Police Crisis: A Lesson From Houston’s Chief

It’s what he didn’t say about his interest in Dallas’s recently vacated police chief’s seat that made for an intriguing conversation with Houston Police Chief Lee Brown-widely regarded as one of the top law enforcement officials in the country-in his office last month. He’s publicly stated that he’s not interested in replacing Chief Billy Prince, and he firmly repeated: not interested. But what the fifty-year-old super cop and doctor of criminology didn’t deny or confirm was whether Dallas City Manager Richard Knight had actually offered him Prince’s old job. “I’ve never even spent the night in Dallas, ” is about all Brown would volunteer. Nor would he comment on how much, if anything, he’s done to help Knight locate the right candidate to overhaul Dallas’s police force.

But that doesn’t mean that any of the city’s leaders-especially Knight-have missed the connection between Brown’s vaunted tenure as public safety commissioner in Atlanta and later as police chief in Houston, and what lies ahead for the new police chief here in Dallas.

Lee Brown’s reputation was born out of his cool, tough police work in the infamous case of Atlanta’s missing and murdered children from 1979 to 1981. But it is Brown’s work in Houston that is most applicable to the current police-minority tensions here. Brown has promoted a healing process between citizens and police that has drawn kudos from the U. S. Justice Department on down. Brown is credited with developing a number of programs that strengthened department relations with Houston citizens. Though not all are unique (Dallas has many such policies, too), insiders say that his “presence” reinforces their effectiveness. Former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson recently told a group of Dallas leaders, “Initially I underestimated the power of Lee Brown. I mistook quietness for weakness. “

Among the initiatives Brown has put in place:

● The Directed Area Responsibility Team (DART) has successfully decentralized the delivery of police services. DART stresses one-officer patrol cars for greater police visibility (as Dallas did before the shooting of officer John Chase); beat stability, requiring officers to stay within their beats as much as possible (in Dallas, a manpower shortage makes that difficult); and officer access to written beat profiles that characterize a beat’s demographics and citizenry. DART also requires officers to attend local business and community meetings.

● The Fear Reduction Project puts officers in direct contact with citizens through get-acquainted visits and follow-up calls to crime victims or citizens with concerns about real or potential criminal activity in their vicinity. Houston’s fourteen storefront facilities (Dallas has six, and the police are requesting money for more) are staffed by community volunteers who take accident reports and provide crime prevention tips. “The key is to develop a set of values, ” says Brown, “so the police can make it possible for citizens to work with them. Experience has shown that interaction speeds up that process. ” Officers are encouraged to use their imaginations in getting to know citizens. One officer offered blood-pressure screening and others rode neighborhood buses to meet the riders.

● The Mobile Car Report Project’s purpose is to keep more officers available for emergency calls by designating a “report car” that responds only to “cold” calls-calls where the suspect has left the scene and no injuries have occurred.

Brown has also tried some less traditional approaches to fighting crime. At a public housing project where drug dealers had virtually taken over the neighborhood, officers swept the area each day, but that only slowed business while the police were there. So Brown embraced an “oasis” technique, putting the police to work with government and private agencies to renovate dilapidated structures, repair inadequate draining systems, and install security lighting. The police department then helped the project to land a HUD grant for further upgrading.

Inside department headquarters, officers say there are high standards and even higher expectations. Opinions are welcome, they report, but Brown’s soft-spoken word is law. Some observers in Houston credit Brown’s stance against police brutality for the decrease in police shootings, which have dropped by half since Brown’s arrival in April of 1982.

Those who know Brown say he’ll keep hammering away at Houston’s city council until he gets the added revenues to raise salaries, just as he did until he got funding for four new police “command stations. “

Given these recent gains. Brown is understandably reluctant to leave Houston. “What we’re doing here in Houston, ” says Brown, “is the future of America’s police forces, if not the Free World’s.”