MPS/MPA visit to New York

Report: 10
Date: 9 January 2003
By: Commissioner

Summary

Between 28 October and 1 November 2002, a study visit to the New York Police Department (NYPD) took place involving three MPS borough commanders, a member of the MPA and a consultant from the Centre for Excellence in the Governance of London. The purpose of the visit was to examine issues in policing diverse global cities. This report outlines the key findings of the study team from the visit.

A. Recommendation

Members are asked to note the content of the report.

B. Supporting information

1. The visit lasted for five days and involved a wide range of discussions and observations with senior police officials, community representatives and officers from other agencies. This report provides an overview of the most significant issues.

2. Among the key issues discussed here are the 'marketing' of NYPD; recruitment; training; community policing; partnership working and some elements of policing practice. The view of the team is that there is little that can be directly translated to London, but that reflecting on the experience of policing in London in the light of practice in New York gives some useful indicators of areas worthy of further, more detailed examination. For the MPS borough commanders involved, the visit provided direct learning that can be applied in the local context within their own commands in London.

Marketing the NYPD - ‘New York’s Finest’

3. NYPD presents an image, both internally and externally, that is unabashedly proud and fosters a sense of pride amongst citizens in their police and among the police in the organisation they belong to. This is evident in the marketing of 'New York's Finest'. Merchandise is widely available and images are used effectively to promote this ethos; there is an emphasis on positive marketing in the local press; awards are an omnipresent feature – on precinct walls, at community meetings. The symbolism of the 23 ‘Fallen Heroes’ of 9/11 is the most obvious example of this ethos.

4. The impression is of an organisation that is self confident about its ability to deliver a high quality service to its citizens, which is positive. There was an evident pride in the year-on-year crime reduction over the last nine years.

5. In general, this was a positive aspect of NYPD and contrasted with the more reticent approach frequently found in the MPS but this may have more to do with the cultural differences between the United States and United Kingdom.

Recruitment and retention

6. Recruitment is centrally driven in a proactive way - a 30 strong team of police officers are deployed to identified locations across New York (e.g. shopping centres, transport interchanges). The approach differs from that of the MPS in that there is no overt focus on diversity in recruitment and there is no equivalent of the MPS Positive Action Team.

7. Recent NYPD recruitment figures show a healthy balance between different ethnic groups. The managers working in recruitment stated that they achieved sufficient diversity in their recruitment without any specific targeted work.

8. Recruitment efforts are focused in the city (with the exceptions of some academic institutions and military bases further a field). This means that the recruitment market within which NYPD is operating automatically provides a highly diverse pool of potential recruits, reflecting the population of the city. This may offer lessons for the MPS, given the proportion of recruits that currently come from outside London.

9. The speed of the recruitment process was highlighted as being important, which is also recognised in the MPS. However, while recruits in New York may have a lengthy wait before attending the academy (as it runs only one eight-month course per year), the process from application to selection seemed to be quicker than the MPS process.

10. There is evident energy applied to recruitment, complemented by the pride referred to above. The potential message is that energetic, focused, generic recruitment effort may be more productive in diversity terms than the current ‘positive action’ approach of the MPS.

11. Police officers are not permitted to wear turbans or other ethnic or religiously proscribed items instead of standard police uniform. It may be that this reflects the view that there is no need to focus directly on diversity in recruitment and retention because of the existing workforce and recruitment profiles.

12. The impression that emerged was that of an organisation that has achieved, by whatever historical means, a satisfactory situation in terms of recruiting from diverse communities and did not therefore need to make 'special' provision.

Training and development

13. There was evidence of a healthy interchange between law enforcement and academia. This was manifested in individuals who had switched at different times in their careers between the two professions (as the Assistant Commissioner at the Academy for example had done).

14. There seemed to be a greater emphasis on continuing education and self-development throughout a career in the NYPD. There is an expectation that Precinct Commanders will have achieved Bachelor's level degree qualification in order to be eligible for promotion.

15. One evident difference from the MPS was that Precinct Commanders expected to hold at least two commands at that level before progressing further. They described the normal progression as being to a quiet precinct as the first command, followed by a busier precinct, typically after about two years. For some there would be a third precinct command, although the busiest precincts attracted a higher rank for the Precinct Commander. This offers clear potential benefits both for individual development and for the service.

