Eric Romero, right, a resident at the Imperial Courts Housing Development in Watts, chats with Los Angeles police officers Delano Hutchins, left, and Angelo Marzan in 2015. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
The Los Angeles Police Department’s signature community policing program has prevented crime and made residents feel safer in public housing developments with entrenched gang problems and troubled relationships with law enforcement, according to a study by UCLA researchers.
But challenges remain for the Community Safety Partnership, including confusion about its mission and perception that it fails to help teenagers at high risk of gang involvement, the researchers wrote in the report, which they presented to the five-member civilian Police Commission on Tuesday.
I served over 20 years as the chief of police in Madison (WI), four years as chief of the Burnsville (MN) Police Department, and before that as a police officer in Edina (MN) and the City of Minneapolis. I hold graduate degrees from the University of Minnesota and Edgewood College in Madison. I have written many articles over my years as a police leader. After retiring from the police department, I answered a call to ministry, attended seminary, and was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church. After 25 years leading two Episcopal Churches in Portage and North Lake, Wisconsin, I now serve as Associate Pastor in a growing, dynamic, and Spirit-filled Lutheran congregation in nearby Mazomanie.
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Improving Police: A Necessary Conversation 