Community policing strategies and implementation

Community Policing Efficacy

The Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act of 1994 heralded the beginning of a massive effort to reform policing strategies in the United States, in part through implementation of community-policing programs at the local level. Congress has allocated billions of federal dollars over the years since to support such efforts and by the end of the 20th century, close to 90% of all police departments serving communities larger than 25,000 reported implementing community policing strategies. However, empirical studies examining the effectiveness of this style of policing are limited and most reveal a modest improvement. This report examines studies that have revealed some of the factors that contributed to the failure of community policing programs to meet the expectations of policy makers. A lack of police organizational commitment and citizen leadership are major factors that have undermined attempts to implement community policing more fully.

Community Policing Efficacy

Introduction

With passage of the Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services was established within the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) (COPS, 2011). Originally funded with $148.4 million, levels rapidly increased and reached an all time high of $1.633 billion just four years later. Although funding over subsequent years has fluctuated between about $0.5 and $1.5 billion, it is obvious that congress is committed to community policing programs.

This level of commitment over the last 16 years suggests that community-policing programs are effective in controlling crime. This research report examines the evidence that supports or undermines this possibility and tries to understand whether community policing really represents the type of police reform communities want and congress expected.

Defining Community Policing

The Community Policing Consortium, consisting of law enforcement professionals, public policy academics, and political leaders, defined community policing as nurturing a trusting relationship between community residents and law enforcement personnel with the goal of improving the safety and quality of neighborhoods (Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1994, p. iii-vii, 15-17). This implies that residents become active participants in helping to fight crime and solving other problems. Citizens are encouraged to keep the police informed of ongoing problems in their neighborhoods, assist with determining policing resource priorities, and become more involved in crime control through neighborhood watch groups and other related activities. In turn, the police are expected to become more engaged in the communities they serve, by responding in good faith to complaints, listening to residents, providing advice, mediating disputes, and being more transparent about policing strategies. In essence, community policing involves the police engaging in social services-like activities in addition to the more traditional crime-fighting role.

Justifying Community Policing

The Community Policing Consortium suggested community policing could represent a significant policing reform strategy that could solve a number of issues facing mid-1990s law enforcement agencies (Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1994, p. 3). These issues included the loss of traditional crime control effectiveness in modern society, destabilization of the traditional family unit, influx of immigrants with distinct policing expectations, budget constraints, epidemic drug use, gangs, and increasing violent crime rates.

Community policing was also suggested to be a more commonsense approach to policing, because it is responsive to the needs of the community (Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1994, p. 4). Community policing was therefore viewed as more democratic, because it involved participation of all parties with a vested interest in policing outcomes, including community residents, police personnel, community leaders, and businesses.

Community policing has been portrayed as a response to the increasing isolation that police have experienced within the communities they served (Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1994, p. 5-6). Police officers were historically moved around to minimize the chances of engaging in corruption and foot patrols faded from use once the automobile became common. The implementation of random patrols to interfere with a criminal's ability to predict a police presence also interfered with a citizen's ability to predict when they could informally interact with the police. The use of advanced technology, such as radios and Compstat, used up patrol time with incident responses and concentrated police in crime 'hot spots', thus pulling policing resources away from the rest of the neighborhood.

However, a number of potentially serious drawbacks were envisioned if community policing were implemented. As police become connected to communities, there is the danger of a shift in political power to law enforcement and increased intrusion into the daily lives of citizens (Moore, 1992, p. 143-146). These changes could in turn lead to policing priorities favoring wealth and power. In addition, the threat of corruption, discrimination, and brutal policing methods may increase, as professional standards are deemphasized to foster normalized relations with members of the community. Moore (1992) feels obligated to mention that being placed into situations where the police are forced to mediate disputes may encourage them to become more attuned to needs of all parties, and accordingly develop a deeper understanding of the need for fair play. This suggestion, though, is moderated by Moore stating, "It would be wrong to be too optimistic about these possibilities" (p. 146). In fact, Moore feels the need to suggest that the relentless focus on improving the efficiency of crime control could very well lead to marginalizing the legal rights of the accused. Implementation of community policing may therefore require, according to Moore, more emphasis on civil rights and public oversight, rather than less.

