Between 1993 and 1997, the Lowell Police Department (LPD) transformed itself from a hierarchically managed, "professional model" department, focused on emergency calls and formalistic relations with the public to a community-focused department with a team-based management style that relied on neighborhood-oriented problem solving and open dialogue with the public.

Brief Stats: 240,856 residents Police department manpower: 309 COPS Grants: COPS Universal Hiring, COPS MORE, COPS AHEAD, Domestic Violence.

Policing Focus

The team approach. With the opening of a new police substation in Centerville, a crime-ridden area cut off from the rest of Lowell by the Merrimack River, LPD officially began its new Community Policing Program. LPD tasked its officers to identify community problems and fix them. Their success gave LPD the impetus to reorganize the department into three sectors based on geographic lines, to decentralize command authority by developing a team approach to policing, and to encourage sworn officers to work more closely with community groups.

Community relations and training. LPD promotes its community policing strategy through stronger ties with local residents, organized community and business groups, as well as outreach efforts to youths. The department has institutionalized community input through its civilian community liaison who keeps a calendar of citizen meetings and attends them with other sworn officers. The department has assigned community policing coordinators to oversee problem-solving training programs for officers and has expanded community policing courses at its police academy.

Help from COPS. LPD received COPS AHEAD and COPS Universal Hiring grants to hire 25 additional officers. COPS MORE grants helped the department decentralize its Management Information Systems division by providing funds to outfit its precincts with up-to-date computer hardware and software, put in e-mail telephone lines, and install a local area network connected to a central server. On the management side, a COPS MORE grant provided the money to hire a civilian crime analyst. A $160,000 COPS Domestic Violence grant allowed LPD to hire three more investigators and a part-time community outreach coordinator for one of its new community policing units.

For more information, click on the NATIONAL COPS EVALUATION-ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE CASE STUDY: Lowell, Massachusetts, by David Thacher, which describes the changes in Lowell's police department (LPD) in three sections:

1. The LPD of the 1980s and early 1990s.
2. Why and how the LPD changed; the effect of leadership, COPS grants, and other influences; and the way in which the existing organizational structure and culture impeded or accelerated change.
3. How the department operates today.