THE PROFESSIONAL MODEL ERA

Historians call the period from 1920 to 1970 the Professional Model Era. Reformers sought to rid government of undesirable political influences and create what they deemed professional police departments. Technology, according to one scholar of the era, “helped emphasize discipline, equal enforcement of the law, and centralized decision making,” hallmarks of the Professional Model of policing.

August Vollmer, considered the foremost champion of the Professional Model, was also a champion of police technology. Vollmer pioneered the use of the polygraph and fingerprint and handwriting classification systems. The crime laboratory he started in the Berkeley, California, Police Department was the model and training ground for the nation. In 1932, the FBI inaugurated its own laboratory which eventually became recognized as the most comprehensive and technologically advanced forensic laboratory in the world. The 1930s saw the widespread police adoption of the automobile and the introduction of two-way radios.

TECHNOLOGY AND THE NATIONALIZATION OF CRIME

There were other technological innovations reaching into the next two decades. For example, radar was introduced to traffic law enforcement in the late 1940s. In the 1960s — 120 years after the inception of the modern era of policing — the federal government for the first time launched a concerted effort to foster the development and use of new technologies for the police. That effort had its roots in the 1964 presidential campaign when Republican candidate Barry Goldwater made crime a national political issue for the first time. Goldwater lost the election to incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson, but Johnson took two steps to assuage the nation’s concerns about street disorders and crime rates, which had doubled between 1940 and 1965. First, he appointed the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice to examine the problem. In 1967, the Crime Commission produced a 308-page report that offered more than 200 recommendations, 11 dealing with police technology.

Johnson’s other step was to begin the flow, a trickle at first, of what eventually became billions of dollars in direct and indirect assistance to local and state law enforcement. Never before had the federal government taken on the job of providing massive assistance to state and local criminal justice agencies. The federal government became committed to addressing the problem of crime in America’s streets and neighborhoods. Hundreds of millions of dollars went to fostering police use of existing and new technologies.

CRIME COMMISSION FINDINGS

The President’s Crime Commission found that the nation’s criminal justice system suffered from a significant science and technology gap. The commission reported: The scientific and technological revolution that has so radically changed most of American society during the past few decades has had surprisingly little impact on the criminal justice system.

Of the police specifically, the commission observed:

The police, with crime laboratories and radio networks, made early use of technology, but most police departments could have been equipped 30 or 40 years ago as well as they are today.

and:

Of all criminal justice agencies, the police traditionally have had the closest ties to science and technology, but they have called on scientific resources primarily to help in the solution of specific serious crimes, rather than for assistance in solving general problems of policing. Overall, the commission’s science and technology task force reported that many technological devices existed, either in prototype or on the market to help criminal justice agencies. Others deserved basic development and warranted further exploration. "But for many reasons, even available devices have only slowly been incorporated into criminal justice operations," the task force said in a statement that still has relevance today. "Procurement funds have been scarce, industry has only limited incentive to conduct basic development for an uncertain and fragmented market, and criminal justice agencies have very few technically trained people on their staffs."

Perhaps the most far-reaching recommendations dealt with computerization and what came to be known as 911.

THE ADVENT AND LESSONS OF 911

The commission called for establishment of a single telephone number, eventually available nationwide, that Americans could use to call the police. At first, AT&T personnel balked. They cited several reasons including problems involving boundaries of dialing areas and police jurisdictions, according to Dr. Alfred Blumstein, who headed the commission’s science and technology task force. But then there was a change of heart, Blumstein said. AT&T decided to launch 911 as the single police and fire emergency telephone number, thus getting rid of dialing zero, the costly and personnel-intensive procedure that was then in use for summoning emergency help. "They were peddling a new product which was 911 and it was going to be automated and they were clearly ahead," Blumstein said.

AT&T announced creation of 911 in January 1968. Within a few years, 911 systems were established in many urban areas. Within ten years, police chiefs of large departments were beginning to complain that ever-increasing 911-generated calls for service were starting to distort and even overwhelm the balanced deployment of police resources. In a study of U.S. policing in the mid-1980s, two scholars wrote, "In many cities the 911 system with its promise of emergency response has become a tyrannical burden." Nevertheless, by the mid-1990s, police departments employing 95 percent of the nation’s police officers had 911 systems. The 911 experience incorporates two recurring themes in the history of police technology. The first is that when private industry can forecast an assured profit, it quickly provides the police with a technology created or adapted to their needs. The dilemma is that there are relatively few instances where industry can anticipate a fairly immediate and steady profit stream by providing a new technology to the police.

