issue: Heavy traffic late at night. Illegal parking. Disturbing the peace.

Stakeholders: Person Calling in Complaint, Water Department, Landlord.

Analysis: Additional crimes were discovered, which allowed for a larger intervention based on narcotic investigation. Conducting traffic stops away from target area, separated a connection from main target. Having persons who visited target purchase drugs from residence provided evidence of illegal drug distribution. Having officers serve a search warrant during a control buy, where targets purchased drugs directly from agents provided a better chance of targets identifying their drug source.

Conclusion: In this example of co-active policing, Officer Johnson was able to resolve two issues, the drug distribution next to Mrs. Jones residence and the targets drug source.