The City of Ferguson has marked a key milestone in its compliance with a 2016 federal consent decree that forced reforms to its Police Department and municipal courts.
Police Chief Troy Doyle on Thursday outlined the department's community policing and engagement strategy, a document that the team in charge of monitoring the decree calls part of the foundation of implementing it.
“These things are not innovative or brand new,” Doyle said. “There are plenty of police departments across the country already doing this type of work, but it’s unique for this city. This city has gone far too long without having an organized, strategic plan to move this city forward as it relates to crime.”
The plan has eight key elements, including regular participation by officers in community events, the creation of more opportunities for positive interactions between police and young residents, and efforts to encourage mediation for disputes between neighbors rather than calling the police.
It also calls for the creation of a Safe Streets Coalition, which Doyle said will work like a formalized neighborhood watch program in which citizens and police liaisons come up with strategies to tackle key problems in specific areas.
The department worked with the Neighborhood Policing Steering Committee and experts overseeing the decree to draft the policy. That monitoring team approved the plan in January, and the department has since come up with a strategy to implement it.
“Throughout this process, there was a lot of give-and-take, a lot of debate, a lot of pushback,” said the department’s spokeswoman, Patricia Washington. “There were times when we all didn't see eye to eye, but at the end of the day, we saw heart to heart, and what you will see in this plan is our heart on paper.”
Cassandra Butler, a 43-year resident of Ferguson, has served on the committee since it was formed as part of the consent decree in 2016. She said it was important for the department to have a plan in which the primary approach to policing was getting to know the community rather than enforcing the typical power dynamics.
“This has a more, community is devised of people, perspective,” she said. “My family, my aunt, my kids, these are people and we want them to recognize that they have rights, they have dignity and we want to respect as well as protect them.”
Butler said the changes required by the consent decree will make the Ferguson Police Department a role model for other small departments – something she never thought she would be able to say.
“I hoped we would get there,” she said. “That’s why I participate, to make the hope come alive. We've got a really good Police Department. We are not the Police Department of 2014.”
