News and Views from the 021st District CAPS. "CAPS: 10th Anniversary year"

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CAPs News and directory

A service of the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference and its website, www.hydepark.org. Help support our work as watchdog, forum and clearing house: Join the Conference.

*Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference does not necessarily endorse everything here as comprising a totally accurate and complete picture but believes the material is highly helpful and insightful.

Be sure to visit HPKCC's Public Safety page. This includes full police contact information, disaster tips; community prosecuting and safe haven programs (shared with CAPS) description. Perspective on the recent spike in robberies. Elected Officials contains links and information for allied city and county services. See also relevant sections of Tracking Community Trends.

Be sure to visit the HPKCC Whistlestop page.
Return to Calendars and Directories.

CAPS Meetings, News and Announcements

CAPS Contact Information

Community Policing (City of Chicago site)

 

CAPS Beat meeting schedule and locations in Hyde Park-Kenwood-7 pm except 2124 at Harris Bank 47th-6 pm.

CAPS (Community [or Chicago] Alternative Policing Strategy) meetings

CAPS 021 beats do not meet in December.

For general calendar and beat boundaries- call 21st District community policing office for exceptions, especially for summer and holiday seasons-- 312 474-8340 or 2930). Usual meeting time is now 6 p.m.

21st District CAPS Community Sergeant: Theresa Odum. 312 747-2930, theresa.odum@chicagopolice.org

Levone Treadwell is CAPS Implementation Office Community Organizer for the 021st District. 312745-1972.

Beat facilitators. 2132: Mike Grauvogle

Learn about community policing in CAPS News and Views or the City of Chicago/Police Department website.

CAPS meet at 7 pm except 2124. District 021. Last 2 digits: "2s" are in North-Kenwood-Oakland, "3s" are in Hyde Park-South Kenwood.

Districts

Link to the Chicago Police Department or any other agency or alderman through http://.egov.cityofchicago.org.
To track crime in the area and identify sex offenders: Citizen ICAM.

This website, www.hydepark.org, is proud to be listed among "valuable websites related to the 021st District", along with the University of Chicago, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, and The Hyde Park Herald.

Be Aware! Community Alerts, Missing Persons, and Most Wanted

Programs include (see descriptions further down)

1st District Management Team

Commander Adrienne L. Stanley
Watch Cdr. 1st Captain Willam Town
Watch Cdr. 2nd Captain Eugene Roy
Watch Cdr. 3rd Nathan Hamilton
Tactical Unit Lt. Russell Schaefer
CAPS Management Sgt. Tom Wieczorek
Community Policing Sgt. Scott Oberg
District Manager rochele O'Neal

District committees 312 747-2930.

Other community policing programs and tools

Adopt-A-Street

A program that creates a public-private partnership to makd our communities cleaner and more attractive. "Adopt-A-Street asks businesses, block clubs, schools, community groups et al to adopt a site and take responsibility for keeping it clean. This means picking up trash, covering graffiti on private propety nd performing other minor tasks too localized fodr city govgernment to afford. Call 311 or your aldermanic office.

Graffiti Blasters. Now for private property, too. 311 (Note- not for murals or other art)

Drug and Gang House Ordinance.

If there isone building on a block, CAPS warns, that is a haven for gangs and a constant source of drugs and other chronic crimes, it will effect the quality of life for every resident of that block. It will place god citizens in fear, reduce their propety values and place children in jeopardy. Once the whole block is affected, inevitably the problem grows to affect the quality of life for an entire neighborhood. The Drug an Gang House Ordinance, MCC 8-4-090, is the main tool used to transform problem buildings. This powerful ordinance is enfoddrced by the Strategic Task Force and the Drug and Gang House Enforcement Section of the Department of Law. 311. Top

Caps: What's In It For You?

From the Summer 2005 Conference Reporter. By Joanne Howard

The Chicago Altenative Policing Strategies program (CAPS) provides a critical service to the City of Chicago. The Hyde Park-Kewnood area is in the 21st District and Sergeant Scott Oberg is our contact person and point man. There are [several area-based] CAPS meetings held each month to update the community on issues pertaining to safety. Not only are the meetings informational, they are also meetings that resolve problems.

At each meeting, a contingent of police officers assigned to the Hyde Park-Kenwood area review quality of life issues tht impact our community. The purpose of the meetings is to develop dialog between the police officers asigned to our area and community members. The format is straightforward and simple: review crime statistics in the area, get background on the statistics, and develop a course of action that can curtail unwanted activity in our neighborhood.

The meetings begin promply and last for an hour. What's in it for you? You get relevant information from the people who are actually serving our best interests. A recent meeting reviewed problems with people sleeping in Nichols Park, abandoned cars, a drowning at the Point, and a discussion of ways to resolve alterations on the west side of Hyde Park-Kenwood.

