Police Chief Shirlene Anderson gave the first few hints of a crime plan to the public this Monday following a City Council budget meeting. Anderson had stalled for months in response to calls by council members for her to present a crime plan, earlier telling the council that revealing the plan would give away too much information to criminals.
The tension between the council and the police chief was palpable at the onset of the presentation, with Ward 1 Councilman Ben Allen believing that Anderson was only willing to present the plan in executive session.
"We're not asking you to show us all the down and dirty regarding the crime plan," Allen said. "We're getting asked what the city of Jackson is going to do to address crime, and we can't say, 'We're not going to tell you. It's in executive session.' This is real simple: We either have a plan, or we don't."
Anderson explained that she was willing to present the plan to the public, and produced a slide show of bullet points.
Elements of the plan entail the "Establishment of Community Partnerships," meaning officers will attend community meetings to identify specific "issues and concerns" of citizens, followed by aimed crime sweeps. The plan also includes a renewed effort in "community service training" of department employees and encouraging more citizen reserve classes and extension recruiting programs.
The plan included little specific information, however. For instance, under "Directed Patrols," Anderson's presentation included only two points. One was: "Specific Problems that need to be addressed." The other was: "Information will be provided to units, which are responsible for investigating the particular crime. This will hopefully aid in solving or preventing certain crimes."
The plan focused strongly on community policing, which Mayor Frank Melton ridiculed during his campaign. Jackson State criminology professor Jimmy Bell, who has helped organize the mayor's crime summits, also helped Anderson devise the plan. "You've spoken to the neighbors, the residents; you've assessed what those hot spots are, and you've directed patrols to those areas."
Police may have a harder time identifying "hot spots," however, because Anderson ordered an end to the city's ComStat program, a computerized statistics tracker specifically designed to identify troubled areas. Former Chief Robert Moore used weekly ComStat tracking to direct police resources where needed and presided over a steady reduction in crime. He also invited the press to ComStat meetings and presented a detailed, five-point plan to City Council.
Anderson's plan did not go into detail on the mechanism by which police will identify troubled areas without ComStat.
Ward 6 Councilman Marshand Crisler said he would have preferred the plan to place more emphasis on disseminating crime statistics to the public. "The public needs to know what's going on in the city to help them handle crime in the areas, especially crimes against persons, and I don't know right now if I'm convinced that we've done that, with all due respect," Crisler said. "I was hoping the plan would talk about data, and trouble spots and random sting operations, and things of that nature that would be implemented. ... I don't hear anything mentioned about how your office is tracking some of these (crimes) that are happening in certain areas."
The city stopped compiling ComStat figures in December. The last ComStat figures show that crime in every category has grown under the Melton administration. In late October, ComStat showed that overall crime had increased 15.2 percent over last year. Violent crime was up a staggering 48.7 percent, with an 82.9 percent increase in armed robbery.
Anderson said after the presentation that she still had no plan to go back to compiling ComStat figures.
"All the neighborhood communities want is to know the area where the crime took place, so they can look out for their neighbor, but this same information can be transferred to the neighborhood associations by the police officer. Some of them do like the numbers, but some of them just want to know basic stuff, like did this house get burglarized or did this lady down the street get raped," Anderson said.
Precinct 4 COPS moderator Bob Oertel said the figures themselves would still be useful.
"Police/community communication is important, but if we don't have the figures, how would we know, a year from now, if things have improved?" Oertel asked.
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