In San Francisco, policing the streets isn't just about keeping citizens safe and bad guys on the run or behind bars. It's also about balancing police officers' inner energies.
Balance and harmony are on San Francisco police Chief Greg Suhr's mind as the department unveils a new community-friendlier policing model, according to the San Francisco Examiner.
Community policing -- a newfangled term meaning more foot beats, more interaction with citizens and less cruising in patrol cars -- is now official SFPD policy, and cops who may be "less gregarious" and less-inclined to engage the citizenry will "find their Chi," Suhr told the Board of Supervisors last week.
"There are an ocean of San Francisco officers... that conduct themselves exactly like this [community policing model tells them to do]. And for them this is not a change on how they will do the day-to-day business," Suhr told the Board of Supervisors' Public Safety Committee, according to The Examiner. "There are other officers who may be less engaging, or less gregarious than some other officers and this is going to have to make them try and find their Chi, if you will, to raise the bar."
Community-based policing -- whatever it means, exactly -- has been an issue in San Francisco for some time now, and was the focus of a ballot measure that lost at the Nov. 2010 polls.
Suhr issued a general order in the SFPD last week that informed all that community policing has arrived, drawing praise from city legislators.
Once all SF cops find that elusive Chi, that is.
