Community policing report recommends voter-approved tax increase

Making community policing work while adding resources to the fire department will require a property tax increase of $386 for the average homeowners by the end of a five-year period, a Columbia Police Department officer said in his report on community policing.

In a draft report that will be submitted to the Columbia City Council on Tuesday, Sgt. Robert Fox wrote an additional $19.5 million will be needed by the end of five years to increase pay and staffing for CPD to implement community policing department-wide and to provide pay increase and more staffing for the Columbia Fire Department.

The report recommends adding 60 officers over five years, along with other positions to support those new officers, such as lieutenants, record clerks, evidence technicians and fleet mechanics.

The report says a property tax increase of 18.91 cents per $100 of assessed value would be needed each year over the five-year period to accomplish the goal. The increase would require voter approval and might appear on a ballot as early as April, Fox wrote. The tax hike would equal about $6.44 per month each year of the five-year phase-in, Fox wrote, for a total increase of $32 per month at the end of five years. The staffing increases would begin in 2020.

Fox’s draft is based on five months of research that included meetings across the city. In his introduction Fox writes that media are largely responsible for a negative public perception of crime and policing.

“Local news outlets lead nearly every broadcast with crime stories, no matter where they happen; and, most days, they are reporting on crimes that occur outside of Columbia,” Fox wrote.

Fox also writes that CPD receives few complaints about its interaction with the public.

Critics of the report said it only lays out funding for more police officers and better pay for them, and no clear plan for CPD leaders to implement community-oriented policing. Lynn Maloney, a member of Race Matters, Friends, said

“The timeline is only about getting a ballot initiative, and the only plan is to have more officers,” Maloney said. “There’s no discussion on how they would change the organization, or any of the implementation, or any of the training.”

Race Matters, Friends released its own report on community-oriented policing in July. The report said CPD needed to deal with a “toxic culture” within the department, citing surveys police officers answered in 2016. Traci Wilson-Kleekamp, president of the group, said the report only served to bolster the argument for raising property taxes, rather than allowing CPD to collaborate more effectively with other groups – an important aspect of community-oriented policing, she said.

“I don’t think the police can do everything, and in this case, I don’t think the solution to the problem of violence is having more officers,” Wilson-Kleekamp said

Other recommendations include increasing the numbers of school resource officers, or police officers who work in public schools, and providing raises for officers the report says suffer from overwork low pay.

Drug and alcohol use are a significant strain on police resources, Fox writes. In particular, the report blames the marijuana trade for much of the city’s violence.

“While City Ordinance has made possession of small amounts of marijuana a low priority for CPD, the violence connected to the distribution of marijuana and the cash flow it creates has resulted in most of the homicides and dozens of shootings over the last 10 years,” Fox writes. “Predominantly, the victims are young black males. These marijuana related violent crimes have often been met with little to no cooperation from neighborhoods, often for fear of retaliation. The ‘stitches for snitches’ culture has prevented several investigations from reaching convictions.”

CPD experiences the third-highest call volume among 30 benchmark cities compared for the report.

The report also details CPD’s history with smaller community-policing initiatives, including one downtown in the 1990s. It also cites statistics to show the success of the department’s Community Outreach Unit, which has been practicing the community policing concept on a few priority beats.

Areas patrolled by outreach officers have experienced 519 fewer 911 calls since the unit formed, an 11 percent reduction in shots-fired calls and large drops in other violent crimes, Fox wrote.

Look for more on this story.