North Charleston embraces community policing model, but some say it’s not enough

NORTH CHARLESTON — It’s almost an automatic response; instinct.

When Reggie Burgess joined the North Charleston Police Department in 1989, he would stop and play basketball with kids in the street. His colleagues were surprised. But Burgess didn’t conceive policing as “us vs. them.”

“It’s us-and-them vs. anyone trying to harm us,” he said.

When he became police chief in 2018, Burgess initiated a succession plan that first day. He asked all the deputy chiefs to do as he did: go into the neighborhoods, attend funerals and church services, forge relationships. When something bad happened, he would assemble them all to face the news cameras together.

Burgess just stepped away after 34 years in the force to run for mayor. His replacement, fellow North Charleston native Chief Greg Gomes, is poised to continue and expand community policing practices.

The idea has been around for a long time, but it gained traction in Chicago in the 1990s as law enforcement agencies sought ways to improve outcomes. It has been catching on all over the country ever since. At its most basic, community policing entails relationship-building between law enforcement and area residents. It emphasizes service and, in so doing, tends to make police officers more responsive to community needs and desires. At its best, community policing includes an open-door policy and actively solicits input — and sometimes oversight — from the public.

The approach engenders trust, and trust results in better communication which, in turn, assists police in their effort to address crime and other problems.

For the most part, community policing has received a favorable response from both law enforcement and the public. People tend to prefer policing methods that are less confrontational and more collaborative. They like it when police officers live in the communities they serve and get to know their neighbors.

It’s hard to dehumanize or vilify someone you know personally.

But community policing has its critics. Some see it as a front that allows police departments to continue mostly with business as usual. Saying you want community input and collaboration might appease the public to a degree while, in reality, the traffic stops and neighborhood patrols continue apace.

Others question whether community policing is as transformative as its proponents say. After all, not all cops buy into the concept equally; there’s always a lot of turnover within police departments; and it’s impossible to ensure that officers always live where they work, especially when recruitment challenges persist.

In fact, the 2021 racial bias audit of NCPD found some officers in the agency don’t embrace, or altogether understand, the concept of community policing.

It’s a Sisyphean task. The boulder must be constantly pushed upward, and one misstep — a bad arrest, an episode of brutality — can suddenly erase years of progress.

Advocates of systemic police reform say community policing is inherently limited and insufficient when what’s needed is a wholesale redefinition of what policing entails, and how it should be implemented.

Erica Veal, co-founder of the Lowcountry Action Committee, said policing should be defined and controlled by communities.

“Our stance is that ‘community policing’ is just a term that is used to justify giving more money to police departments, money that ultimately will be used to overpolice Black and Brown communities,” Veal said. “That’s not the same at all as community control, which means the community has the right to decide how they’re policed and by whom.”

For Veal, “community policing” is propaganda; it’s mostly about photo opportunities that present cops in Black and Brown neighborhoods grilling hotdogs, dancing or playing sports. Those same cops on another day harass residents, arrest people for nonviolent offenses (the vast majority of crimes), stop them for minor traffic violations and generally criminalize people for being poor, she said.

What’s needed is massive investment in affordable housing, education and training, child care services, health care and jobs. When quality of life improves, crime diminishes, she said, citing a well-documented correlation.

When people live better lives and violent crime is uncommon, the need for policing changes and, ultimately, it can be abolished in its current form and reimagined, Veal said. Police officers should be better educated and better trained, emphasize de-escalation, and have the ability to call on resources meant to deal with mental health issues, domestic abuse, drug addiction, homelessness and other woes, she said.

Caveats

The research on community policing is mixed. A 2019 study asked the question, “Do positive, nonenforcement interactions with uniformed patrol officers actually cause meaningful improvements in attitudes toward the police?” Field experiments in New Haven, Conn., indicated “that a single instance of positive contact with a uniformed police officer can substantially improve public attitudes toward police, including legitimacy and willingness to cooperate. These effects persisted for up to 21 days and were not limited to individuals inclined to trust and cooperate with the police prior to the intervention.”

A 2021 study found that such results are not necessarily replicated elsewhere. It examined policing in Brazil, Colombia, Liberia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Uganda and concluded that community engagement did not increase trust or reduce crime.

“Improving relationships between police and community may require deeper structural changes before or in addition to approaches such as community policing,” the report stated.

Nevertheless, in North Charleston (and elsewhere), the practice is widely used, and the response often has been positive.

Omar Muhammad, executive director of the Lowcountry Alliance for Model Communities, said a policing model that connects people to the resources they need is preferable to the old-style enforcement approach. Relationships lead to understanding, which makes communication easier and removes obstacles between the police and the citizenry. This, in turn, can lead to productive interactions in which police officers act as liaisons between members of the public and the organizations that provide services, he said.

