Police department removes speeding and DUI quotas
Alex Mudd - April 24th, 2008Flagstaff law enforcement has implemented a new system of policing, which will evaluate officers not on the amount of citations they write, but instead will concentrate on trends and statistical changes on their respective beats.
Because this new system, titled comp-stat, is about accountability for positive change, it also involves a lot of learning and what Sgt. Tom Boughner of the Flagstaff Police likes to call “out of the box” thinking.
Comp-stat is a system of computer analysis of all the crime data in the city, coupled with new policing methods that strive for preventative change instead of standard policing quotas.
He used the example of an intersection with a large number of injury accidents to portray his point. Under the comp-stat system, an officer will come back to their sergeant with suggestions such as lowering the speed limit by five miles an hour, extending the yellow light half a second or increasing enforcement with overlapping shifts.
The sergeants, corporals, lieutenants and chiefs then meet at least once a month to review these new ideas and look at the results, which the comp-stat system provides almost instantly.
“Part of it, yes, is enforcement, but the idea is to get everybody thinking out of the paradigm, think a little bigger than that,” Boughner said. “How can we reduce those injury accidents?”
This level of accountability and responsibility was absent when officers were held to traditional standards, according to Boughner. An average officer in the old system might only be expected to make three traffic stops a day, talk to three people a day and get a DUI a week.
One new measure stemming from the comp-stat method is FPD’s “move it or lose it” campaign.
Boughner used the example of one particularly bad night for car burglaries. Officers managed to find the suspects and a trail of CDs leading to the victim’s cars and discovered that five of the vehicles had been left unlocked. Boughner hopes “move it or lose it” will prompt people to take the extra 20 seconds to hide their valuables and lock their doors.
“We came up with this for property crime because, in a way, a lot of people want this to be Mayberry,” Boughner said. “They don’t want to lock their car. They are proud of saying ‘I haven’t locked my car in 25 years.’”
Boughner emphasized the new system will not change the police presence on the street. Officers will still be responsible for all the calls for service they receive; the new comp-stat measures are an addition to these previous responsibilities.
“You’re still going to be responsible for all your calls for service,” Boughner said. “Some of these special things are going to be when you can fit it in during your shift or if we can find a grant to charge overtime.”
Boughner is also reaching out to NAU criminal justice classrooms with presentations and examples of this relatively new form of policing. These visits are not just for educational purposes; those classes provide good feedback for local police.
“That is another thing I like about going to NAU classes; they’ll say ‘so and so did it this way, have you guys ever thought about that?’ So I’ll bring it back here and pretend it is my idea,” said Boughner jokingly. “The students have such great questions, such out-of-the-box thinking. Especially after 20 years, you wish you could think more like that all the time.”
Flagstaff Officer Nathan Graham said all of the traffic violations, crime reports and even citizen complaints are put into the comp-stat system.
“It can be anything from soliciting to loitering, if that’s a major problem in an area,” Graham said. “It’s a way to show us what to focus our efforts and enforcement on.”
Many Flagstaff residents will remember the signs around the city warning drivers not to follow too close behind other vehicles. Graham said this was one of the first major efforts from the comp-stat system and Flagstaff PD saw an improvement in accident numbers.
Graham said the hard part is interpreting the numbers and discerning what they mean and what can be done to correct them.
Graham, who patrols the east side of Flagstaff, said their focus is currently on the transients and public intoxicants on Fourth Street north of the 66 and south of Cedar Ave.
Police in the area began a list of businesses that are willing to be victims of trespassing and loitering and will pursue charges. Criminal charges can only be brought against a person when there is a victim willing to press those charges.
For example, squatters in an abandoned home that has been foreclosed and now is owned by a bank, can not easily have charges brought against them because there is no homeowner to press those charges.
According to Graham, this new list allows them to make arrests instead of shooing transients north of Fourth Street over the course of a night or calling business owners at three in the morning to ask if they want to press charges.