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Berkeley California. A city of enlightenment as a police department that often is served as a textbook model for police academies throughout the world. Yet the pressures of daily life that seemed to be making ours an increasingly lawless society are operating in Berkeley as they are in

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nearly every other american city. The former police chief of Berkeley, August Balmer said in 1922 that crime is not a police problem, it is a home and school problem, a community problem. 45 years later, the president's Crime Commission said essentially the same thing. This is assignment

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for the award winning report to the west produced in the community interest by the documentary department of K R. O N T. V. Tonight. Our delinquent society, the role of a police officer in a time of remote. The Berkeley Police Department has had an impact far

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beyond its size. It has fewer than 200 men. That compares with 28,000 for New York, 50 600 for Los Angeles, 900 for Oakland. Officer Roy Nedra was 25. A native of Los Angeles where his mother was a policewoman. He graduated from the University of California in

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Berkeley. From childhood he learned that police work is public service and he never wanted any other career. The Berkeley police were the first to recruit college men into the department. As early as 1916, they hired a full time criminologist. The department has never been afraid to

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innovate to pioneer. This is worth noting since police departments are by nature one of the most conservative segments of our society. KR wins cameras recently spent a week on patrol in Berkeley with officer Negro. The week's routine was much like one that might be found by

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a police officer in any Bay Area community. Not every call comes over the police radio. A robbery victim may hail a cruising patrol car with the first report of a crime. In this case, a gas station attendant reported that six youngsters fled from a stolen car

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after it bumped a traffic signal pillar. In this case, it was another hot call, so to speak because we have the responsible leaving the car and running down the street. So we would have two roles there. Most of our hot cars are recovered abandoned without anyone

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in them. And in that case there's only the processing role of notifying the owner and processing the car for physical evidence. The remedies are, these steps are very simple and they've been shouted to the public from every media for as long as I can recall. The

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only problem is getting people to do them and people to listen to us, your car. It's very simple. Park it in a lighted area if you can and wherever you park it, lock it, lock the ignition and lock the doors, leave attractive packages or anything of

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that might attract a thief out of sight under the seat or in the trunk of the car. So you won't attract him to breaking into your car. Many of the cars that we, we recover that are stolen quite frequently to find that they have not been

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reported stolen. Uh, this because the responsible persons have taken it within the last hour or two and the victim hasn't even noticed it missing. So we find quite frequently that we're calling the victim up in notifying him that his car has been stolen. Well, Berkeley is

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becoming more urban. The old brown shingled houses that used to be a fixture are giving way to the motel type apartment houses. As the area near the campus becomes more congested, everyone tends to move more often. Feelings of neighborliness are harder to sustain. The quality of

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life tends to diminish in cities with a rise in crime. The rise in congestion, traffic tie ups smog, even though some of the residential areas of Berkeley are among the most attractive of any city or suburb in California. We have a free flowing element that comes

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to the south campus area for a hippie scene or the hippie life. We also have a very high crime rate in this area. Our burglaries and auto burglaries. Auto theft, motorcycle theft, robbery is higher in this area of town than any of the other areas of

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town. Many of the armed robberies seem to stem out of illegal activity, A narcotics transaction that did not go as per scheduled. We've had several held up hold ups with people being held up for their narcotics or for the cash they were carrying that they were

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going to buy narcotics with every Berkeley police officer carries a street map of the city in his head. When called to another neighborhood, he can respond immediately. Haste is necessary where there is a potential of violence. We never send one man on any domestic quarrel or

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any domestic situation. If there's weapons involved, your first consideration is trying to get the man or the weapon away from him. But we have no set plan that covers situations. You sort of play it by ear and by your past experience and hope for the best.

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But on this one that we went last week, there was some thought as to bringing a shotgun down to the scene waiting for the shotgun and decision was reached that we didn't have the luxury of time in that case that we had to move on it

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right away and we move without a shotgun. In this potentially dangerous situation, the man was disarmed but he was not arrested because no crime had been committed. There are times when the officer on patrol can drive around his beat for long periods without hearing a call

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on the police radio or seeing anything suspicious happening on the street. I don't have the statistics on it. But certain days of the week, certain times of the day and even the weather conditions have a marked effect on crime. We find more cases reported or committed

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on the weekend. When criminal cases. Then during the rest of the week we have more activity at night generally with regard to hot criminal calls in the daytime. But there is always a backlog of cases in an officer's file that he can work on if his

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radio was silent for a long period and if his beat is a residential one, he may engage in an exercise of crime prevention, especially burglary prevention, he makes periodic checks of the homes of vacationing families. Our two major concerns now, residential burglaries and auto theft. The

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things that you can do as a citizen that prevent these type crimes are the things that have been hammered and hammered away by police jurisdictions time and time again over the years for the house, just a simple factor of shutting windows, locking them shutting and locking

