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 What
do the neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., have in common with
the neighborhoods of London or Glasgow or Dublin? That's what
Commander Ross Swope of the Metropolitan Police of Washington,
D.C., traveled to England to find out. And the answer was a surprising:
a lot more than you may have thought.
A 26-year veteran, Swope has spent the better part of his career
studying about--and practicing--community policing. "Policing
has really progressed in the last three decades," he explains.
"It's not just about crime control and making arrests and
getting convictions anymore. We're moving into dealing with crime
prevention--and understanding the fear of crime is at the forefront
of our efforts."
The focus, it turns out, is much the same in the United Kingdom.
Swope spent almost four months at Cambridge University, sharing
his expertise and conducting research on the fear of crime in
the United Kingdom. "It's an issue that's just as timely
in the UK as it is over here," he says. "The perception
doesn't always match the reality, but those perceptions have a
big effect. Based on the perception that they live in a dangerous
place, residents may move to other neighborhoods or refuse to
patronize local business." But the impact goes well beyond
economic concerns, Swope insists. "When you have residents
who are afraid, they may become shut-ins who don't participate
in the social life of the community--so then there's less informal
surveillance, and less concern about community life. And those
are the things that just invite disorder."
With the passage of the 1998 Crime and Disorder act in the United
Kingdom, police have been putting more effort into community policing,
Swope explains. "And a key performance indicator used to
measure their success," he says, "will be their ability
to reduce the level of the fear of crime." Swope not only
lectured at Cambridge, but also met with, and gave workshops for,
nearly a dozen police agencies, discussing his experiences in
Washington, and listening to those of his British counterparts.
"I wanted to conduct research on a very timely and important
subject," says Swope. "But I was also able to take part
in an exchange about wider issues that face police everywhere."
They were exchanges that were nurtured by the bonds that seem
to easily span an ocean. "Wherever I went, I was able to
talk about common challenges that we all face every day. That
really helped to broaden my perspective."
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