Two women are raped by the same man in a Far North Side neighborhood.
Within hours of the second attack, police have created a sketch of the suspect. Beat officers are alerted, and neighborhood activists begin distributing copies of the sketch and warning residents.
This scenario, which played out recently in Rogers Park, is what community policing is all about.
But it works only if the police and the community participate. And often, it doesn’t happen that way on the streets of Chicago.
That is the dilemma Chicago Police Department officials still face two years after implementing the Chicago Alternative Police Strategy, or CAPS. The program is Chicago’s version of a popular police philosophy known as community policing, where residents and police work together to solve crime.
Police officials say the Rogers Park rape investigation shows what CAPS could be. But in other parts of the city-and at times in Rogers Park, some residents there note-police-community cooperation remains more theory than reality.
The program has yet to surmount a barrier of mutual mistrust between residents and police. Some residents are confused by the concept of community policing or don’t know it exists.
The success of CAPS also is complicated by skepticism among the police rank and file, many of whom consider it nothing more than a political gimmick, and by special units within the force that are reluctant to get involved.
Those challenges are especially apparent in Englewood, where residents complained recently that they were kept in the dark while police investigated a series of murders.
In early June, word spread in the South Side neighborhood that several women, mostly drug addicts and prostitutes, had turned up dead. Community activists met with police to discuss their concerns, but police assured them they had no evidence of a serial killer.
Then, on June 20, police announced the arrest of 30-year-old Hubert Geralds of Englewood, who is charged in the murders of six women starting in December.
Geralds’ arrest touched off a storm of criticism from residents, Ald. Shirley Coleman (16th) and Englewood District police officers, who themselves complained that they were provided with little, if any, information about the slayings.
Criticism was directed back at the community, too, because, although Geralds was well-known in parts of the neighborhood as a volatile individual who hung around prostitutes, residents apparently gave police few leads.
“No one goes unscathed in this story because everyone is at fault,” said resident Hal Baskin, a community activist.
Indeed, in the days since Geralds’ arrest, authorities have acknowledged that information should have been exchanged more freely with the community.
At a community meeting last week, Englewood District Cmdr. Ronald Evans acknowledged “miscommunication” between residents and police.
Supt. Matt Rodriguez told the Tribune’s editorial board on Monday that police should have issued an advisory to prostitutes and drug users, much as shoplifting alerts are issued to merchants.
But Rodriguez, who, along with Mayor Richard Daley strongly supports the CAPS program, said there was no breakdown in communication in Englewood.
Rather, he said, the traditional system of police communication hampered it. In that culture, individual units, such as homicide investigators, are reluctant to share information with other officers.
That parochial mindset has begun to change at the patrol level, Rodriguez said. But, he said, it has yet to spread to other elements of the force, such as special units.
“Forty-seven-year-old detectives don’t change as easily,” Rodriguez said. “You have to show that this would help them, not hurt them.”
The CAPS program was started in April 1993 in five police districts-Englewood, Rogers Park, Marquette, Austin and Morgan Park-and is being expanded to the remaining 20 districts. It came at a time when hundreds of police departments across the country were latching onto the idea of community policing as an innovative way to combat crime.
While the program never promised to re-establish “Officer Friendly” casually strolling the boulevard, advocates hoped it would counter the “lock them up and move on” attitude that has developed the past 30 years.
In that environment, police in squad cars spend most of their time responding to 911 calls, creating what one officer called an “us vs. them” relationship.
Under CAPS, most officers still patrol in cars, but they are encouraged to get out more and get to know residents and merchants on their beats. Special rapid-response teams were created to respond to 911 calls.
Officers can refer nuisances such as abandoned cars and broken street lights to the appropriate city agency. The theory is that such problems contribute to resident perceptions about crime and neighborhood decay.
Periodic beat meetings also are called so residents and police can address problems ranging from drug hot spots to unkempt lots.
“We identify problems that affect the lives of people in Englewood, and we prioritize and strategize with police,” said Fran Baptiste, a Chicago schoolteacher and Englewood landlord.
Along with 14 other residents, Baptiste has volunteered to spread the message of CAPS through Englewood, whose crime rate exceeds most other neighborhoods’.
Their efforts were recognized recently in an academic study of the CAPS program that said it had reduced crime and improved residents’ perceptions of police. Among the accomplishments was placing an automatic-teller machine in the district police station, so residents could get money without fear of being robbed.
But while CAPS has succeeded among the most active community residents and organizations, the study said that most people have never heard of the program.
In Englewood, less than one-third of the residents were aware of CAPS, and many of those who have heard of the program don’t really understand what it is supposed to do. In the prototype districts, beat meetings have averaged five police officers and only 17 citizens, although an average of 10,000 people live within the boundaries of each of the city’s 279 police beats.
“We are looking and waiting,” resident Brandy Johnson said. “I wonder what happened. I heard we were going to get police walking in the neighborhood.”
Others hesitate to get involved in CAPS because of long-standing suspicions that police don’t really care about crime in neighborhoods like Englewood. And they don’t share information because they think nothing will be done or they fear being tagged a snitch.
Within the police ranks, CAPS has won over a sizable number of devotees. But considerable opposition remains from patrol officers and detectives.
CAPS proponents talk of a two-way street where detectives keep officers abreast of their investigations, and patrol officers tell detectives information they pick up in the neighborhoods. That didn’t happen in Englewood, several patrol officers there said.
Many officers also complained that they aren’t rewarded for problem-solving with residents because their supervisors remain more interested in making arrests and writing tickets.
” `Go out and get those numbers’ is so ingrained in this police department that you’d have to fire everyone from sergeant on up to change,” one officer said at a recent CAPS training class. “No matter what you say, we just flat-out don’t believe it.”
What does all this mean for the future of community policing?
Deputy Police Supt. Charles Ramsey noted that CAPS is so ambitious that there are bound to be problems. He said it would be five years or so before the program is at full strength.
The Rogers Park rape case, where “the phone is ringing off the hook” with tips from the community, though the suspect remains at large, shows the program can work, said Rogers Park District Cmdr. Thomas Byrne.
Even public criticism of the program is a sign of success, some police officials say. Before CAPS, they reason, citizens did not even expect efficient communication with police in the first place.
“People are getting mad, and that is good,” said Evans, the Englewood commander. “Sometimes we need an issue to rally around.”
