East Central Cops Combats Crime On The Home Front

A sign on the front door of the East Central COPS substation proclaims, “The greatest evil is when good people do nothing.”

For substation president Tom Bernard, that has become his battle cry.

In its three years of existence, the Community-Oriented Policing Services substation located at the corner of Fifth and Haven has introduced a host of programs into the community.

Volunteers monitor neighborhood crime by patrolling the area in their own cars while equipped with a police radio and plenty of training on how to spot and report crime in progress.

Volunteers document graffiti for police, sponsor community events for children and neighbors, and try to provide a sense of safety for a community with a reputation for a high crime rate.

But to get the job done, Bernard said, people will have to take his motto to heart.

Seventeen volunteers currently staff the substation, one of 10 scattered throughout the city as a joint effort between neighborhoods and the Spokane Police Department to curb crime within communities.

With an annual budget of just $500, funded entirely through donations, Bernard would like to see many more volunteers walk through the door. But the idea that this is a police-controlled environment, he worries, may put off some prospective volunteers.

“People are tired of the reputation of the area,” he said. “It’s simply not true.

“These people are great, hard-working people who really want to do something with the community. “So they need to know that this building belongs to them, not the police department.”

Bernard said he was inspired to join the fledgling COPS program after hearing program coordinator Cheryl Steele speak about the merits of a neighborhood crime prevention force.

“At first I thought, ‘Oh my God, she can’t be serious,”’ he said. “But the more meetings I attended, I was impressed. I knew this was something for me.”

Bernard said he doesn’t even keep track anymore of the long hours he logs as a volunteer.

He does it for the love of the neighborhood.

“This is a great community,” he said. “But I saw some of the things going on in the area, and I thought, ‘This can’t go on.’

“The police department - they really need our help,” he added. “We live here 24 hours a day. We’re responsible for the area.”

It is a large undertaking. The East Central neighborhood encompasses Division Street on the west, Trent Avenue on the north, Havana Street on the east and 17th Avenue on the south.

It is an area with a history of prostitution and drug houses - a reputation that Bernard hopes to eradicate, or at least diminish.

But statistics do show a continued rise in crime in the East Central neighborhood.

One Spokane Police Department crime analysis, for example, shows 23 incidents of vandalism and theft for the East Central community in May 1994, but 27 for the same period one year later and 31 for May 1996.

Despite the rise, Bernard said he can feel a difference in the community where he has lived for the past 15 years.

“This is something that I truly believe in,” he said. “I know community policing does work.”

He cites his volunteer patrols’ involvement in reporting drug houses along Altamont as one of the station’s biggest successes.

“I would like to believe now that my grandkids could play out in the yard and not be faced with drugs or violence,” he said.

Officer Bill Schaber patrols the streets of East Central Spokane as a neighborhood resource officer with the COPS substation. A 24-year police veteran, he said he, too, knows better than any statistics that the program works.

“We’ve had good luck with it,” he said. “We’d certainly be a lot worse off without it.”

“It’s a very diverse community, one of the most diverse in the city,” Bernard said. “And it’s a great one.

“There are a lot of hard-working and decent people around here.

“We still have a ways to go, but we’re making progress.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo