Word: reddin
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Damping Rumors. At Reddin's direction, community-relations programs have been greatly expanded, with a deputy chief and a staff of 100. A community-relations officer, often a Negro, and a youth-service officer have been assigned to each ghetto station as emissaries to the neighborhood. Each station, in addition, has established a citizens' council that brings together 20 to 50 residents a month to discuss local problems with the police. One such meeting in Watts elicited a demand for a crackdown on bars serving as hangouts for prostitutes. The police listened, then acted against the bars. Another time...
...their side of the story to the local rumor-control officer. He calls four friends and each of them calls four more; the chain continues until a large part of the community knows that there are at least two sides to the story. "It's very loose-knit," admits Reddin, "but it gets the word out. And the people involved aren't known as finks...
...that residents can know who the man behind the badge is, Reddin also gave each cop business cards and name tags?an innocuous but nonetheless controversial departure in a once notoriously highhanded force. Another innovation is actually ancient. Reddin has returned to the streets a man who disappeared from Los Angeles when patrol cars came in: the cop on the beat. It is remarkable in a city where only the poor and the eccentric walk, and so far the experiment is on a tiny scale. About 30 are now pounding the pavements...
Monsters with Badges. The Reddin blueprint pays attention to the young?rather self-consciously. Fourteen officers, each known as "Policeman Bill," are assigned to the city schools' first, second and third grades, where they tell children about the policeman's job. It all sounds a little cloying. Even so, before one "Policeman Bill's" visit, a survey showed, ghetto children portrayed cops as monsters with whips and flashing silver badges. After he left, they scrawled kindly father figures. To woo teenagers, almost always the troublemakers in ghetto disturbances, the L.A.P.D. has experimentally hired twelve youths for help on such minor...
...Reddin's schemes for better commu nity relations have not worked miracles or turned Watts into a place where happy kiddies constantly listen to stories from avuncular cops. Nonetheless, police are relatively safe in Watts, something that cannot be said for all the nation's ghettos. Though most members of minorities like Reddin's ideas, many Negro militants still refuse to talk with the police. Some, like US (US is black people; whites would be THEM) Chief Ron Karenga, insist that Chief Parker's out-and-out hostility would be preferable to Reddin's firm amiability. The police, says Karenga...