As Gas Prices Rise, Police Turn to Foot Patrols

As Gas Prices Rise, Police Turn to Foot Patrols

SUWANEE, Ga. — People around here are seeing a lot more of Officer
Robert Stewart.
http://www.nytimes.com:80/2008/07/20/us/20patrol.html?th&emc=th

Officer Robert Stewart ducked into a barbershop recently while on foot
patrol in Suwanee, Ga.
Following strict new orders, he frequently leaves his squad car,
hopping out to visit a bartender, then a barber, then a bank teller
who squealed and clapped her hands, demanding to see the latest
photograph of his son.

As gasoline soars past the $4-a-gallon mark, police chiefs in towns
and cities across the country are ordering their officers out of the
car and onto their feet in a budgetary scramble.

“It’s changing the way we police,” said Chief Mike Jones of the
Suwanee Police Department, who has asked his officers to walk for at
least one hour of every shift. “We’re going to have to police smarter
than we have in the past.”

Chief Jones budgeted about $60,000 for fuel in the fiscal year that
ended last month; the department spent $94,000. This year, he budgeted
$163,000 — a large line item in a budget of $3.8 million.

The Houston Police Department exceeded its gasoline budget of $8.7
million last year and expects to spend $11.3 million this year. San
Diego, which budgets fuel costs citywide, already expects to exceed
its budget for the fiscal year that started July 1 by $1.5 million.

Departments have switched to lower octane gasoline and installed
G.P.S. receivers in patrol cars to make dispatching more efficient.
State troopers have gone from cruising the highways to sitting and
monitoring traffic in “stationary patrols.”

The State Highway Patrol in Missouri plans to increase its use of
single-engine airplanes to look for speeders. In Marietta, Ga., the
police department is working out a policy for its new T3 Personal
Mobility Vehicles, a battery-powered cross between a Segway and a
scooter. In Cook County, Ill., sheriff’s deputies have mothballed
their cars in favor of bicycles. And the New York City Police
Department acquired 20 hybrid cars this month.

Other agencies have increased penalties for false alarms, stopped
responding to 911 calls if they are determined not to be emergencies
or put two officers in some cars.

But one of the most popular fuel conservation measures has been the
simplest: walking. Or as Chief Frank Hooper of Gainesville, Ga., put
it in a memorandum, “walk and talk.”

The old-fashioned foot patrol has gone in and out of vogue. But in the
last decade or so, the use of ever more refined mapping to pinpoint
criminal hotspots has lent itself to the practice. Many departments at
least pay lip service to the idea of community policing, in which
officers get to know residents, develop contacts and tackle problems
that fall outside the traditional realm of police work. Police chiefs
who are particularly devoted to the community policing model say
gasoline prices are helping to push their officers in that direction.

“I’ve always had a theory that one of the greatest inventions was
police cars, because it made us more mobile,” Chief Hooper said. “And
one of the worst inventions was air-conditioning, because we rolled
our windows up.”

Chief Hooper said he had always encouraged his officers to get out and
talk to residents. But under the threat of losing the privilege of
taking home patrol cars because of high gas prices, Gainesville
officers cut their gas consumption by 10 percent last month compared
with June 2007. They have walked the town square, the malls and, at
night, abandoned buildings.

Officer Adam Crenshaw said he did not mind escaping his car or even
sitting in one place to monitor traffic. “Being stationary, you see a
lot more,” he said. “I’m able to see a lot more child restraint
violations.”

In Suwanee, Officer Stewart said that walking and talking suited his
natural inclinations and helped him work cases. Restaurant workers, he
said, “have intel on all kinds of stuff. They know who’s doing what.
They know about drugs coming into the city.”

He said building relationships can help save on gasoline costs, too.
He passes out his cellphone number and e-mail address and can handle
business in ways that do not involve getting into his car.

But not all officers have been so easily lured out of their cars.

“The average officer thinks that if they’re constantly on the move,
they’re doing a better job of preventing an incident from occurring,”
said Chief Ric Moss of Woodstock, Ga. “Candidly some of them have
said, ‘Well, gee, you know, it’s hot out there.’ Well, if you go in
that store, you’ll cool off, you’ll get to know the manager and you’ll
get your presence known. We’ve had to educate them as to the
benefits.”

One officer on a bicycle has already caught a thief in the act of
stripping copper from an abandoned building, Chief Moss said. “How you
measure how much crime you prevented, that’s always a question,” he
said. “But if we’re getting into areas that we’re not getting into
with a motor vehicle, I’m satisfied.”

Departments that have limited car patrols say that they have seen no
effect on crime or citations or that it is too soon to tell. They say
that the public has been apprehensive when changes have been
announced, but that the reaction to more accessible police officers
has been positive.

At Taco Mac, a restaurant in Suwanee where Officer Stewart was greeted
with hugs and a Diet Coke, the manager, Steve Helms, said he would
rather have an officer in his bar than cruising the streets in a
marked car.

“We stay open the latest in the entire city,” Mr. Helms said. “It’s a
deterrent.”

Still, some jurisdictions have resisted any notion of restricting
patrols. “I have one beat alone in the northeastern division that is
larger than the city of San Francisco,” said Detective Gary Hassen of
the San Diego Police Department. “To say, ‘Gee, are you going to walk
that?’ — it would be impossible.”

George Kelling, a professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University
and a longtime proponent of community policing, said police
departments that clung to their cars were missing the point.

“There are areas even in suburban areas where citizens congregate, and
it seems to me that we would want to have police officers in areas
where people congregate,” Professor Kelling said. “You can increase
and decrease the number of police riding around in cars, and the
public can’t tell the difference. You can increase the number of
police out interacting with
.