The Boston Globe, Wednesday, September 7, 2005, Metro/Region, Page 1

CRIME WATCH EFFORTS MAY BE FINE-TUNED

By Suzanne Smalley, Globe Staff

A counterterrorism consultant is suggesting major changes to the Boston Police Department's highly touted neighborhood crime watch program, saying better management could make it a far more effective crime-fighting and homeland security tool.

Duncan Shipley Dalton, who has been studying the program since June, is recommending that the department require better communication between the crime watch unit and community service officers, and that it more aggressively monitor the groups so that officials know where the crime watch is active.

Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole said she will strongly consider making the changes, particularly because the city plans to rely on the watch groups as part of its homeland security strategy. She said she believes about 200 to 300 crime watch groups are active in Boston, and pledged to increase that number as much as possible.

"Community policing is the foundation on which we're building everything," O'Toole said in a recent interview. "We have to make sure that foundation is sound."

Dalton was asked to help coordinate the city's crime watch and counterterrorism efforts. It is essential to know how many crime watch groups are operating, he said, so that gaps in the city's network can be filled.

In Boston, vigilant residents can be hugely effective counterterrorism tools, Dalton said, because terrorists would probably move to a neighborhood and plan their attack for months before striking.

"They're not going to just turn up, get off the plane, and immediately go and commit an act of terrorism," he said. "They're going to come here and live here for six to 12 months beforehand."

Dalton said the Boston police crime watch unit needs to more actively recruit people to start the groups in particular neighborhoods. He said if police focus on recruiting more groups to prevent terrorism, the groups will also wind up fighting crime.

"There's a big overlap between communities that have social and economic problems that tend towards more crime, and those areas where terrorists are most likely to be," Dalton said.
Dalton, who is a student at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and spent the summer working for the Boston Police Department through a fellowship paid for by the school's Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, said his recommendations are basic.

He said the city's management of the crime watch system is so disorganized that department officials do not know exactly how many groups are active. Dalton said he is concerned that most of the crime watch work is being performed by community service officers who often do not communicate with the centralized crime watch unit, which was reduced from six employees to four in late 2003.

"If you said, 'What groups met this month,' nobody could tell you," said Dalton, who as a politician in Northern Ireland befriended O'Toole when she traveled there in 1999 to help implement new policing strategies after the historic Good Friday Agreement. "Even if you said the last six months, nobody would know. . . . That kind of information is not that complicated to organize."

Dalton said the estimated 1,100-plus crime watch groups that city officials say were active during the height of the department's crime reduction efforts a decade ago have probably never been active all at once. That is because the police department's crime watch unit tracks the groups only as they start, without following up every year.

"People are very active in the department, but in a lot of places the activity isn't well focused," Dalton said. "That's its biggest managerial flaw."

O'Toole said crime watch groups tend to form in response to a crisis in a neighborhood, which she said often means the groups fade away along with the perceived threat.

"I hope Duncan can . . . see how we can institutionalize some of these groups so they can continue to partner with the Police Department long after a crisis has subsided," O'Toole said. She said she plans to retain Dalton as a part-time consultant now that his fellowship has ended.