Reducing excessive police incidents: Do notices to owners work?

Abstract

Many municipalities throughout the United States have enacted ordinances that allow cities to charge property owners fees or fines for excessive police calls for service to the property. However, there are few studies of the outcomes of such ordinances. This study examines the impact on the count of police incidents of a notice of potential future fees or fines to property owners in Anchorage, Alaska and Green Bay, Wisconsin. It was found that police incidents are reduced by 24–28 per cent after a notice of potential fines, with two-thirds of properties experiencing a decline in police incidents post-notice. The implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Appendix

Table A1

Table a1 Characteristics of the two programs

Anchorage municipal code 8.80

Anchorage Municipal Code 8.80 defines excessive police responses to residential property as more than eight (8) per dwelling unit per calendar year. A police response is defined as one or more officers going to the dwelling unit in response to a call for assistance, a complaint, an emergency, a potential emergency or reasonable suspicion of unlawful activity that was determined to be related to activities on the premises and which were reasonably preventable. Police responses do not include:

• False alarms

• Child neglect

• Potential domestic violence

• Potential stalking

• Sexual assault

• Medical emergencies for serious bodily injury or death

Officers from the Community Action Policing Team receive a report of properties that may be in violation of AMC 8.80 based on a query of computer-aided dispatch data. Each property and each police response is then reviewed by the officers. The narrative report from each incident must be reviewed to determine eligibility as a ‘police response’ under AMC 8.80. Potential domestic violence, for example, is defined as a variety of crimes (for example, assault, burglary, trespass and harassment) committed by current or former household members or romantic partners. Such details are typically contained only in the responding officer’s narrative report. As has been found in the context of arrest decisions (Black, 1971; Terrill and Paoline, 2007), the police tended toward leniency. If there was any question about the inclusion of a particular incident, officers would generally not count the incident against the property.

After receiving the notice, owners have 30 days to take appropriate corrective action. Fees cannot accrue during this period. Corrective action must be ‘reasonably expected to correct the cause of the police responses.’ Owners are required to provide written notice of the action taken; the police have five days to determine if the action was appropriate. The ordinance lists actions that may be appropriate, such as a notice to quit, eviction notice served on tenants, obtaining a restraining order, installation of new security measures and other actions recommended by police. Owners are specifically prohibited from relocating tenants to another unit and from communicating only orally with the person causing the police responses.

Green Bay city ordinance chapter 28

Green Bay City Ordinance Chapter 28 defines chronic nuisance and allows the city to recover the costs for providing police services for nuisance activities. Chapter 28.401 defines a chronic nuisance premises as an individual dwelling unit, entire building, or business at which three or more nuisance activities have occurred within a 12-month period. Nuisances reported by the property owner do not count toward the three (3) calls in a year standard. Nuisances are defined as any of the following that result in enforcement action (warning, citation, or arrest):

• Harassment

• Disorderly conduct

• Battery

• Lewd and lascivious behavior

• Prostitution

• Theft

• Receiving stolen property

• Arson

• Drug offenses

• Gambling

• Trespassing

• Weapons violations

• Noise violations

• Execution of search warrant or arrest warrants

• City of Green Bay Inspection-related calls where the police department responds

As in Anchorage, the narrative for each incident must be examined to determine if the incident meets the definition of nuisance in the ordinance. Unlike Anchorage, in Green Bay, much of this work is performed by a civilian analyst who has created a database to support the effort and track case history.

In general, the Green Bay Police Department attempts to resolve nuisances without invoking the formal chronic nuisance process. When that fails, the property owner is notified that their property is a chronic nuisance. The notice includes a legal description of the premises and a description of the activities that have occurred. The notice includes an order to meet with the police chief or his/her designee to create a written nuisance abatement plan. The property owner then has 10 days to submit the plan. Frequently, the property owner is inexperienced in crime prevention. The police department often provides assistance with the plan based on the specific problems faced by each property.

Owners can be cited for failure to meet with police and for failure to submit an abatement plan. The abatement plan must include contact information for a person living within 60 miles of the property to act as a point of contact. If nuisance activity continues more than 15 days after the chronic nuisance notification was issued and the property owner has not made reasonable efforts to abate the nuisance, the actual cost of police responses to additional nuisance activity can be billed to the owner. The Green Bay ordinance allows for flexibility in what is billed – owners that are making ‘reasonable efforts’ to abate the nuisance can be exempted from fees.