Washington, D.C. – A project called the Wharf, slated for 27 acres east of the 14th Street Bridge along Maine Avenue SW and Water Street near the Fish Market. Groundbreaking for the first phase is planned for spring; the ultimate aim is millions of square feet of buildings, 20 restaurants, three hotels, 500 boat slips, a concert hall and festival grounds.
All of the burgeoning development is being helped along by an agency that just years earlier might have been seen as an unlikely partner: the Metropolitan Police Department. Chief Cathy L. Lanier is embedding police commanders with developers in the belief that the way things are built can influence the behaviors of criminals and potential victims, much as speed bumps can slow cars.
Last month, Lanier; Daniel P. Hickson, commander of the department’s First District; and developers met at the future site of the Wharf to pore over a scale model and discuss surveillance cameras and sight lines. Hickson called the model “very impressive” even as he contemplated finding a contingent of officers to patrol an area that, at present, requires relatively little attention.
The concept of police working with developers is not unique to Washington, but experts say Lanier’s department is ahead of many of its peers. While some offer a stock list of design recommendations, D.C. police make specific suggestions about safety measures as blueprints are being drawn, well before the first buckets of concrete are poured.
Lanier tracks economic development trends across the city closely. She says she recently met with developers to discuss public safety in Ward 8. “The bottom line is every neighborhood and every project has to have the same level of attention from public safety officials if the city is going to continue to grow and thrive,” she wrote.
Having taken lessons from problems attending Gallery Place’s growth, police have already met with developers building the mega-project on the Southwest waterfront, even though they are months away from starting construction.
Police believe such efforts are particularly important as neighborhoods transform, presenting shifting demographics, drastically altered landscapes, changing crowd dynamics and, in some cases, entirely new mini-cities to protect.
Hickson urged Hoffman to study Gallery Place — not for its public safety defects, such as the sidewalks, but for its internal security procedures and extensive network of surveillance cameras, which he said were effective.
The idea, Hickson explained, is to devise ways to police an area that go beyond simply sending more officers in.
“It’s not all crime numbers,” he said. “It’s us trying to look at what’s happening in neighborhoods, and that may influence what we do and how we do it. . . . Policing has evolved, like any business, and we’ve realized that we can be predictive rather than totally reactionary.”
Read “District police embrace concept of preventing crime through design” at The Washington Post
