Evanston Police Chief Frank Kaminski is a firm believer that the best way to police a community is with the help of the community.
At his office desk, Kaminski spreads his arms out. “This is not my building,” he said. “This is everybody in the community’s building, and we really want to make it something they are proud of and part of.”
Kaminski is beginning his sixth year as chief. In his 27 years with the department and service under five chiefs, he has seen a lot of changes.
He also has seen what works in Evanston and has found ways to successfully build on that.
The result is the department’s current “Partnership” program, which Kaminski described as a hybrid of traditional and innovative policing methods that rely heavily on public involvement.
Connecting to residents
“The underlying theme to this department historically had been connections to the community,” he said.
“We’ve just tried to step it up several notches. We believe in building partnerships, relationships and networks with various parts of the community–and by community I mean the whole city.”
The response has been gratifying, Kaminski said.
A survey completed last year for the City of Evanston by the Northern Illinois University Center of Governmental Studies resulted in some high marks for the Police Department.
Eighty-seven percent of the more than 400 residents interviewed in a random telephone survey were confident the police would respond quickly to an emergency if called. The same number considered the police to be respectful of residents. Nearly the same number agreed that the police “perform their duties knowledgeably and capably.”
Accent on cooperation
And, significant to Kaminski’s philosophy of policing, 83 percent said the “Evanston Police Department’s relationship with the Evanston Community can be described as a cooperative partnership against crime.”
“Our mission and everything we’re about reflects this partnership style of policing,” Kaminski said.
One of the programs Kaminski is most proud of is the Citizen Police Academy.
Established in 1995, the academy offers an inside look at how the department operates. Anyone who is at least 18 and lives or works in Evanston can participate. The academy meets one evening a week for 12 weeks; it is offered twice a year. The next one will start in September. those interested in participating can call the department at 847-866-5000.
Members hear from Police Department and judicial system speakers, ride along with officers on patrol and observe the operations of the 911 dispatch center.
“Once people go through the academy, they have a better appreciation for what we do,” Kaminski said.
Many volunteer programs
In one volunteer program citizens can sign up to help with community-event coordination, crime-prevention programming and traffic direction and control. Other volunteers write tickets or help with investigations by performing such tasks as non-sensitive follow-up calls for the detective bureau.
“One of the big problems we had was the misuse of handicapped parking spaces,” Kaminski said. “I got a lot of complaints about it so we came up with a plan: I authorized citizens to go through a training program and to go out and actually issue tickets for cars illegally parked in handicapped zones.”
The Disabled Parking Enforcement Program, as it is called, has worked out well, Kaminski said.
“We’ve eliminated the problem, and the people are great,” he said.
“We have one lady who’s in wheelchair and she’s probably our largest writer.”
In a similar program, members of Evanston Fire and Life Safety Services have been authorized to help issue parking tickets for vehicles illegally parked near fire hydrants.
Welcome projects
Some of the activities have been less traditional but just as welcome, such as the remodeling of the police station’s break room by volunteers.
“We’re kind of short on remodeling money around here and the condition of the break room for everybody in the building wasn’t that great,” Kaminski said. “The volunteers went down there and they tore it apart. They painted it, they tiled the floor, they got new furniture and made it a beautiful break room.”
Another project that volunteers have planned for this spring is landscaping the front of the station building, he said.
The projects are unusual for citizen volunteers, “but that’s how people get connected and involved,” Kaminski said. “We’re always looking for other avenues to expand the partnership.”
Departmental cooperation
Partnerships also extend into other branches of Evanston’s government.
“Here in the city we have what we call the Civil Enforcement Task Force,” Kaminski said. The task force includes representatives of the police and fire departments as well as building inspectors and human-relations personnel.
“We meet about every month and identify those buildings or places that have the most calls for services due to complaints and we go after those properties as a city from all the different angles,” Kaminski said. “We have found that to be very successful.”
For other problem areas, such as those experiencing complaints about gangs and drugs, light pole-mounted, video-surveillance cameras have been one of the high-tech solutions.
“We have cameras that monitor intersections and locations on a continuous 7-day, 24-hour basis,” Kaminski said. “The technology of these cameras is just fabulous: You can read a license plate a block away. By doing just visual monitoring we’ve found that people do not hang out there. We don’t do audio so there’s no eavesdropping problem.”
