By Jennifer Potash
The Princeton Packet
Friday, July 27, 2001

   Fifteen years ago, local newspapers reported many minority residents in Princeton distrusted the Princeton Borough Police Department.
   But with changes in the composition of the department and new approaches to policing the community, the department is working to restore that trust, new Police Chief Charles Davall said last week.
   "Those headlines served as a kick to get us to change," Chief Davall said. "The people were saying to us, 'We don't know you. You never get out of the car. You don't wave to us.'"
   The chief and newly named Capt. Anthony Federico met July 18 with the Princeton Human Services Commission.
   The commission praised the department for reaching out, and several members noted that the number of civil-rights complaints to the commission have dropped in recent years.
   "I served on the Civil Rights Commission 10 years ago and the decline is really amazing," said Pam Hersh.
   The Human Services Commission was formed in 1998 through the consolidation of the joint commissions on aging, civil rights and the local assistance boards.
   The Police Department has placed an emphasis on diversity in its hiring practices. The last class of officers hired in the borough included an Hispanic male, a black male and two females, Chief Davall said.
   "I think a community wants to be policed by a department which looks like them and not just a lot of white males with buzz cuts," the chief said.
   He added that the opportunity for the department to listen to and learn from the experiences of officers of different racial and ethnic backgrounds is "invaluable."
   And the establishing of a community policing unit, called the Safe Neighborhoods Unit, has been expanded departmentwide, the chief said.
   The next step will be for the beat officers to go door-to-door in their assigned areas to meet residents and business owners and listen to their concerns, he said.
   "We want to know from the community how they want to be policed so we can best deploy our resources," he said.
   Chief Davall and Capt. Federico said they agree it is important that the department have a strong internal-affairs officer. Capt. Federico serves in that role.
   "Our people know it is important to us to hold ourselves accountable," Chief Davall said.
   The department has always been concerned about racial profiling — a practice in which law-enforcement officers stop individuals on the basis of race — and established preventive measures, Capt. Federico said.
   More importantly, every officer understands it is the department's philosophy to "treat everyone with respect," he added.
   Patrol cars have mobile-data terminals which allow officers to check the record of a driver from the police vehicle. The department does random checks of officers to ensure individuals of a certain race or from a particular street or municipality are not being stopped more than the general population, Capt. Federico said.
   "It's paid off," he said.
   Andree Marks, a commission member who served on a youth subcommittee, said in meeting recently with teen-agers from Princeton High School as well as private schools, the students expressed concern about the police.
   Chief Davall said it was the first he had heard of the complaints and he would participate in a forum with the teen-agers to discuss the complaints.

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