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Campbell police go back to basics on foot patrols
By SARAH LEHR
CAMPBELL
As they enter their third year of neighborhood foot patrols, Campbell police have gone back to basics.
Despite the growth of increasingly complex law-enforcement technology, including radar and DNA testing, Campbell Police Chief Drew Rauzan says he doesn’t want his officers to discount two of the simplest tools imaginable – their own two feet.
“Believe it or not, police work and law enforcement is best at the local and personal level,” Rauzan said. “No one loves technology more than me. I hate paper, but I know this about law enforcement – it is not a technology business, it is a people business.”
Campbell police implemented foot patrols in 2013. Two officers in the street-crimes unit regularly carry out foot patrols, though any officer has the opportunity to contribute four to six hours a week to foot patrolling, Rauzan said.
Officers participate in both uniformed foot patrols along a stretch of the highway and in undercover, plain-clothes foot patrols through neighborhoods.
The undercover patrols typically occur at night. The crimes the patrols most often deter are car break-ins, officers said.
“It is amazing what you see people do when they don’t realize you’re a police officer because it is the exact opposite reaction of when you drive by in a uniform in a patrol car,” Rauzan said. “I have personally walked down the street and found people in other people’s cars in the moment.”
Sgt. Joseph Pavlansky, a foot-patrol supervisor, said being on foot allows officers to more easily maneuver in backyards and other small spaces and hide in the shadows, if necessary.
The drawback, Pavlansky noted, is officers lose the speed of a car.
“Mobility is both an advantage and a disadvantage,” Pavlansky said. “It’s a proactive approach to policing, and it’s a different approach than what the public’s used to seeing.”
In contrast to plain-clothes patrols, the city’s uniformed patrols advertise the presence of police to passers-by. Foot patrols decrease the physical distance between officers and passers-by, and Rauzan believes foot patrols decrease perceived distance as well.
“Seeing a police officer drive by you with the air conditioner on and the windows up is one thing,” Rauzan said. “Seeing a police officer park his vehicle and then walk around your neighborhood, talk to your kids, that is monumental.”
National conversations have centered on how to reduce divisions between police and the neighborhoods they serve, so that police departments feel less like occupying forces and more like extensions of the community.
Having police out and about on sidewalks is key to establishing positive relations, Rauzan said.
“Here’s what the call has been nationally – get your police back inside your communities,” Rauzan said.
The city of Youngstown this spring also instituted its community policing initiative, which places one officer in each of the city’s seven wards.