The Community Outreach Program - Federal Bureau of Investigation - Tutorial

FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin,The, Sept, 2000 by William Holley, Maria Fazalare

Putting a Face on Law Enforcement

Law enforcement agencies often suffer from image problems. At worst, the public views them as authoritarian and paramilitaristic, quick to use force, and slow to admit mistakes. At best, citizens do not really know their local law enforcement officers. Fortunately, law enforcement agencies can do something to change the public's perception of them while fighting crime through community partnerships.

For the first six decades of its history, the FBI maintained a low organizational profile. The situation began to change throughout the 1990s, and today's FBI believes that a positive relationship between a community and its law enforcement officers can fight crime as well as any multiagency task force. As a result, employees from all 56 FBI field offices are actively participating in local events.

For example, the Community Outreach Program (COP) has become one of the FBI's most successful community relations efforts. COP sends FBI employees into neighborhoods and schools to work with children as teachers, coaches, and mentors; to represent the Bureau on public occasions; and to help dispel whatever stereotypes may exist about the FBI as an aloof, secretive organization staffed with shadowy, undercover operatives.

BACKGROUND

The FBI's Community Outreach Program began in 1990 as a pilot program in a sixth grade classroom located in a high-crime area of the District of Columbia and a youth sports team in Alexandria, Virginia. The year before, the Alexandria neighborhood had experienced a drug bust that had gone wrong, ending in a shootout between the police and the drug suspects that left two residents dead. Although not involved in the shootout, the FBI had sent a special weapons and tactics team to the site. That incident fueled anger and resentment in the community toward law enforcement in general and the FBI in particular. This neighborhood would provide a real test of any public relations initiative.

FBI staff developed a 34-segment lesson plan that focused on helping children develop strong citizenship skills. Then, FBI volunteers went into the school and began teaching thirty 11- and 12-year-old youngsters how to become junior special agents. Other FBI volunteers organized neighborhood basketball and softball teams and served as coaches. The success of this initial COP program became clear when the following spring, the parents of the children on the softball teams held an end-of-season picnic and invited the FBI volunteers as honored guests. Today, the program operates in 165 schools and has reached more than 750,000 students. In various adaptations, COP functions in every FBI field office, and it can work virtually anywhere for any law enforcement organization.

MODEL COP

Along with FBI field offices, several divisions from FBI headquarters conduct COP activities in the Washington, DC area. Also, the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division in Clarksburg, West Virginia, participates in COP. In July 1995, that division started the Partner in Education Program, initially with the local high school, then with the elementary school, and later a middle school. Another high school entered the partnership in September 1998. CJIS Division staff and volunteers maintain continuing involvement with the four Partner in Education schools, offering a wide range of educational programs, providing guest speakers, and attending special events at the schools. Students from the partnership schools are always on hand at COP events. They go to the CJIS complex to serve as ushers, lead the Pledge of Allegiance, and shake hands with such special guests as FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno. On a regular basis, they accompany CJIS Division staff to community events to help promote the anticrime, antiviolence, antidrug message.

While the Partner in Education concept serves as the foundation of the CJIS Division's COP, the program is continually expanding. Since its inception in 1995, COP has extended its coverage from a single county to an eight-county radius. Employees have developed a community service curriculum and create new programs as community organizations express a need for them. Currently, two full-time staff members organize and manage the COP calendar. The extent and scope of the program clearly demonstrate the support the CJIS Division gives the program.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CJIS COP

The Community Fingerprinting Program

Because the CJIS Division serves as the central fingerprint repository for American law enforcement, the division's COP includes a community fingerprinting program for children throughout north central West Virginia. Student volunteers from local high schools come to the complex to receive training and practice on the inkless fingerprint system. Fingerprinting experts from the CJIS Division's Identification and Investigative Services Section provide 5 hours of training to each school team. Then the young technicians, accompanied by COP staff, travel to schools, day-care centers, shopping malls, and area fairs and festivals to fingerprint children and present the prints to their parents for safekeeping in the event of a future emergency. To date, the high school technicians have rolled the prints of more than 13,000 area youngsters.