Community policing

16. The core responsibility for community engagement is rooted in the Community Affairs department. This is a central unit with line command to the Deputy Commissioner for Community Affairs at 1 Police Plaza, although in practice the unit based at Brooklyn South Patrol Borough worked to the Borough Commander. Each Precinct then has between one and three officers who are designated as Community Affairs officers, who are under the line command of the Precinct Commander.

17. At Borough level, the Borough Commander had explicit expectations of his precinct Commanders in regard to community engagement.

18. In the stated views of the Precinct Commanders, there was no confusion about priorities. They recognised that the Borough Commander would equally expect a Community Council in each Precinct but that delivering crime reduction was the most important feature of their roles. Precinct Commanders seemed to rely heavily on Community Affairs officers as the main conduit for accessing communities, similar to BLOs in the MPS. However there did not seem to be a community based approach integrated into the work of other officers, as would be found in the MPS through Sector officers.

19. The quality of relations with community/faith leaders was evidently high – there appeared to be genuinely warm, trusting and mutually productive relationships with for example the Chairs or Imams of various mosques in South Brooklyn. The Community Affairs officers were clearly able to deliver some of the day-to-day requirements of the people they interacted with, such as increased patrols during Ramadan.

20. The MPS Group attended a Community Meeting in one Precinct - the Community Council - this reflected the experience of some Community Police Consultative Groups in London.

Partnership working

21. There were good examples of projects on the ‘ground floor’, e.g. homelessness, children’s services, domestic violence, which broadly mirror similar partnership projects to be found in the UK. Of particular interest was a project where a manager from a voluntary sector organisation undertook joint management of partner agencies’ staff. This project emphasised the importance of joint training as a means of reaching a common understanding and purpose across the barriers of different organisational perspectives.

22. There was no statutory framework within which partnership working took place, in the sense of an equivalent to the Crime and Disorder Act so as to promote a clear strategic framework for partnership or a clear philosophy that partnership work was important.

Police practice

23. The impact of Compstat was omnipresent. Although Compstat was not part of the focus for the visit, it was in practice impossible to ignore it as it was such a dominant feature in the NYPD.

24. There was universal acceptance that the focus that derived from the Compstat system had and continued to be of great benefit. Certainly there was absolute clarity of priorities. However there was also evidence of an undifferentiated application of tactics, with no apparent consideration of disproportionality issues or of the potential for differential impact on various communities.

25. A 'Quality of Life Hotline' had been established to bring 'quality of life' issues into the Compstat process whereby people could report non crime incidents and precinct commanders expressed the view that they were held to account for delivery against complaints made by this means. There were genuine efforts to deal with the issues that people wanted the police to deal with alongside the priority crimes, although always secondary to crime reduction.

26. There were no targets set for crime reduction – Precinct Commanders reported the message was simply to ‘reduce’ crime across all main types. Strategic support for crime reduction efforts involved guidance on best practice. There was also no evident focus on formal demand management strategies or alternative ways of dealing with crime, such as telephone or third party reporting.

Conclusion

27. The team formed the view that there was little capable of direct application in London from the issues examined. The operating context of the part of New York visited was very different from the London experience. However the borough commanders felt that there were lessons that could be learned from reflecting on professional practice in the MPS in the light of the New York experience - for example in internal performance management within boroughs, the Quality of Life Hotline, and the NYPD approach to marketing. Additionally issues such as the NYPD experience in achieving a high degree of diversity in the workforce would merit further detailed study.

28. The team felt that among the issues most suitable for exploring further, should the exchange develop, would be the MPS learning in relation to critical incident management and the integration of partnership into a crime reduction/problem solving approach, amongst others.

C. Equality and diversity implications

The purpose of the visit was to specifically examine equality and diversity issues in policing a multi-cultural city elsewhere in the world. Any positive lessons to be learnt will be fed into appropriate fora in the MPS for further detailed study.

D. Financial implications

The cost of this visit was covered by existing budgets and there are no emerging additional financial implications from the findings of the team at this stage.

E. Background papers

None.

F. Contact details

Report author: Chief Superintendent Mark Simmons, MPS.

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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