
Police box: policing a walkable city - oftenwrong
http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2016/04/police-box-policing-walkable-city.html
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sandworm101
Borderline. Police boxes have their downsides. The OP missed one important
distinction between Japanese and North American police architecture: Guns. A
japanese police officer may feel comfortable sitting at a fixed point,
brightly lit, surrounded by darkness. A north american or even a UK officer
will not... and probably should not. That's why those police buildings don't
have big windows.

(Note the "best" example is actually Canadian, with a very different gun
culture than the US. And the worst is in a rural part of the US where guns are
the norm.)

Also, privacy. Japanese police do not interview people in the same manner or
with the same regularity as north american police. North American police
buildings need to be able to take people inside them without worry of someone
snapping pictures from a car outside. They need a closed environment to
interview suspects, witnesses, and any number of other people outside of
public eye. That extends to police vehicles, which are regularly used to move
people to places for interviews away from prying eyes. This is not as common
in Japan.

Thirdly, density. North American policing involves a relatively few officers
spread over a much greater area. Even our dense urban cores are more spread
out than anything in Tokyo. Tying an officer to a fixed point severely limit's
their area of operation. And an empty police box gives the impression of an
absent force. North American deterrence relies on the concept that police
'might' be watching. Any clear indication that they are or aren't at a given
time, whether or not the police box is empty, works against that deterrent.

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ricardobeat
Why does all of that activity have to happen "away from prying eyes"?

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sandworm101
Because not everyone wants the entire neighborhood to see that they are
meeting with a police officer, especially if you are reporting a crime by
someone still walking around that neighborhood. Nor do police want to
embarrass people. So it is normal to interview someone in a private place,
without windows.

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percept
If I'm remembering correctly, an ex-Seattle police chief wrote in his book
that vehicle-based policing is at least partly (if not more so) driven by
"consumer" demand, i.e., people want a response to their calls _now_.

NYPD did something almost like this with:

[http://fort-greene.thelocal.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/nypd-skyw...](http://fort-
greene.thelocal.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/nypd-skywatch-tower-comes-to-clinton-
hill/)

But it received a negative response from several directions.

~~~
sandworm101
It was also a reaction to corruption amongst officers walking a fixed beat.
Community policing is all well and good, under you realize that having only a
handful of officers dedicated to a small area is a breading ground for
corruption and cover-up. Using vehicles means that stations can be larger,
more centralized/supervised, with officers rotated amongst different areas.
But I doubt any former officer writing a book would have mentioned such
things.

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r00fus
Why would localization have a big impact? In this day and age, if there's
corruption to be contended with, it'll be with large monied interests that
often span localities.

Honestly, the people being policed simply don't have input into oversight.
That's the root cause of corruption.

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sandworm101
If you read police/legal history, the issue is with the very very small beats.
When there is only one officer assigned to a particular street, what do
residents do when that officer is the problem? One early answer was to give
them mechanical watches and regiment exactly when and where they were to stand
during the beat. But that too led to problems as officers prioritized the
schedule over actual policing. It's a very interesting history whereby the
trust pendulum has swung back and forth many times.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_%28police%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_%28police%29)

~~~
gozur88
Yeah. Once you have small groups of officers in the same area for a length of
time you start getting pressure on local businesses to contribute to the
"widows and orphans" fund.

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r00fus
I get that today via mailers. Once we accidentally committed to a donation
(did not actually donate), now they are ceaseless in their fundraising
efforts.

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softgrow
Japanese police also stand outside their police box or station with a big
stick doing "ritsuban" i.e.
[http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/20/reference/police...](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/20/reference/police-
who-stand-with-big-sticks) which is I suppose the opposite of a motorised
patrol where you stand still and the community moves around you whilst you
project "the police are watching you". This for me now makes sense of the same
practice at airports where there is a guy on a platform with a big stick, just
being there, a bit intimidating.

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Animats
San Francisco tried building some koban in the 1980s. One was at 16th and
Mission, and the other was on Post St. in Japantown.[1] There was one in
Chinatown, and one at the Powell/Market St. cable car turntable. Seldom were
there cops in them. They just were not much more useful than cops walking
around.

Larger storefront police substations have a better track record, but they're
not common. They're expensive to staff. But that's not the problem. Here's
what Japan's police agency thinks of their own police box system:[2]

 _Good security conditions are a fundamental prerequisite for the system.
Although police boxes are institutions designed to secure public safety, they
can only be successful in areas that are already safe. For example, in an area
where terrorist attacks frequently occur, police boxes could become easy
targets. It is still necessary for officers to make a lot of effort in order
to defend a police box against less serious crimes such as vandalism and other
attacks. A small number of officers are deployed to a large number of places
under the system. Therefore, the police box system can be successful under
highly secure conditions such as what Japan has._

 _Japan’s good security conditions have been underpinned by the police box
system, and also by non-police factors such as sea-bound geographical
conditions, a highly homogeneous society, group conscious culture, economic
and industrial development, and strict weapons ownership control. In other
words, the police box system has been able to contribute to the safety of
Japan because it already had favorable conditions for maintaining public
security._

That's why it wouldn't work in the US.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/16/us/latest-japanese-
import-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/16/us/latest-japanese-import-goes-
on-patrol.html) [2]
[https://www.npa.go.jp/english/seisaku1/JapaneseCommunityPoli...](https://www.npa.go.jp/english/seisaku1/JapaneseCommunityPolice.pdf)

