TAMPA — Tampa police Chief Jane Castor is tweaking how the city's police respond to crime.
Less than a month into her new position, Castor is meeting with officers and community members to unroll a new deployment plan she hopes will better target repeat offenders and reduce crime.
Already, she said, the city is on track to end the year with 18 percent drop since last year. But the more you cut crime, the harder it is to maintain the downward trend. So, starting in January, two plain-clothes squads known for years as the SAC unit (Street Anti-Crime) and QUAD (Quick Uniformed Attack on Drugs) will combine into one.
The purpose of the merger, Castor said, is to improve communication within the department while increasing the agency's agility when it comes to responding to crime trends.
Also folded into the new squad will be the District Latent Investigation squads — plain-clothes detective units assigned to help investigate property crimes.
The new squad, known collectively as Rapid Offender Control (ROC) will focus its attention on "hot spots" in each of the agency's three geographical districts.
Already, Castor said, QUAD officers were spending only about 40 to 60 percent of their time working on street-level drug operations — the original mission for QUAD when it was created in 1989.
But with few open air drug markets left in the city, Castor said, the undercover officers have devoted their time to other related investigations.
She cautioned that the move does not mean that the agency will be any less interested in drug-related crimes.
"We are not doing away with any services," she said. "And if anything, it's an extension of what we have been doing."
Key to understanding the tactic, Castor said, is the belief that criminals don't tend to specialize. Drug offenders also commit strong-armed robberies, burglaries and more, she said.
"It will work," she said after describing the plan Thursday in a conference room at TPD's downtown headquarters.
Each district will have four ROC squads, enabling the districts to be covered by these officers for 23 hours a day, seven days a week, responding when a neighborhood experiences a flare-up in prostitution or traffic problems, for example.
Each district will have a "tactical lieutenant," who will serve as the single point of contact for residents concerned about crime in their neighborhood.
Expect these lieutenants — who will be named after November — to advertise their work and cell phone numbers. Castor said she wants people to call with their issues.
"The Tampa Police Department's relationship with the community is the best I've seen in 25 years," she said. "But there's still room to do better."
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