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Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams, pictured here in December, said Wednesday that his officers could do more community policing if they weren't so busy responding to residents' calls for service.

(Lisa DeJong, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams told members of City Council Wednesday that residents will have to start filing their low-level complaints and police reports online or at a police station so officers can have more time to practice "community policing."

At Council's Public Safety Committee meeting, Williams said that the department is committed to embracing a community-policing model that would allow officers to interact regularly with residents to solve quality-of-life-problems and improve the relationship between the department and the people it serves.

"But the challenge is to reduce some of those lower-level calls for service that we get bogged down with," Williams added. "Which means more of our residents will have to make more of those reports online or at a police station. That frees up our police officers to do more community policing."

Contacted by phone after the meeting, community policing expert and former Cleveland police officer Bob Guttu said Williams is missing the point of the community-policing concept and that the chief's contradictory comments suggest that the department doesn't have a clear plan for instituting the model.

"If people have to go down to the police station to file a complaint related to a quality of life issue, what are the community policing officers doing?" Guttu said. "What's their job?"

Guttu said that during his two decades in the community policing unit, he and his partners were charged with clearing lower-priority quality of life complaints, such as abandoned cars or excessive noise, so residents wouldn't tie up police lines with those calls.

"The idea was to improve response times for our zone car heroes to handle the more important priority-one assignments," Guttu said.

Williams said during the council hearing that he wants to "make sure that all officers understand what community policing is and how the division will enact community policing."

But he has yet to explain it to the public, media or council members, some of who have called for the city to reopen long-shuttered police mini-stations.

Guttu said Wednesday that the mini-stations, which gave residents direct access to officers embedded in the neighborhoods, were critical to the success of the community-policing program during his years on the force.

Guttu acknowledged that low staffing levels could be an impediment to successful community policing. But more troubling, he said, is that police brass seem generally unprepared to implement the model they say they embrace.

"They do not have a plan," Guttu said. "And that's the problem. They better get a plan together. Because after all that has happened, when it comes to improving the relationship between police and the community, a lot of people out there don't think it can be done."