Operation Cul De Sac Case Study

If a random survey was taken about how much people trust their community law enforcement, there would be very mixed opinions. Some would say they are doing a great job and others that might be living in a not so nice neighborhood would say that they aren’t doing a very good job. It all just depends on what side of the street someone is on. Police use the community and their interactions with them to aid them in fighting crimes but this wasn’t always the case, especially in the most crime ridden neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Police Department took to one of the most dangerous neighborhoods to reduce crime rates and strengthen relationships with community members. The police did this through a program called operation cul de sac. Operation cul de sac decreased crime rates in a neighborhood where the rates were record highs by focusing on community based policing and building relationships with members of the community. Prior to this program being set up, neighborhoods in Los Angeles were falling to gang violence which resulted in a lot of drive by shootings and killings on the streets. Before the program started, in 1988 there were 34 drive by shootings and …show more content…
Researchers picked out specific neighborhoods that had the highest gang violence in Los Angeles. What the program entailed was setting up barriers at the end of the streets in a neighborhood in Los Angeles that had one of the highest drive by shooting rates. The second portion of this policy was to build relationships among police and community members. Ways that they did this was by doing more foot patrol in the area. While police officers were out on patrol, they would talk to community members and reach out to them and show them that they were there to help and not hurt anyone. Most of the crimes that were happening in the area prior to the program were gang related