After decades of discriminatory policing eroded trust in scores of neighborhoods across the city, the Baltimore Police Department is continuing an uphill battle to establish good relationships with residents, but it has a long way to go, according to a recent report on the agency’s efforts to implement “community policing.”

The report, which was completed as part of the department’s federally-mandated consent decree, found that staffing shortages “continue to be a barrier” in establishing community trust through more proactive policing efforts. The “community policing” philosophy is premised on the idea that officers form partnerships with community leaders to establish trust with residents. The hope is that trust will result in more cooperation to help police solve violent crimes.

But while the police department has made strides in training officers on community-oriented policies, actually putting them into practice has been a different story. For instance, the plan to have every beat officer regularly interact with their communities is still a long way from being a realistic one, the report by the monitoring team found.

“BPD will not be able to fulfill these requirements until it finds a way to free officer time to conduct meaningful community engagement,” the report said,” ... and to measure that this engagement is having the intended outcomes.”

One oft-cited metric in the report is the goal to have every officer spend 40% of their time “engaging in proactive community policing,” which essentially means walking the neighborhoods they patrol on foot and responding to concerns residents may have. Instead, officers continue to spend too much of their time in their vehicles, and much of their time responding to calls, the monitoring team concluded.

“In many of Baltimore’s neighborhoods, mistrust in the police has traditionally run high,” the report said. “BPD has faced considerable challenges in engaging in effective community policing, especially in some of the city’s most underserved communities.”

The story continues at the Baltimore Banner: Baltimore police should spend less time in their vehicles and more time on the street, report says

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