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		Like many older American cities, New Haven has more than its share of problems. With the disappearance of its industrial base, the city's centerpiece, Yale University, sits in the middle of crumbling neighborhoods and devastated public housing. It is a city with a high poverty rate and few jobs, lots of drug use and lots of crime; in fact, in the 1980's, New Haven had one of the highest crime rates in the Northeast. Since the early 1990s, when other police forces were making headlines for shocking incidents of brutality, New Haven has been working to change the face and substance of policing. For the past decade an experiment in crime prevention has been evolving in New Haven. "Community policing," as the experiment is called, is not a band-aid program, but a thorough and continuing rethinking of the proper mandate of a metropolitan police force and the duties of the individual officer. The police department has striven, as their mission statement says, "to civilianize, de-centralize, re-educate, integrate and humanize all 417 sworn members of the New Haven Department of Police Services." In New Haven, police officers are chosen for their capacity to use common sense and to behave with fellow-feeling. Both law enforcers and community advocates, they are trained to engage with and get to know the citizens whom they meet when patrolling the streets. While officers are expected to pursue aggressively those who commit serious offenses, they are also expected to protect assiduously the rights of all citizens. Empowered with counseling, child development and listening skills, the men and women of the New Haven police force are encouraged to bring their humanity to the job. Once disheartened by the accelerating violence in their city, they have a new enthusiasm and sense of hope. Trained to question authority, to withhold judgment and use their power with discretion and kindness, they are given leeway in deciding how to handle situations. The mission of the foot patrol is to "rebuild the neighborhoods," which means not only watching for drug deals, but also noticing a dangerously collapsing porch or a run-down playground. An officer can decide to warn and then monitor a casual drug user instead of immediately throwing the offender in jail. Says Officer Bennett Hines of a teenager he caught smoking marijuana, "had I arrested him, he would have just gone to jail...and he wouldn't have learned anything from it." Thus the officer becomes a valued and trusted member of the community, collaborating with neighbors, experts and local activists to bring about change. New Haven's problems won't disappear overnight; community policing is a work in progress. But this philosophy is empowering police officers to work closely with citizens and to mobilize their own humanity to make concrete changes. NEW COP ON THE BEAT takes a look at the New Haven model for communities looking to move beyond the morass of drugs, crime and hopelessness. Home | Story | Community Policing | Paramilitary Policing | Filmmakers | Resources | ITVS