Examining the Impact of Community Policing

(1/1/2011 - 12/30/2011)

The Chicago Alliance for Neighborhood Safety (CANS) was involved in creating Chicago’s community policing program more than ten years ago.  For more context of CANS, refer to this article.  While the functions of community policing were taken over by the Police Department itself (and more recently in 2010 given back to local community volunteers), CANS had a significant impact on the career trajectories of staff, organizers, board members, and researchers as well as on the character of community policing itself.  

This pilot oral history project examined both these impacts and how a community organization “lives on” in the form of how it shaped both public policy and individual activists’ careers.  In addition to being of specific interest to those seeking to understand community safety, the project also hopes to establish a model for understanding a community-based organization’s impact years after the actual work took place.

This project produced an initial analysis of the impact of CANS along with digital oral histories which will be made available on-line.  

Research Team:

• P. Nyden, CURL

• R. Miller, CURL

• Warren Friedman, Former Executive Director, CANS

• Maria Zavala, former CANS staff member

Community Partner:

• Chicago Alliance for Neighborhood Safety (CANS)