Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Community Policing Meeting Frequency Cut

Chicago News Coop:
The frequency of beat community meetings—a staple of Chicago’s community policing program since it was launched in 1993 to improve communication between police and residents—will be cut in many areas of the city from every month to every other month starting the first of the year, Ron Holt, the director of the CAPS program, told the Chicago News Cooperative Tuesday.


Holt said most of the city’s police districts simply don’t have enough officers available to hold monthly meetings in each of their beats. The scheduling will vary by district depending on available staffing, he said. Holt said he was in a meeting and would provide more information later but did not respond to follow-up calls.

City budget constraints have limited police hiring in recent years, leading to a major reduction in the number of officers and a fierce political debate about how they should be deployed. To help cope with the drop, Holt and Mayor Richard M. Daley announced in September that most of the roughly 300 officers assigned to the CAPS program would be redeployed to street duty. They promised that the CAPS program would remain intact and the officers would be replaced by civilians.
Read the whole thing!

Also has anyone been involved with CAPS programs in most of our local police districts? Let us know your experiences.

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