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Thursday, September 19, 2002

By Timothy McNulty, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police plans to overhaul its community policing program by placing supervision of the 80 Community Oriented Police officers completely under the city's six zone commanders, and assigning them as they do detectives who respond to crime trends.

	Click to view Chief Robert W. McNeilly Jr.'s five page report in .pdf format. You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the .pdf, available as a free download from Adobe

According to city Police Chief Robert W. McNeilly Jr., the program's scope will change from individual officers walking local beats to teams of officers working on local problems. Even the name of the program will be changed, from Community Oriented Police, or COP, to Community Problem-solving Officer, or CPO.

He said city residents and neighborhood block watch groups should not notice a difference in police presence: Officers will still staff neighborhood ministations and walk some beats. The main changes will be supervisory ones inside the Police Bureau.

McNeilly told City Council yesterday that the COP program was inefficient and "doomed to failure" from its beginning 10 years ago, partially because of its dual chain of command.

Currently, COP officers take orders from supervisors of the six police zones citywide and a COP commander. Under the new plan, the CPO officers will be supervised only by the zone command staff.

The current COP commander, Kathy Degler, will be reassigned to another command-level position, McNeilly said.

The changes will be implemented in roughly two weeks.

McNeilly said CPO officers will still walk some beats, ride bicycles and perform other community-based duties. But some, under the direction of zone commanders, lieutenants and sergeants, would respond to specific crime trends in communities, such as a rash of burglaries or series of rapes.

Sheila Titus, president of the Lawrenceville Block Watch, said she could support the plan as long as officers are still deployed in neighborhoods and the minioffices are open.

Former Police Chief Earl Buford introduced the COP program in 1992. The program placed ministations in city neighborhoods and beat patrol officers on streets and worked with neighborhood leaders and private citizens to stem crime.

Mayor Tom Murphy tweaked the program in 1994, his first year in office, letting zone commanders share supervision with the citywide COP commander.

Despite that change and others, the program still lacks the proper "structure, direction or coordination" needed to "synchronize an effective strategy at addressing crime problems in our communities," McNeilly wrote in a five-page memo on the changes.

COP cannot be a separate program from other police activities for it to work, McNeilly also wrote.

No matter what changes are made, McNeilly said he expects resident complaints. He already receives complaints that officers are not inside the police ministations enough, or that officers are there too often.

Tim McNulty can be reached at tmcnulty@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1542.