George Harris
Kansas City Star
Reader Advisory Panel 2008

It is tempting to measure police departments by whether they can reduce crime rates. But it’s not the only way, maybe not even a good way, to measure police effectiveness.

Yael Abouhalkah's post on this web site correctly points out that crime rates have dropped significantly over the years. He then questions whether the department needs additional funding, particularly since the department has offered no evidence that more money would result in less crime, particularly violent crime and homicides.

The problem is that rates of violent crime are correlated highly with the percentage of youth in the general population. The more teenagers there are, the more crime there is. Policing has little to do with population.

There is even some argument that serious crime was significantly reduced by Roe v Wade, the argument being that unwanted children grow up to be more troubled than children whose parents really want them.

Whether or not you agree with this argument, it is clear that many factors outside the control of the police affect crime rates.

The reality is that police action is not even theoretically a deterrent to crime; the police arrest, the courts punish. It is difficult to give police either the blame or the credit for crime reduction in a complicated criminal justice system.

And, of course, even if the police can deliver "justice" directly, they really can't be ubiquitious and can't defeat human nature. Police departments can crack down on speeders on a busy highway, and at least for awhile, citizens will get the idea that they need to slow down. But soon after the police quit enforcing a particular stretch of road, cars soon begin accelerating. Police suppress crimes temporarily with their presence, but then people do what they do.

It is also quite difficult for the police to stop murder. Most homicides victims know their assailants, often family members, and it is simply too much to expect that police can exert enough presence to reduce these horrific events. Police might have some impact on gang related violence, but less so on overall rates of violence.

Community policing can encourage citizens to report criminal activity and generally increase citizen cooperation with police. This results in more effective policing, perhaps in helping communities deal with unwanted groups in neighborhoods, but the rest of the criminal justice and social service system must also do their parts.

There are many reasons police departments need funding:

Most citizens want a fast response time when they call in to report danger. Few police, long wait times.

Citizens want serious crimes investigated, even if the correlation between cases solved and crime rates is relatively low. Investigations require manpower and money.

Police need backups, sometimes multiple backups, during emergencies. They need to be able to protect each other when they're getting shot at. It might be possible to reduce police numbers by having skeleton shifts, but I wouldn't want to work that shift.

Police provide assistance to schools, drug information programs and a variety of other services, including traffic control during presidential visits and other major events. These tasks do not reduce assaults, at least not immediately, in any easily measureable way.

Finally, police costs go up with almost everything else. When gas hits $4 per gallon, think about what this does to the police transportation budget.

Police departments should be evaluated on the variety of services they perform. The KCPD has been fairly criticized for some shortcomings, but it is important to see the department in the big picture and not just a few crime statistics.

To be sure, the city has many needs, and policing is just one of them. But when you hear a strange sound in the night, would you want to call me, a psychologist, or a police officer trained to chase bad guys down dark alleys.

I think I know the answer.