The Springfield Police Department strategies are community-based, problem-oriented, and data driven. They are designed to reduce the levels of crime, disorder, and fear in our city.

Community-based means this police department will focus on neighborhoods as the basic building block of its organizational structure and its policing strategies. Many of the neighborhoods of Springfield face some similar issues but also issues unique to each one. The control of crime, disorder, and fear is a priority everywhere in the city. Neighborhoods may order their priorities differently, and the police department must be responsive their concerns. A neighborhood focus which emphasizes geographic accountability is necessary at every rank.

Problem-oriented policing requires that the police department acts assertively in taking steps to prevent crime and proactively manages conditions that breed disorder and that create a climate of fear.

Proactive prevention necessitates tactics that go beyond rapid response to calls for service, routine patrol and post-incident criminal investigations. Proactive prevention requires the use of problem-solving. This means scanning the environment for spikes and trends of activity, the careful analysis of crime and calls-for-service data, the development of responses to the identified problems, and an assessment of the effectiveness of these responses.

Problem-orientation recognizes the need to look beyond an incident to examine the underlying conditions that breed disorder and crime in specific places and the development of robust plans of action to address those conditions. Successful problem-solving requires close coordination of department division and units. Just as important as internal coordination is collaboration with other criminal justice, social service, and governmental agencies as well as non-governmental service providers and neighborhood groups.

Data-driven strategies require the department to develop and enhance its ability to analyze crime, disorder and fear indicators, to provide that analysis to operational units, and to measure the impart of the activities of those units.

It starts with careful and accurate report writing and review. It also demands a system of accountability. Accountability must extend from Officer, to Sergeant, to Lieutenant, to Captain, through Deputy Chiefs and to the Commissioner. Crime mapping and call analysis will continue to be the basis for weekly command meetings that will focus the attention of all department units on conditions in each neighborhood. The elements of the “comp-stat” process will drive our discussions: accurate and timely intelligence, rapid deployment, effective tactics, and relentless follow-up and assessment.

We will take ownership of the crime, disorder and fear conditions in each neighborhood and work together to ensure our success. True accountability cannot take place without clear chains of command, cross sector communication, and sharing of information and assets. Each sector’s success or failure belongs to the entire department. No one sector can succeed alone.