Building community-based policing, or performative public relations?

National Night Out is a community policing awareness-raising event in the United States, held the first Tuesday of every August.  New Rochelle’s 2024 National Night Out will be held on Tuesday, August 6th, from 5 pm to 8 pm in front of police headquarters at 475 North Avenue.

Originally conceived as an opportunity to build community-based policing, National Night Out has devolved, at least in New Rochelle, into an elaborate block party designed to improve the Police Department’s public image, disconnected from any work to develop community policing.  

According to its founder, Matt Peskin, then a volunteer for the Lower Merion Community Watch program in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 

“National Night Out was introduced in August of 1984 through an already established network of law enforcement agencies, neighborhood watch groups, civic groups, state and regional crime prevention associations and volunteers across the nation. …. National Night Out grew to become a celebration beyond just front porch vigils and symbolic efforts amongst neighbors to send a message of neighborhood camaraderie. Neighborhoods across the nation began to host block parties, festivals, parades, cookouts and various other community events with safety demonstrations, seminars, youth events, visits from emergency personnel, exhibits and more.”

With funding from the US Department of Justice, the event is sponsored by the National Association of Town Watch (NATW), a nationwide organization dedicated to the development, maintenance and protection of community-based law enforcement.  The language used to promote and encourage participation is based around the community “taking back their neighborhood.”  

An article published by the Department of Justice in 2000 said that “…National Night Out has become an occasion symbolizing what can happen when citizens take responsibility for the well-being of their neighborhoods instead of looking entirely to outside authorities to enforce public safety. It creates situations for citizens and police to forge partnerships that help protect communities.”

In 1994, NATW introduced “Project 365”, described in a 1999 Department of Justice publication as …a targeting component of the National Night Out program that helps communities identify specific problem areas and then work to resolve these problems over the next 365 days. The project begins on the annual National Night Out celebration day (the first Tuesday in August) and ends 365 days later….Activity highlights include the cleanup of local parks, the removal and prevention of graffiti, the establishment of domestic violence and homeless prevention initiatives, and an increase in the number of Neighborhood Watch groups and in crime prevention programming in multifamily housing areas.”

Thirty years later, the thoughtful, year-long, community involved/directed plans and programs to help prevent crime are nowhere to be found in New Rochelle’s National Night Out annual events.  This well-funded and well-attended event has been reduced to an exercise in performative community outreach, seeking to polish the image of the NRPD amid continuing controversy over local police violence and the Department’s resistance to community demands for transparency and accountability. 

As the nation grapples with the police killing of Sonya Massey, the New Rochelle community continues to mourn the police killing of native son Jarrel Garris, and our city is plagued with numerous unsolved killings (including Juan Mendoza-Torres in 2015, Manuel Ayala in 2016, Hector Morales in 2017, and a young man from Brooklyn in 2021), many residents wonder what could have been if community-led policing had been embraced rather than neutered.  

The recent investigation and suspension of Lt. Sean Kane for the deliberate mishandling of evidence presents New Rochelle with a new opportunity to change the culture of the NRPD and end decades of lip-service as it relates to much-needed police reform. 

At a time when nationally the number of civilians killed at the hands of police continues to rise, and while crime is on the decline, advocates for police reform are saying now would be the time to embrace true community-led policing in New Rochelle.  The adoption of a strong Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) by City Council would be an important first step.  To read more about the current proposal for a New Rochelle CCRB, click here.