The emphasis should be placed on making more resources available to residents rather than on confrontation and punishment, Muhammad said.

“No (police) reform can be done without community input,” he said, adding that the logical next step is the formation of a community advisory board that collaborates with law enforcement and that has some oversight ability.

Also needed is more workforce housing and incentives to get cops to live in the communities where they work, he said.

“It’s hard to abuse power with people you live with every day,” Muhammad said.

David Mack, a North Charleston resident and former state legislator who years ago worked with a previous police chief on community engagement, said outreach efforts depend on a department culture and work ethic that prioritizes it — and that depends on leadership.

“The right leadership will help create the right relationships throughout the department,” Mack said. And it’s essential that leaders disposed to embracing the community policing model codify it for future administrations, he added.

“It can shift in a heartbeat,” Mack said.

The strategy only works when residents and law enforcement officers work together, he said. What happens when officers move away or get promoted? Is there a training mechanism for ensuring other officers can fill the voids?

The same goes for the dynamics of a community. Civic leaders come and go; neighborhood representatives change; enthusiasm ebbs and flows. How can consistent engagement and continuity be achieved given circumstances that are often unpredictable?

Mack said he considers community policing a tool in the toolbox. It can be effective, but other strategies and requirements also are needed.

“Law enforcement (officers) have to hold each other accountable,” he said. And this can be difficult when, in the heat of battle, the instinct to protect and defend colleagues kicks in. “There are internal issues that need to be worked out.”

It’s easy to issue commands; it’s much harder and more time-consuming to cultivate relationships, hold conversations, employ the art of persuasion, and follow up with people regularly, Mack said.

But when that happens, it’s far more likely that the community will have a police officer’s back, he said.

Public trust

Chuck Wexler, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Police Executive Research Forum, said community policing has been around so long, it has come to mean different things to different people. His definition begins with engagement between law enforcement and the public “to develop a partnership around common goals.”

“The No. 1 issue, when we ask police chiefs, is regaining public trust,” Wexler said. “In this post-George Floyd period, there’s never been more of a disconnect.”

And if that’s the goal, the best way to achieve it is through open engagement, he said.

“If you don’t have this and all you have is hard enforcement, you might reduce crime but it will come at the expense of losing community trust,” Wexler said. “So community policing becomes that kind of policing that brings a community in, works with (people) and recognizes that there’s a lot of areas that the police can’t do on their own.”

In some cities, it entails assigning an officer to a geographic territory. The officer strives to get to know as many people in that area as possible, and foster improved communication, Wexler said.

“Then, when someone comes into that area to commit a crime, the community and police can help each other,” he said.

In Camden, N.J., which once had a reputation for police brutality, the leadership instituted big changes starting in 2013. Officers went door to door, one block at a time. They organized public events. They refused to patrol neighborhoods in their cruisers. The effort paid off, Wexler said.

But can it persist?

“The reason community policing is so hard is because you need two parts to be successful,” he said. “Cops have to want to do it (and they don’t always), and the community has to want to get engaged.” But not every resident can; they are often busy with other matters. “So you might end up with people who don’t necessarily reflect the makeup of the community.”

Some communities want a robust police presence and active enforcement. Residents in crime-prone neighborhoods believe that more cruisers and badges will act as a deterrent.

In any case, Wexler said, turning a troubled community around can’t be done through crime control, and even when crime rates are brought down through police efforts, that doesn’t tend to translate into more trust of the police.

AJ Davis, who has served as president of the Chicora-Cherokee Neighborhood Association during the tenures of three police chiefs, said community policing can’t significantly deter crime because the model doesn’t really address root causes. The institution of policing fundamentally is designed to be the protective arm of the state, not an agency that fixes economic disparities, he said.

“It is very naïve to think that having a model where the department brands itself to be more friendly to the community is solving the issues,” Davis said.

‘Relationship policing’

In 1989, Burgess took an oath to protect the people of North Charleston.

“I’ve had to go through so much to get to the point to realize that the traditional way of policing, that model, wasn’t working,” he said. It wasn’t serving the needs of an increasingly diverse and growing community.

He remembers positive police encounters as a kid growing up in the Union Heights and Liberty Hill neighborhoods, exchanging waves with officers, seeing horse patrols trot through the streets, calling on cops to sound their sirens for fun, watching them get out of the cruiser to interact with children and others. It all left an impression.

He remembers Arthur Smalls, the department’s first Black assistant chief who served as a detective when the Bonds-Wilson High School football complete burned down. Smalls gathered the students in the gym, described the situation and promised to find the arsonist.

“He made us feel like he was part of the school,” Burgess said.

