Weekend Read: “Cathy Lanier Changes Policing in D.C. and Maybe Nation”

Governing magazine this months profiles MPD Chief Cathy Lanier, including her history in MPD and theories in policing.

The glowing report begins with Lanier cruising through Barry Farm one Saturday night, windows down, and chatting with local residents.

As Lanier waves from her cruiser, she isn’t just being friendly — though she is unfailingly that. She’s modeling how she wants her force to interact with the citizenry. It’s an approach that has made her the most popular public official in Washington and endeared her to residents across the city.

Lanier’s theory of crime-fighting, the report says, is a counter-point to zero-tolerance and hinges on participating in community life.

Beginning in the early 1990s, New York had reduced its violent crime rate by more than 80 percent. As a copycat, D.C.’s violent crime rate fell too, by more than 50 percent. But absolute levels of crime were still high, and an unfortunate fallout was building. Police tactics seemed to be turning high-crime neighborhoods against the cops. The way Lanier saw it, zero tolerance-hot spot policing wasn’t driving crime down; it was making it harder to solve crimes.

“When you’re doing zero-tolerance policing,” she says, “who are you picking up and who are you alienating? Your residents, your victims and your witnesses. Now they have no respect for the police. They have no reason to speak to the police.”

Lanier changed course. Instead of cracking down on minor disorder in high-crime neighborhoods, she encouraged patrol officers to develop sources. At the same time, the department embraced social media and encouraged a savvy population to engage with police in new ways.

Five years later, Lanier says the results vindicate her change of strategies. At the January meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors earlier this year, she presented her stats to an attentive audience of mayors: homicide, down 42 percent over the past three years; this year’s homicide clearance rate, above 90 percent; anonymous tips to the police, up sixfold.

It’s worth noting that Washington City Paper profiled Lanier almost a year ago, describing Lanier’s approval rating as a “cosmic 84 percent.”

Reporter Rend Smith contemplated a potential mayoral run for the chief (“she’s a Ward 5 resident whose blue-collar affectations play best in the parts of town where her original patron, Fenty, got his butt kicked”), reported a little on her background (after becoming a teen mom she got her GED and tried waitressing and sales before a boyfriend encouraged her to apply to MPD), and looked into Lanier’s policing style (“stop viewing crime stats in isolation, instead factoring in details like “population density, demographic trends, projected economic development, physical infrastructure” to create a broader picture.”).

Read Governing magazine’s full story here.

And re-vist the City Paper profile here.

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