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the doors will to tour many, many burglars because there are burglars who work strictly on 18 entry into houses by non forceful means. There's so many places where the windows or doors not secure that if they come across one that is secure, they'll just move on

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to the next house. There's nothing in the world that will prevent a burglar from breaking into your house or your car if he really wants in. But so many of our auto thefts and burglaries are committed by amateurs and juveniles that a few basic steps might

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prevent many. Many of these banks, liquor stores, gas stations are favorite targets of armed robbers, policemen can't post a watch on every business establishment, but they do spot check them, especially banks. Every day in Berkeley, we have a policy of having a uniform beat officer check

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the banks from time to time and go into the banks say hello to the employees and do this during normal banking operations. But not on any schedule. We'll try not to watch straight in from flat. We'll try and get a pretty good look inside of what's

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going on in the bank before we actually come in the door. But that's like so many other police situations. You just can't predict what you're gonna do. What can be done. At least one police car is dispatched to every fire in Berkeley. The beat officer responsibility

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is to protect the fire apparatus whenever they yeah, go out on a call. We have a second responsibility to supervise and redirect any traffic congestion or traffic problem that might be caused by the fire apparatus being spread out of the street. Yeah, Those are normally are

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two functions. We also will provide ambulance service that there's someone injured The last four or five years demonstrations on war and peace. Free speech racial issues and other problems have increased police duties. A recent demonstration was prompted by the circumstances of the arrest of black panther

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party leader bobby seale, we are not and cannot become involved in the a real imagined or mythical causes that spring these demonstrations. Uh Our only function are only role uh, is and should be just to protect people, protect property and forced the law and preserve the

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peace. However, the police role in demonstrations is a highly sensitive one in which a single insensitive action or misunderstanding can escalate an orderly meeting into a dangerous inflammatory situation. There are conditions. Police must live within every american city for the foreseeable future. All of us got

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it down. Big Child, an abandoned auto at Carleton and Fulton Street. A Patrolman's day starts with a meeting in the squad room. The men going on patrol, a brief for the sergeant on everything that's happened during the 16 hours. They've been off shift a food store

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on university reported, found the child W. F. J. 1 to 2 years old, returned to the mother not too long ago. Berkeley was so quiet that even traffic mishaps appeared on the bulletin. Not anymore. Now the police communication center is the hub of an ever spiraling

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rate of activity. Black population has increased, but the crime rate has increased even more. In the center, phone calls are received and evaluated in patrol cars are dispatched. Berkeley is divided into quadrants with University Avenue and Grove Street uses the lines of demarcation. These quadrants are

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further broken down into beats, each covered by a man in the patrol car check 35. Will you take quadrant four on the 2, 11, 35 copies of the description. Both persons male negro, 20 years five ft tall, both apparently wearing black jackets. One of them armed

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with a gun. And most armed robbery situations. You're looking for anything that is unusual in this case. We had a description of the two responsible persons, naturally we'd be looking for them. It would also be looking for any cars moving out of the area in a

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fast manner. Uh huh. Any groupings of people, anything looks down next looks are natural. There have been occasions were I've got to do a robbery and I didn't see the suspect but I saw groups of people standing around pointing down the street and I went over

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and talked to them and it turned out that the suspect had knocked over several citizens without running and they were able to provide a very good description in a direct line of flight that we would never attempt to stop an armed robbery suspect or any other

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violent suspect without notifying the desk. The desk is responsible for your safety and if they don't know where you're at they can't adequately protect you with the needed cover cars or needed assistance. Okay. Yeah. At the getaway car not overturned. It may have taken much more

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time to solve this armed robbery but the gun and the cash drawer from the grocery were recovered and search for fingerprints and witnesses came forward to identify the suspect as always the final disposition of the case belongs to the courts Neville says that taking a man

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into custody is sometimes a three man job. You see three or 4 policemen. Wrasslin there struggling with one person jumps to your mind. Oh that poor man. We frequently get civilians on our persons at a crime scene watching this happen and they will uh jeer at

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us. Why does it take four? Why does it take three to take that one man in? And you just like to get out there and tell them the reason it takes three or two or four is because you're trying not to hurt the man when you

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have three policemen on one person, there's no necessity for anyone ever getting hurt. The only time I've been hurt and the only time I can recall that person that I was struggling with was hurt was when I didn't have enough men there to effectively control him

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by myself. K. R. A. Wins, cameras traveled with officer need row on night patrol. He spends a lot of time at the wheel, but so do most Californians and the kind of duty negro likes least is traffic enforcement. Traffic is one of the worst functions for

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a policeman to carry out here for the first time he catches the entire society in a slight wrongdoing from. It cuts across all economic social levels, anybody can make a traffic violation. People don't like to get traffic tickets. It just seems to be a fact of