What the camera sees is not necessarily always being watched by police, but it is always recorded.
“We’ve found it does displace crimes and in a couple of instances it proved crime didn’t happen when people have made allegations that it did.”
Crime is down
In Evanston, crime has, in fact, been dropping.
“In recent years we’ve seen a reduction in crime by about a third,” Kaminski said.
According to Evanston’s 2000 Crime Index Report issued in March, crimes were at an all-time high in 1997, with a total of 7,669, but the 1999 and 2000 totals were the lowest of the 1990s.
More than 93 percent of the 5,197 crimes in 2000 were property crimes such as burglary and vehicle theft, with the figures remaining roughly the same as last year’s. Violent crimes, however, such as robbery and sexual assault had dropped a bit.
“While I caution against relying solely on numbers to assess progress toward a crime-free community, it is true that these trends indicate improvement in the overall well-being of our community,” Kaminski said.
The RV factor
One popular–and hard-to-miss–sign of police presence in the community has been the department’s Community Policing Vehicle, which debuted in 1999.
Basically a 28-foot recreational vehicle, it is sent to wherever police presence is desired. This can be at a location where there is gang activity, at a disaster where an emergency command post is needed, or to help with crowd control, such as at a large sports event at Northwestern University.
When it sets up in a neighborhood with crime problems, it sends a chill to undesirables, said Sgt. Sam Pettineo, one of the officers usually assigned to the vehicle.
It also attracts residents who want a closer look–and who typically end up chatting with officers in an environment that feels more friendly than talking through a patrol car window or at the police station.
“Outside, it’s basically a 28-foot billboard for the Police Department,” Pettineo said. “The kids especially seem to love it.”
The inside has two areas. One is an office space with desks, computers and phones, as well as a coffee pot and compact refrigerator. The other is a small lounge area for informal talking; the lounge also has a television and VCR for viewing police tapes.
The vehicle is equipped with two generators, one of which can power the department’s communication system in case power is lost at the station.
Staffing challenges
But for all the positive progress, the department has its challenges, Kaminski said.
Right now, the biggest is finding and keeping good people working in the 220-person department.
“We are an aging department, which means we have a lot of people ready to retire–this is a national problem,” Kaminski said. “It’s just a cycle that’s out there now. There’s a lot of people ready to retire and move on.”
“It’s hard to fill in the lower ranks. Recruitment of people to be police officers had been tough the last several years. That’s by far my biggest challenge–I still have not been able to get up to full strength. In the last three or four years, we have hired 60 people. Out of a sworn compliment of 161, that’s almost a third.”
One of the responses to such shortages has been to conduct a continuous recruitment effort. Many of the new employees come to the Police Department via its Web site, where an application form can be downloaded.
Once hired, the employees need to be trained and absorbed into the department. Not all stay.
“We do not retain everybody,” Kaminski said. “Some try police work and don’t like it.
“A few go to other departments. But we steal people from other [departments], so it balances out in the long run,” he said with a laugh.
`Just the facts’ on the force
The basics
Main station:1454 Elmwood Ave.
Outposts: 1749 Lyons St. and 633 Howard St.
Web site: www.evanstonpolice.com
e-mail: evnstnpd@evanstonpolice.com
Useful phone numbers
Emergency: 911
Non-emergency: 847-866-5000
TDD: 847-866-5095
Chief of police: 847-866-5005
1749 Lyons St. Outpost: 847-866-5058
633 Howard St. Outpost: 847-866-5001
Animal control: 847-866-5080/81
Detective division: 847-866-5040
Drug hot line: 847-866-5055
Juvenile division: 847-866-5050
Narcotics/Gang unit: 847-866-5048
Records division: 847-866-5020
Senior crime prevention: 847-866-5019
Service desk: 847-866-5000
Traffic management: 847-866-5064
Victim services: 847-866-5016
Youth services: 847-866-5017
The divisions
Strategic Services: Neighborhood enforcement teams, traffic bureau, animal control
Field Operations: Patrol details, Problem solving team
Investigative Services: Detective bureau, juvenile bureau, police social services (victim services and youth services)
Support Services: Communications bureau, service desk, records bureau, property bureau, court liaison