So, be a part of making the community better. Come out, air your views, and get a resolution to problems you are having in the community. [Schedule followed.] Top

 

Caps is often considered ineffective or the problems prove intractable, so people stop coming--a big mistake in the Conference's view: As Bob Mason of SECC also says, "You have to keep putting their feet to the fire."

What is CAPS supposed to be and do? From the Sept. 2004 21st District Resource Guide

Meet the officers who patrol your beat. Work with your beat officers and your neighbors to determine the priority crime problems in your neighborhood. Find out what the police are doing--and what you can do--to fight crime and address the priority problems on your block and your beat. Meet your neighbors and get organized. You can do all of these, and more, at your beat community meeting.

Beat community meetings are held on a regular basis....monthly or... at a minimum ...quarterly. The meetings usually do not exceed one hour.

Beat community meetings are hosted by the Police Department and are chaired by a police officer who is a member of t he beat team. A member of the community, often called the beat facilitatodr, may co-chair the meeting and asist in establishing the agenda.

Beat community meetings are an important first step in the CAPS problem-solving process on your beat. The meetings provide you withthe opportunity to help set the crime-fighting priorities in your community--to work with your beat officers in identifying and prioritizing crime and disorder problems, in analizing thoes problems, and in developing strategies to address t hem. Information from the beat communit meeting is used by the beat team in creating the beat plan-- a tool tht helps police officers and the community keep track of the priority problems on the beat and the progress made in addressing those problems on the beat and the progress made in addressing those problems.

CAPS - What It Stands for; What It Is

To the Conference Reporter, May-June 2002, Sgt. Scott A. Oberg, Community Policing 021st District

Quite often, I am asked, "What is CAPS, and what does it do?" Literally, CAPS stand for Chicago's Alternative Policing Strategy.

To some, CAPS simply means attending monthly beat meetings and complaining to the police. The police listen, maybe jot down a few notes, and say, "We'll look into it." Everyone then returns the next month and thesame thing happens all over again. That is not what CAPS is all about. That is, simply, what I like to call a "Verbal 911 Session." CAPS is a lot more!

The CAPS Design

Picture a triangle: Two sides and a base. You may think that there ate lnly three pasrts to a triangle, but there are really four. You must not forget the center. With this design, an alternative policing strategy is developed.

In the center is a problem. A serious problem. It could be a drug house, gangs on a street corner, or asaults occurring on the street. The center is where all resources must be focused.

The Sides of the Triangle

On the left side of the triangle are the police. The police taking police action: making arrests and traffic stops; enforcing the curfew; doing foot patrols; and making contact with the public at large.

On the right side are city services. They include agencies that assist in combating the problem in the center of the triangle. Streets and Sanitation arrives on hte scene to tow abandoned autos that may store hidden drugs or are used as hangoputs for gang members. A vacant lot is cleaned to make the area less conducive to crime. The Department of Housing knocks on the door of a drug house to issue citations against the property owner--citations for violations that can lead to expensive civil action. The Bureau of Electricity arrives to fix the light posts so light lfloods thea rea, and the criminals cannot hide in the darkness. With the Bureau of Electricity comes the Department of Forestry to trim the trees so the light will not be blocked. These are just a few of the city services that help solve the problem in the middle of the triangle.

At the bottom of the triangle, holding it together, is the community. Without the community at the base, the triangle will fall. It's the community that lets the police and the city services know where to go, when to go, and who's involved in the problem, in order for residents to take back their neighborhoods.

Community Participation

Community residents loiter in locations that gangs control--at first, with police and city services representatives at their side, and, eventually, on their own, taking back a block that was theirs in the firs place. If troubl returns, so will the partnership.

And that is what CAPS is all aboaut All sides must be active participants for CAPS to work. If any one side does not do its proper job, the problem in the center has a way to escape. And escape it will, to return day after day.

Beat Meeting: the Catalyst

The catalyst to the success of this proces is the beat meeting. The three sides of the triangle must problem solve at the beat meeting by attacking the center. Please do not make CAPS meetings a "Verbal 911 Session."

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By the Reporter editor, with input from the CAPS Implementation Office. May-June 2002

In the beginning, there were block clubs in Hyde Park-Kenwood.

In 1950, the newly-organized Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference formed 20 block clubs as part of the strategy to reverse the tide of physical and social deterioration in the community. The clubs were formed to help residents diagnose neighborhood problems and take action to solve them.

In 2002, block clubs--now part of CAPS--still focus on identifying and solving neighborhood problems, says Levonne Treadwell, community organizer fo the 21st district in the CAPS Implementation Office. Each district has a community organizer, whose many responsibilities include responding to the need for block clubs and helping organize them.

