Coral Gables

Zone Defense

Chief praises new police patrol

Don Slesnick

By Angie Hargot

Coral Gables Police Chief Michael Hammerschmidt told an occasionally skeptical City Commission Tuesday that the city’s new policing strategy is, so far, a success. According to Hammerschmidt, in the two months since the plan was enacted, arrests are up and overtime hours have been reduced by 3 percent.

“We’ve been watching as, around the country, crime [rates] started to creep up and we weren’t affected — until last year,” Hammerschmidt said, adding that the crime level in Coral Gables is not alarming.

According to semi-annual data reported to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, however, the city experienced a 0.4 percent overall increase in crime in the first half of 2007, the most recent data available. Most notably, five rapes were reported in the first six months of 2007, compared with four in the entire previous year. The city also had 26 reports of robberies in the first half of 2007, a number rapidly approaching 2006’s 35-robbery total. The FDLE has said it expects to release annual reports for 2007 in the coming weeks.

The Coral Gables Police Department’s revamped patrol went into effect on Jan. 8. Previously, the city had been divided into 12 patrol zones, with an officer assigned to each. But the costly system wasn’t as effective as it could be, Hammerschmidt said, so two months ago he overhauled the patrol regions, dividing the entire city into two squads and four zones: two north and two south of U.S. 1.

The clunky 12-zone system was ineffective, he said, and cost far too much money in overtime; if an officer couldn’t work, it meant overtime for his replacement — a pricey situation for the department’s almost $38 million annual police budget.

Hammerschmidt’s new system, based partly on the Comstat police schedule system that originated in New York City, assigns one sergeant and eight officers to each of the two squads, with about six officers on duty at any given time. The sergeant, equipped with a GPS tracking system, monitors each officer’s physical location.

“To address crime, we are concerned with coverage and visibility,” Hammerschmidt said. “With zone patrol you’re relying on a lot of luck that the officer is in the right place at the right time.” He said that distributing officers evenly throughout the city doesn’t allow effective coverage of crime “hot spots.” Instead, the department now assigns coverage based on the highest crime spots by region, day and time.

He added that visibility — offenders actually seeing the patrol cars on the street — deters crime. Hammerschmidt said that since the new system was implemented, arrests for property crime have increased. He related anecdotes of suspect apprehensions, one of which included a small gang of boys allegedly trespassing onto a property, for, a witness presumed, the purpose of robbery.

“Because [police] swarmed the area we were able to apprehend all four,” a feat not likely in a zone configuration, Hammerschmidt said.

But the new plan is not without its critics. Vice Mayor William Kerdyk has heard from residents concerned that the new strategy is nothing but a cost-cutting measure.

“I want you to assure residents that it is assisting us in the financial situation, but we’re not putting citizens in danger” to accomplish it, Kerdyk said.

Commissioner Rafael Cabrera, who made clear that he had a great deal of faith in the chief’s experience and professionalism, said he had received complaints about a lack of visibility, and insinuations that sending more police to hot spots might be a more reactive than proactive approach to crime fighting.

Residents told him that “for the first time ever, [they] were not seeing police cars in [their] neighborhoods,” Cabrera said, adding that some of the complaints originated in the southern portion of the city, where many gated communities pay extra to hire off-duty police, Florida Highway Patrol officers or private security firms to patrol their streets.

Although Hammerschmidt noted that police response times have not been affected, he did acknowledge the citizens’ concern reported by Mayor Don Slesnick that police officers deployed this way would spend too much time, well, shooting the breeze.

“I’ve received comments [that residents] see more and more officers parked together [and chatting]”, Slesnick said.

“Sure, they B.S. a little to break the monotony,” allowed Hammerschmidt. “Our supervisors understand that it’s on their shoulders to make this system work.”

Hammerschmidt said that although the department monitors the success of the strategy and crime statistics at the end of each month and then cumulatively, he plans to reevaluate the new tactics in June.

Comments? E-mail Angie@miamisunpost.com