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Benny Napoleon
While announcing his endorsement this week for Detroit mayor, the influential Rev. Wendall Anthony made particular note of Benny Napoleon’s plan to assign a police officer for every square mile of the city.
“We are most impressed with the “One Square Mile” plan which puts a police officer in various neighborhoods to secure trust, provide services and to build relationships,” Anthony’s organization, the Fannie Lou Hamer Political Action Committee, wrote in a press release endorsing the Wayne County Sheriff as mayor.
In a mayoral race that has been long rhetoric, but short on fresh ideas, Napoleon’s plan stands out.
The question is: Is it realistic? Napoleon and some community supporters like Anthony say yes. Not everyone agrees.
“There’s not nearly enough officers to handle that,” says one veteran Detroit Police Officer. “It’s not viable.”
Napoleon disagrees.
Napoleon Calls Plan Exceptional
“It’s exceptional,” Napoleon told Deadline Detroit. “People in the neighborhoods get it. I've gone over the plan with police officers and executives and they all agree it's a phenomenal plan. They helped me write it."
Under the plan, Napoleon would assign one officer during the day to a square mile of the city. There’s 138 miles of land in Detroit. The plan is based on a “community policing” concept in which officers get to know folks in the community.
Napoleons says the cop would set up an office in the area, be it a church or a community center or store, and patrol the area, developing relationships, responding to crime, making sure businesses tend to their garbage and graffiti, narcotics officers raid crack houses and street lights work.
“It would be during daylight hours where many of the issues occur in the community,” Napoleon said. “One of the biggest issues is break-ins which usually occur when people are at work. It would really have an impact when it comes to break ins."
He said the officer would also give welcome packets to new neighbors, and make sure owners of abandoned structures take care of their properties.
“We’ve allowed them to keep them in our community in disrepair,” he said of those properties.
Rev. Anthony, president of the Detroit Branch of the NAACP, says “it’s not a panacea” but he sees a lot of positives to the plan.
“It allows for a closer understanding and mutual respect between the police department and the community at large,” he said..
As for resources, he said : “That is something the sheriff and his team will have to work out.”
Numbers seem to vary as to how many police officers there actually are. The Detroit Police Officers Association says it has 1,893 officers. Some think the number of actual active officers is far lower.
Officer Says Resources Aren't There
The police officer who expressed skepticism about Napoleon's plan, says the idea of an officer working alone is not a very popular one. Most, he says, prefer to work with another officer for safety reasons.
He also wondered what would happen when officers went on vacation for a week or two or were sick or made an arrest, which could take them off the street for the entire shift, filling out paper work or taking a suspect to the hospital.
“It’s more of a pie in the sky idea,” he said.
Napoleon dismisses those remarks, saying, as a former Detroit Police Chief and as the Wayne County Sheriff, he's seen law enforcement from the "ground up to the bird's eye view.
"The fact that some police officers who have never been chief don't understand the plan doesn't surprise me," he said.
"It's out of the box, it's creative thinking," he said, adding that the officers assigned to a square mile will also address such complaints as loitering, which will free up other officers around the city to address more urgent calls.
Napoleon said the proposal was "inspired' by a highly successful program by his department called S.C.O.U.T (Sheriff Community Organized Urban Team) in which sheriff's deputies worked certain days of the month with community groups in a one to two square mile radius in Detroit.
Raphael "Ray" Washington, Chief of Police Operations for Sheriff Napoleon, said the program, which operated for nearly two years, helped reduce crimes, particularly break-ins, in the targeted neighborhoods. However, it was cut about a month ago because of funding. Washington called Napoleon's proposal for Detroit "brilliant."
Mark Diaz, president of the Detroit Police Officers Association, says he’ll take a wait and see attitude.
“I can’t believe he would make a suggestion that we could do it without having some facts to back it up. I haven’t seen the plan. But I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s been in law enforcement a long time. I'd like to imagine he knows what he’s talking about.”
