Lanier To Focus On Crime Hot Spots

Some neighborhoods, especially those with an active night life, need a heavy presence of foot patrols at midnight. Others, mostly residential areas, need less, she said.

Residents in some high-crime neighborhoods have welcomed emergency tactics, including the occasional use of klieg lights to illuminate streets. People in other areas find the lights a nuisance and offensive, she said.

Wherever they are, Lanier said, police must be attuned to the people they serve. People walking into police stations should be greeted by someone who is polite and helpful, she said. Neighbors worried about yellow crime tape on their block should be able to get an answer from officers about what is happening there, Lanier said.

Fenty crisscrossed the city for two years before his election as mayor, listening to residents who at times fumed about crime, fear and their frustrations with police. Throughout the mayoral campaign, he touted his public safety fix: better community policing. He met Lanier while serving as the council member for Ward 4 and believed she shared his vision.

"Community policing" is a decades-old concept that has a broad meaning of building bridges to people and increasing police presence.

"Community policing has become a motherhood, apple pie catchphrase," said Brian Forst, a professor of criminal justice at American University. "It means different things in different places. If you look in New York City, it means arresting the turnstile jumpers. In Seattle it means bringing back Officer Friendly."

Lanier's talk of viewing the police force as a business is a staple of community policing, Forst said. "Managers have to manage by walking around; they have to get to know the customer," Forst said, and police must do the same.

In Washington, officials have been promoting community policing since before Ramsey arrived in 1998. The city has more than 40 Police Service Areas, each with teams of officers who are expected to know community members and their concerns.

Lanier said she wants to "go to the next level" and cited her experience with the precision patrol teams as an example.

Neighborhood activist Sara Green, who lives in Takoma Park, said she thought Lanier did a fine job when she headed the 4th District, from 2000 to 2002. But Green wished she had stayed longer, saying the district has had too much turnover.

"I thought she was a real human being, as opposed to someone in a uniform who walked a bureaucratic line," Green said. "Some of these top police are very military. You have a feeling that no matter what your human problem is, they are long past an understanding of it."

Andrew Karmen, a criminologist and sociology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said Lanier's goals seem attuned to victims' concerns. Karmen, who has written books about crime and victimology, said victims want police to show up quickly when they call, to be treated with sensitivity, for their case to be solved and for police to be transparent about what they're doing.

Lanier said she hopes to make better use of community resources and tap into local universities to have academics study police procedures. As with Ramsey, she wants to push officers to continue their educations, as she did in her own career.

She credited Ramsey for moving the department forward and said she will make her own imprint. "I think everything he's done is great," she said. "But I want to do things differently."