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life and many of them are more than quite willing to tell you that they don't like a traffic ticket. And the whole area. Traffic enforcement is a big pain. It's a job that has to be done. It's a job that's well worth doing. It's a function

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that can save many more lives than actual protection of people against violent crime. But people just don't see it that way. When you tell them that you're writing them that ticket because this particular offense has killed X. Number of people, they just don't relate to it

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to be a policeman is to be a member of a very close fraternity, a brotherhood because of the dangers they face and the inability of the public sometimes to understand them. The ties are almost closer than blood and it strongly shapes the policeman's thinking. It's a

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good feeling to know you can rely on your beat buddy, the man working the next plot of land next to you. In another aspect, I think it tends to make the police narrow and you know, looking uh but I think this is a problem in here.

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I didn't work. If I had my choice, I would say we need to bond more than we need to worry about being narrow minded, brought strong feeling between the police between each other could mean the difference between death or injury. Police statistics indicate that car theft

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in Berkeley is an everyday occurrence sometimes two or three times a day the same evening, officer ned roe responds to a call that's become more frequent. In recent years, a young man has had a bad trip, an adverse reaction to the use of hallucinating drugs. The

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police function in this matter is ah and in these cases where you have a person who's obviously in danger to himself, in danger of harming others, heart function is to gain control of him and placement and psychiatric situation where it can be examined and treated normally.

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An LSD intoxication or a bad trip results in the person being confined for some time in a mental institution. A gallup poll recently indicated that crime was the problem that worried americans more than any other. But the solutions do not always lie with the police. That

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part of our story. In a moment, Berkeley, like most northern cities, has changed radically since World war two, thousands of white families have moved to the suburbs, replaced by thousands of negro families from the rural south city ways were unfamiliar to them at first and the

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police have not always understood the customs of the speech of the newcomers. Some cities have been slow to adjust to these changes. Reuben Greenberg, who has a degree in anthropology, is a human relations specialist for the city of Berkeley. He is a vital link between the

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black and white communities and he sees part of his job as crime prevention. I would describe it as a crime prevention in the sense that of course, one of the main reasons of crime, particularly in the minority community is lack of jobs, frustration due to discrimination

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in employment discrimination and housing exploitation in grocery stores, loan companies, uh pawn shops and so forth. You see, I personally work with the chamber of Commerce and California state employment service and others to increase the number of jobs in Berkeley or to increase the minority uh

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group members ability to get these jobs. Berkeley um uh isn't really an isolated community, it's part of the national community and because the social life, their socializing and discussing things with people in other areas, then their ideas where they are regardless of their physical surroundings, it's

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bound to be affected by it, particularly this feeling of despair that they really have no future. You might experience, for instance, in the right situation where you don't just don't care whether you get shot or not. The fact that he's got a gun pointed out it

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was no longer important. It can you in a sense, want to die, but you want to take as many of them with you, Berkeley, regardless of the physical environment, can't exist in this vacuum, that any type of vacuum and be immune from the feelings and activities

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of the other blacks in other areas, negroes and whites both have asked why there are not more negro policemen. Since the need for more negro policemen is so apparent. I would think at this particular time, particularly in the Bay Area would be very difficult to get

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more minority group policeman because police have a very, very bad image in the black community. I remember once a black policeman and barry was accused of annoying a prostitute. There's no way not to know a prostitute. Often it's ones perhaps even one sister, ones cousin, one's

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relative, one friend next door neighbor because this person comes from the environment and he's lucky enough to become a policeman and he just can't immediately sever all of these ties. You can't sever his whole life if he's somehow able to pass through security test for policemen.

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They have. He himself has never been arrested. It was not because the opportunity to be arrested wasn't there? Because a combination of luck and a combination of wit, it's very easy to become arrested in the black community. You see, I don't believe there's any way that

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you can, that you can get substantial numbers of black policemen in the present atmosphere in the Bay Area. The report of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the administration of justice is called the challenge of crime in a free society. The report says the most

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effective way to prevent crime is to assure all citizens full opportunity to participate in the benefits and responsibilities of society. Those who have studied the riots in Watts and Detroit most closely have concluded that what spawned these uprisings was not hatred but love of America and

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belief in her promise of equality and justice for all the riots called attention to that promise unfulfilled. It is not the function or the duty of police to correct the inequities of society. But the policeman's job will become increasingly difficult until all americans have a chance

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to participate in the american dream. In the words of the commission report, the Foundation of the National Strategy against Crime is an unremitting national effort for Social Justice Assignment four is produced in the community interest by the documentary Department of KRON- TV. Oh, come on. Yeah.

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Willis again for our next report to the West on Assignment four, wow, I'm ready. Mhm.