The second theme is, as in other areas of life, new technologies for the police can bring new problems. The rules of unintended consequences apply. The 911 system has become essential to summon emergency police, fire, and medical services. It also created new headaches for many administrators of large urban police departments.

Five of the commission's formal recommendations in the area of police technology dealt in one way or another with police radio communications. (See Appendix Four [of the Commission's report] for a complete list of recommendations.) Others addressed such matters as fingerprints, manpower allocation, police callboxes, and comparative studies of crimes, arrests, and field investigations. But what have turned out to be the most far-reaching recommendations dealt with what came to be known as 911 and computerization.

THE RAPID ADVENT AND LESSONS OF 911

The commission called for establishment of a single telephone number, eventually available nationwide, that Americans could use to call the police. In the commission’s words:

Wherever practical, a single police telephone number should be established, at least within a metropolitan area and eventually over the entire United States, comparable to the telephone company’s long-distance number.

At first, personnel of the subsidiary of AT&T with which commission officials conferred balked, recalled Dr. Alfred Blumstein who was executive director of the commission’s Science and Technology Task Force (interview). (AT&T at the time held a monopoly position in the nation’s telephone business.) They cited several reasons, including problems involving boundaries of dialing areas and police jurisdictions and, possibly, similar requests for a single nationwide telephone number from big commercial clients, according to Blumstein who is a professor in the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie-Mellon University. But then there was a change of heart. AT&T decided to launch 911 as the single police and fire emergency telephone number. "It was clear that they would be delighted to get rid of 0," which then was the emergency number and a relatively costly, personnel-intensive operation, Blumstein said. "They were peddling a new product which was 911 and it was going to be automated and they were clearly ahead." AT&T decided to do 911 "as a commercial venture."

AT&T announced creation of 911 in January 1968. Within a relatively few years, 911 systems were established in many urban areas. Within ten years, police chiefs of large departments were beginning to complain that ever-increasing 911-generated calls for service were starting to distort and even overwhelm the balanced deployment of police resources. “What patrol officers do in a modern police department is almost wholly determined by incoming calls for service (Sparrow, Moore and Kennedy, 1990).” The New York Times came to editorialize about what it called the tyranny of 911. In a study of U.S. policing in the mid-1980s, two scholars wrote: In many cities the 911 system with its promise of emergency response has become a tyrannical burden. Departments know that if they fail to respond speedily to every call, no matter how trivial, the public will become angry and complain to police, politicians, and the media. The pressure for 911 calls is often so great that few officers are available for proactive community involvement. Moreover, patrol personnel can exhaust them-selves speeding from one call to another, using up the time they needed for understanding the human situations into which they are injected (Skolnick and Bayley, 1986). Whatever the new problems 911 caused, “centralized call collection using three-digit phone numbers and centralized integrated dispatching of police, fire, and medical services for large metropolitan areas” are cited as two of the relevant police technolo-gies of the 1970s (Manning, 1992). “Around 1980, some departments, among them Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida, and Wichita, Kansas, developed the capacity to display on a screen the address of the phone from which a caller was calling,” Peter Manning reported. This capacity was termed an “enhanced 911” system. “An enhanced system will allow checks of address and simplified data gathered from distressed callers who are often confused or anxious.”

The 911 experience is evidence of two recurring themes: that if private industry can forecast an assured profit, it is quick to provide the police with a technology created or adapted to their needs. The second is that new technologies can also bring with them new problems.

A data analysis that became available in 1996 shows the remarkable growth of both basic and enhanced 911 systems. The analysis, published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), was of a wide range of data collected in 1993 through its Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) program. The LEMAS survey is a nationally representative sample of more than 17,000 state and local law enforcement agencies. “The 1992 LEMAS survey questionnaire was mailed to all 854 state and local law enforcement agencies with 100 or more sworn officers and a repre-sentative sample of 2,416 agencies employing fewer than 100 officers,” BJS said. The response rate was 92.6 percent. About the 911 system, the BJS analysis reported: In 1993 about two-thirds of all local police departments participated in an emergency telephone system whereby one of their units could be dispatched in a response to a citizen call to 911 or its equivalent. This was a significant increase from 1990 when about half of all departments had a 911 system, and twice the proportion of agencies reporting 911 participation in 1987. Local police departments with a 911 system employed 89 percent of all officers in 1993, compared with 65 percent in 1990.

