Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy

Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) was started in 1993 as a pilot program in five diverse neighborhoods. A year later, the Chicago Police Department implemented CAPS all across Chicago. The goal of CAPS is to blend traditional policing strategies with “alternative” strategies aimed at encouraging community members and police to work together to reduce the occurrence of crimes.

This differed from traditional policing methods which in the early 1990s were increasingly isolated from the community. CAPS emphasizes the need for increased lines of communication between the community and the police, so that together they can come up with solutions for chronic neighborhood problems. Their motto is “Together We Can” which promotes the cooperation of police, community and city services in fighting crime.

Why is it alternative?

CAPS is an alternative to many of the traditional law enforcement methods. In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the community and police were becoming increasingly isolated from one another throughout the country and in Chicago.

How does CAPS work?

Chicago is divided into 25 police districts and further divided into 281 police beats. Beats are small geographic areas to which police officers are assigned. Rather than changing beat officers daily, with CAPS the same officers are assigned to a beat for at least a year.

This is to encourage partnerships and problem solving at the beat level. However, not all officers are beat officers, and some police units still use forms of the traditional method for emergency and rapid response.

Each month, community beat meetings are held in all 279 beats. This allows individual residents to sit down with their beat officers and other police personnel to discuss neighborhood problems and hopefully develop strategies to address them.

Beyond the community, CAPS relies on city agencies and services to prevent crime. The City of Chicago has set up cooperative efforts with the Mayor’s Liquor License Commission, the Department of Streets and Sanitation, the Department of Buildings and other agencies to ensure the police have support from the city to tackle smaller problems like abandoned buildings and graffiti before they lead to more serious crimes.

In 1993, the CAPS Implementation Office was created. This office is staffed by civilian community outreach workers who organize court advocacy programs and coordinate city services in support of CAPS related programs.

How can the community become involved?

The best way for an individual to become involved is to attend their local beat meetings. Chicago Police Department lists when and where all beat meetings take place on their website.

The meetings are generally held in a community area, such as a church, park or school. Meetings generally take place monthly at a regular time and place. The CAPS facilitator runs the meetings, moving the meeting along according to an agenda and calling on community members to ask questions. The police do not run the meetings, but they are active members and play a major role in all discussions.

Another major component of meetings is the special role played by a small group of dedicated beat meeting activists. These activists come to meetings frequently in their beats, driving up attendance and CAPS related activism. CAPS related activism includes marches, rallies, prayer vigils, and smoke-outs (group barbecue at gang or drug-infested sites).

Community members who attend the meeting have the chance to ask questions and voice concerns about crime-related problems in their neighborhood, hear reports by the police on crime activity in their beat, and meet neighbors who are also concerned about the safety of their community.

Attendance is generally higher where it is needed. The beat meetings where attendance is the highest, are ares with bad housing, high levels of crime, and poor schools. Awareness of CAPS has grown in all racial groups, but several studies have found that awareness is highest among African American residents of Chicago.

The United States Department of Justice has found that beat meeting attendance rose steadily with levels of civc engagement, rising to more than 40% among residents involved in at least three kinds of local organizations. Church involvement showed a high correlation with CAPS involvement as well; one explanation for this could be that so many CAPS meetings are held in churches, especially in African American communities where both CAPS and church involvement are particularly strong.

In addition to the monthly beat meetings, there are also District Advisory Committees (DAC), which meets regularly with the commander of the district to discuss district affairs. The members of the committee are generally community leaders, like business owners or local community activists.

The goal of the committees is to discuss district priorities and develop strategies to address them with community resources. However, Northwestern University reports in Caps at Ten, that many members are frustrated about their ill-defined mandates, leadership problems and inaction.

External links

• Find out what police district and beat you live in
• Chicago Police Department: How CAPS Works
• Northwestern University report: CAPS at Ten
• Department of Justice and Northwestern University report: Public Involvement: Community Policing in Chicago