Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is negotiating to hire one of the nation’s best-known criminologists to evaluate the efficiency of the Police Department and recommend staffing levels and anti-crime strategies, according to city hall sources.
George L. Kelling, professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J., would lead a team of consultants to review the Police Department and institute changes over the next six months, sources said. An announcement is expected early this week.
Former New York Mayor Ru dolph Giuliani has credited Kelling’s crime theories as a primary factor in drastically cutting crime in the 1990s.
Lindy Eichenbaum Lent, Hickenlooper’s spokeswoman, would not comment specifically about the ongoing negotiations, but “we’ve said all along that we are interested in result-oriented recommendations from objective outside experts.”
“Public safety is too important to let old habits or politics shape our law enforcement strategies,” she said.
The hiring of a new police consultant would come as the Denver City Council and the mayor’s office are fighting about the number of new officers the city should hire and whether a hiring spree is the answer to battling increasing crime and decreasing arrests.
The mayor’s office has resisted council attempts to substantially increase police hiring. Last week, Hickenlooper’s acting chief of staff, Cole Finegan, said he was disappointed in efforts to make the police force more effective and productive.
The City Council is expected to offer an amendment Monday night to add 19 police officers on top of the net increase of 22 called for in the mayor’s budget.
Police Chief Gerry Whitman said that rank-and-file police officers may be “naturally skeptical” of another consultant but that Kelling’s reputation may overcome that.
“Anything with his name on it draws instant validity,” Whitman said. “He’s had so many successes with big-city police departments.”
Kelling is the pioneer of the “broken window” theory of policing, which focuses on “quality of life” crimes, such as prostitution, petty theft and aggressive panhandling, and putting large numbers of cops on the street to ensure public areas are free of illegal activity.
The idea is that when communities accept low-level disorder as inevitable, disorder increases and major offenses such as robbery and murder follow. Police need to focus on maintaining order, not merely catching criminals, the theory proposes.
In addition, it states, commanders should be held accountable for the crime rate in their districts, while cities are responsible for giving them the resources they need to be successful.
Still, there are a number of emerging critics of the broken window theory. Some chalk up declining crime rates in New York City in the 1990s, for instance, to a number of factors, including a better economy, tougher gun laws and the end of battles among crack dealers.
Many sociologists say there is little empirical evidence showing that disorder causes crime. Michael Wagers, part of Kelling’s team who was in Denver last week interviewing with the mayor, said the team’s solutions aren’t based solely on that theory. The team tailors recommendations to community concerns and needs.
Wagers said the first thing the team would do is analyze crime trends and statistics. The department’s computer system is old and in the middle of an overhaul, but Wagers said team members would find a way to pull data. They would also look at organizational issues, staffing and current crime strategies.
After that, the team would pinpoint problems and begin creating solutions.
Measuring success would depend on what problems were defined. For instance, Wagers and Kelling are working on projects in Los Angeles and two New Jersey cities, Newark and Camden.
In Camden, initial success was reached when the department was de-centralized and divided into districts. In Los Angeles, the target was reducing crime in the Baldwin Village community in south-central, which is home territory for the Bloods gang the Black P-Stones. Crime there has been reduced by 30 percent.
In Newark, a 2-square-mile area with 75,000 people was responsible for 33 percent of all the shootings in the county. Under the team’s 90-day plan, shootings have dropped 25 percent.
Denver District 4 Commander Rudolf Sandoval said he has already adopted parts of the broken window theory. He has teams of 10 officers and two supervisors checking businesses, stopping vagrants and watching to see what people are doing on the streets.
“It’s a good theory,” he said. “Its stops minor crime and helps quality-of-life issues.”
But he is cautious about welcoming a team of consultants into town.
“I want to see what they’re going to do and how they’re going to implement it citywide,” he said.
Staff writer Karen Crummy can be reached at 303-820-1594 or kcrummy@denverpost.com.