A majority of the local police departments in each population category were participating in a 911 system in 1993, ranging from 100 percent of those serving 250,000 to 499,999 residents to 59 percent of those serving a population of under 2,500. In contrast to 1990, a majority of departments with a 911 system in 1993 reported their system was an enhanced system, capable of pinpointing the location of the caller automatically. In 1993, enhanced 911 systems were operating in 41 percent of all local police departments, while 27 percent reported they had a basic 911 system. In 1990, 18 percent had an enhanced system and 30 percent a basic system.\

Increases in the use of 911 were seen in all population categories from 1990 to 1993, and a majority of the departments serving a population of 10,000 or more had an enhanced system in 1993. This included 80 percent of those serving a population of 250,000 or more (compared to 72 percent in 1990), 77 percent of those serving a popu-lation of 50,000 to 249,999 (54 percent in 1990), and 60 percent of those serving a population of 10,000 to 49,999 (34 percent in 1990). Among departments serving a population under 100,000, the percentage with enhanced 911 tripled from 11 percent in 1990 to 34 percent in 1993 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1993).

The 911 experience incorporates two themes that recur in the history of police technology. The first is that if private industry can forecast an assured profit, it is quick to provide the police with a technology created or adapted to their needs. The dilemma is that there are relatively few instances where industry can anticipate a fairly immediate and steady profit stream by providing a new technology to the police. The 911 system was able to overcome police agency jurisdictional boundaries and provide a potentially universal service endorsed by a high-powered, presidential commission. It may have helped that AT&T was a monopoly at the time 911 was inaugurated. Typically, industry must try to sell its technologies one agency at a time to the nation’s 17,000 police departments. In this fragmented marketplace, no sales are assured, and there are seldom, if ever, high-powered imprimaturs of the kind the Crime Commis-sion could bestow.

The second theme is that, as in other areas of life, new technologies for the police can bring new problems with them. Rules of unintended consequences apply. The 911 system has become essential to summon emergency police, fire, and medical services. It also has created new headaches for many administrators of large urban police departments.

One of the biggest changes in communications has been the move, noted in Part One, to 911 dispatching. As it was originally envisioned, 911 was to be the nationwide emergency number, a system in which telephones were hooked to computers. When the phone rang, the computer checked its database to find the number and display it on the computer screen. The system became “enhanced” (E911) when the computer got smarter, showing the telephone number, address, and in some cases, the name of the person who owned the number. Some systems also showed the fire department or ambulance service responsible for handling emergencies in the caller’s area. If the call did not go directly to a law enforcement agency but came into a public safety answering point, or PSAP, the call-taker simply pushed a button on the console to transfer the call to the appropriate agency. The additional information on the screen transferred with the call.

The idea of a nationwide emergency number was popular with citizens and lawmak-ers, but it became the local political football even after its implementation was mandated by legislation. Some agencies had to fight the telephone company for access to numbers and addresses, a tug-of-war that brought privacy issues into play. Others could not afford to maintain the required database and were happy to let the telephone company handle it. Decisions had to be made about whether to use a PSAP to route calls, or whether each call should go directly to the appropriate agency. That was only the beginning. Each tele-phone number in the system had to be assigned to a particular law enforcement agency, ambulance service and fire department. Funding had to be secured, hardware purchased, consultants consulted. It was a process that took anywhere from two to five years.

As useful as 911 now is to citizens, in some ways it has become the tail that wags the dog. There are those who criticize the 911 system because it drives the way the department does business, not the other way around. Officers, particularly those in large metropolitan agencies, complain that they are so busy responding to calls for service, they cannot spend time with the people of the community, which means community policing programs may take a back seat to handling emergencies. Proponents of 911 tell a different story, saying that with enhanced 911 and the addition of computer-aided dispatching (CAD) the opportunities to implement community policing programs are improved.

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