Treadwell reports she has, so far, identified 12 existing block clubs in Hyde Park-Kenwood and will be working twoard developing more of them as the need is identified. Block clubs, she says, can be a single block or several blocks on the same street, with residents working together on their common problem (or problems) and often socializing as well.

Sone block clubs are organized as a result of questionnaires passed out at CAPS beat meetings; others as a result of neighborhood distribution of the questionnaires. Still others are formed as a result of requests by individual residents.

Any residents interested in organizing a block club, should call Levonn Treadwell, 312/745-1972.

Among other programs, CAPS includes Neighborhood Watch, Adopt-a-Street, and Safe Haven [and one notifying residents to come to court days to show support].

Tips from CAPS by Sgt. Scott A. Oberg to the Conference Reporter

Tending to Basics

Summer, 2003:

 

Adopt-a-Street--Join the Team

Spring, 2003:

Adopt-a-Street is a program tht creates a public-private partnership to make our neighborhoods cleaner, safer and more attractive. Begun as a pilot program in seven wards, the program asks local businesses, block clubs, schools, and othe community-based organizations to "adopt" a site in their neighborhood and take responsibility for keeping it clean. This means picking up trash, removing graffiti on private property,,and performing other minor clean-up tasks.

Among the rewards of participating in the Adopt-a-Street program are the following:

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Help Police: Observe, Remember, Report

March-April 2002

A reader recently asked: "What should you do--or not do-- when you see a crime being committed or a suspicious act takeing place?"

Find the nearest telephone, call 911, and report as many of the details of the people and events as you can remember. Here is some of the information needed.

General Description

To capture a criminal in this electronic age, it is one of the utmost importance for the police to promptly obtain an accurate description of the persons and happenings. Make note of the following:

____________________________

Explorer Program Offers Support for Young Adults

January-February 2002. by Scott Oberg and Scott Lee

The Police Explorer Program recognized that there is a large popultion of school going young adults of varying age groups in the area surrounding the 021st Dsitrict. The young adults can use all the support they they can get so they can be future, positive contributors in society.

The purpose of the explorers meetings is to provide a safe meeting environment that will allow Police Explorers to participate in positive, self-esteem building activities, while assisting their ocmmunity and law enforcement.

The intent of the Police Explorers is to educate and involve youth in police operations, and to interest them in law enforcement functions, whether they decide to follow a career in law enforcement or not. The program is to teach young adults, between the ages of 14 and 20, the positive aspects of Law Enforcement through guest speakers, discussions, hands on activities, and eductional trips.

The goal of the Police Explorers is to implement a variety of programs and projects featureing safety, traiing, and service. Explorers will have opportunities to learn about the requirements of law enforcement careers and gain firsthand work experiences. Programs will be hands on activities, attempting to attract and hold on to the young adults.

Regular meetings will be held twice a month on the second and fourth Mondays, between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. at Michael Reese Hospital's Singer Pavilion, located at 2959 S. Cottage Grove.

For further information, contact P.O. Scott Lee from the 021st District Community Policing Office, 312-747-2930. [Now Theresa Odum]

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What is the Court Advocacy Program?

Contact: Stephanie Packard-Bell, 312 747-9983.

Court Advocacy is a toolin Chicago's Alternative Policing Strategy through which neighbors and community leaders, working with the police, identify and track court cases and attend court sessions. Participants accompany crime victims to court or attend trials that re important to the safety of the community.

Why bother? Attendance at court shows support for the police adn victims and witnesses of crime, and lets everyone involved inthe judicial process know thas thte communty is concerned about the outcome of the case. It sends a strong message to the judges, prosecutors and the accused. By these effort, neighborhood residents and other stakeholders can greatly enhance the effectiveness of the criminal justice system for the entire community.

How do you get involved? The best way to stay abreast of court cases that might have an impact on your communtiy is to attend beat meetings...Each police district has a Court Advocacy subcommittee that tracks court cases. The types of cases followed will depend on the concerns of community members. Some districts may wish to follow cases of robberies, rapes, drive-by shootings, etc. Other communtids may concentrate on cases regarding abandoned buildings or slum landlords. Still others may identify taverns selling liquor to underage drinkers as a problem and follow those cases through the hearing process.

What do you have to do? When the case you are interested in is called, as many people from the beat or district as possible will attend the session. For the program to succeed, it needs volunteers to attend court sessions. This doesn't necessarily require a lot of time. It could be as little as a few hours two or three times a year. Because court session are usually conducted during business hours, it may be necessary to take time off from work to attend the hearings.

What are the benefits? Experience has shown tht participation in court by communtiy residents can have an impact in obtaining stiffer sentences and sending a message to defendants that this is a neighborhood that gets tough on criminals.