That’s what he thinks about today when the topic of community policing comes up: breaking down barriers, understanding the priorities of a neighborhood, trying to help when things go wrong.

“I wanted to be like him,” Burgess said of Smalls. “I call it relationship policing.”

He has reached out to activist groups, churches, representatives of the Hispanic population and many others in an effort to forge partnerships, develop trust and solicit feedback. He has endorsed implicit bias and racial equity training for his team. He has considered the results of the 2021 racial bias audit, which found racial disparities in policing, and has taken action.

He says the work is paying off. From January to April 2022, there were 13 recorded homicides in North Charleston. During that same period in 2023, only four. The North Charleston police force now consists of 115 White officers, 70 African Americans, 27 Latinos, four who are multiracial and two who are Asian. (When Burgess first came to the department, there were 140 officers total, 110 of whom were White, he said.)

Whether the statistical changes can be attributed to community policing is questionable, but something is working right, Burgess said.

In 1991, North Charleston native Jamel Foster joined the Navy. Four years later, he was back home and determined to help people cope with an influx of drugs and violence. So in 1996, he became a civil servant, first working as a firefighter, then as a police officer.

He knew he was a role model for some. He wore his hair in braids. He drove a nice car. He didn’t want young Black people to think that only drug dealers could present themselves that way, he said.

“You can’t let the uniform change you,” Foster said.

Acutely aware of racial bias and disparities in policing, and distrust of law enforcement among Black communities, he worked hard to treat everyone the same.

“If you see a citizen in need, it’s your duty to help that person out,” he said.

Over the years, Foster worked in just about every division and has become a familiar face in North Charleston. When he’s obligated to make an arrest, sometimes he’ll try to turn a bad situation into something positive — like the time he helped a drug addict clean herself up. “If you’ll go straight to rehab, I’ll talk to the prosecutor,” he told her. She agreed, and the charges ultimately were dropped.

He said Burgess’ vision of policing has been widely embraced within the department.

“ ‘Protect and serve’ has become ‘serve to protect,’ ” he said.

That doesn’t mean enforcement efforts have fallen by the wayside. North Charleston police still conduct what’s called hot-spot policing, which permeates a known high-crime area with officers.

But those officers strive to avoid unnecessary confrontation.

“Chief Burgess built the foundation, he created a model home,” Foster said. “All we’ve got to do is put in the windows and furnishings we want.”

That will be up to Gomes.

Partnerships

On April 28, he was sworn in as the new chief of a department often perceived by communities of color as problematic. The relationship between the police and residents is fragile. It was shattered in 2015 when an unarmed Walter Scott was stopped for a minor traffic violation, then tased and shot multiple times when he tried to flee. City officials have worked to repair the damage under the leadership of Burgess, who was the first African American to become the city’s chief of police. (North Charleston is 40 percent Black, 40 percent White, and 20 percent Hispanic.)

If Gomes — a White North Charleston native who has served 25 years in the department — is nervous, he hides it well behind a wide smile and a confidence in the template created by his predecessor.

He watched and learned from his boss, who’d made himself visible in communities during the “Stop the Violence” marches that followed shootings. He watched how Burgess spoke emphatically at press conferences, making emotional appeals for an end to the violence. He watched as Burgess led an effort to award local nonprofits combating violence with $1.2 million in federal COVID-19 funding.

So, Gomes’ game plan is to “do what we’ve been doing,” and improve upon it, he said.

He supports the city’s new partnership with grassroots organizations aiming to address the socioeconomic factors that contribute to crime. Last spring, gunshots rang out at Pepperhill Park in the parking lot near a youth baseball game. No one was injured. The incident sparked new debates over firearms. City leaders engaged 12 nonprofits to help address some of the systemic problems that lead youths to resort to violence.

The organizations host all sorts of programs: job training, mentorship, food distribution, free karate and technology classes, life coaching, financial literacy and more. Mayor Keith Summey said earlier this year that city council will reevaluate the activities of the nonprofits in November to decide whether new funds will be allocated next year.

People need to be patient, Gomes said, noting that crime reduction is not going to happen overnight. He resists citing a decrease in criminal activity as a measure of success, preferring to focus on what he calls “positive outcomes” for children. For example, the city could track the progress of young people participating in one of the group’s job training programs and see where those students end up 5 or 10 years from now. Over time, an increase in employment will lead to a reduction in crime, he said.

“I don’t want folks to think that this is somehow some magic wand,” he said. “As police, we’re tasked with trying to reduce crime, I understand that. But if we focus on positive outcomes for our younger generation, that will have an impact.”

Burgess stepped down as police chief on May 1 to focus on his campaign for mayor. Gomes offered him an enthusiastic endorsement.