Policing for, and with, the community
As Harvard celebrates its 375th anniversary, the Gazette is examining key moments and developments over the University’s broad and compelling history. It wasn’t easy being a police chief in the 1980s. Gang violence and drug use haunted American cities. Trust between officers and the public was eroding, a trend that would culminate with the Los Angeles riots in 1992. Meanwhile, research was showing that traditional police tactics — rapid response to crime, detective work — weren’t making communities safer. At the same time, two important ideas, broken windows theory and community policing, were taking shape at Harvard and would transform the public debate about law enforcement’s role in society. Their genesis could hardly be more different. The former theory rested on two men’s work; the latter was a result of years of roundtable discussions at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). But both would help to fundamentally change the philosophy of police work, emphasizing that the...