Implementation of Community Policing

Community policing involves three core components: community partnerships, organizational transformation, and problem solving (COPS, n.d., p. 5-6). Community partnerships represent collaborative interactions between law enforcement and the various elements within the community that have a stake in policing effectiveness. The potential partners include other government agencies, members of the community, businesses, and private organizations. Examples of participating government agencies include schools, social services, city council, state and federal law enforcement agencies, and municipal services. Community members may serve on a community policing board, volunteer for a neighborhood watch group, or simply call when they see something that could be a potential problem or crime. Businesses can help identify public safety problems and provide valuable resources. Nonprofits can offer valuable oversight and the news media can act as a conduit for providing current policing information to the public.

The transition from more traditional policing methods to community policing requires transforming the organizational structure of local law enforcement agencies (COPS, n.d., p. 7-11). Probably the most important change is in the decision-making hierarchy. Since community policing emphasizes a problem solving approach to crime control, officers on patrol are given greater responsibility for identifying and creating solutions to problems. The overall effect is a decentralization of decision-making and a shift of control over policing resources to the field. As a result, strategic planning necessarily requires the presence of patrol officers. Other changes include long-term patrol assignments, specialized training, citizen satisfaction evaluations, and greater transparency.

Another aspect of community policing that represents a dramatic break from historical policing methods is its proactive approach to crime control (COPS, n.d., p. 12-13). Rather than waiting for crime to occur, community-policing strategies attempt to address the underlying problems that could eventually precipitate criminal activity. The problem-solving model is called SARA, for scanning, analysis, response, and assessment. Patrol officers are tasked with scanning for potential problems and then prioritizing problems in terms of threat to public safety. The officers would then analyze the problem, to understand the contributing factors better. The response phase involves developing a solution that would eliminate, reduce, or control the problem. Assessment would entail determining if the solution was effective.

The environment also takes a prominent role in community policing, replacing the traditional perspective of the psychology of crime (Clarke and Eck, 2005, p. 14). Rather than focusing on the mental state and background of potential offenders, environmental criminology focuses on situational predictors of criminal behavior, such as opportunity. Opportunity can come in the form of an absence of security precautions and availability of targets. The "Problem Analysis Triangle" proposes that predatory crime is precipitated by multiple factors, including the coming together of a likely offender and suitable victim in both place and time. Predatory crime prevention can thus be managed in terms of having security measures in place that discourage criminal behavior at a specific location, a "guardian" for the victim, and a "handler" for the offender.

A guardian may simply represent the victim taking security precautions on his or her own, or by virtue of the close physical proximity of a friend, coworker, or police/security personnel.

A handler is someone who can influence the behavior of the offender, such as a family member, friends, pastor, or probation/patrol officers.

Typically, the person who owns or is responsible for managing a location implements security measures to deter crime. This can be as simple as a bus driver asking a troublemaker to get off the bus, a bartender cutting a patron off, or a landlord threatening to evict a problem resident. Or, it may involve a real estate management company installing outdoor security cameras and lighting.

Efficacy of Community vs. Standard Policing

A 2003 National Research Council report provided an assessment of the empirical evidence supporting different policing strategies (reviewed by Clarke and Eck, 2005, p. 4-5). Standard policing (professional law enforcement), which entails responding to upsurges in criminal activity by increasing the number of patrol officers, decreasing response times, instituting random patrols, increasing pressure to solve crimes, and arresting more offenders, has been shown to be largely ineffective in deterring crime. The evidence though, has revealed that two criteria produce the greatest benefit to controlling crime: (1) increasing the diversity of approaches and (2) using crime analysis to focus on high crime areas.

Community policing incorporates a diversity of approaches, by spreading the responsibility for crime control among all interested parties. The community policing strategies that seem to have the greatest empirical support (weak to moderate) are: making connections with members of the community, police engaging citizens in a respectful manner, improving the legitimacy of police, and instituting foot patrols (reviewed by Clarke and Eck, 2005, p. 5). In contrast, problem-oriented policing (POP) utilizes both a diversity of strategies and focused policing. Accordingly, POP is supported by the strongest empirical evidence for controlling crime and in particular, strategies that address crime hot spots.

The effectiveness of community policing depends, of course, on how committed police agencies are to implementing the core elements. By the end of the 1990s, over 90% of police agencies serving communities larger than 25,000 people reported having adopted some form of community policing (Morabito, 2010, p. 566). The key word in the previous statement is 'reported', because academic researchers have since discovered that many of these claims were nothing more than rhetoric.

A study examining the factors affecting community-policing adoption for 474 municipalities in the U.S. found that community characteristics, such as ethnic diversity, economic disadvantage, and concentration of political power, were not significant predictors of community policing implementation (Morabito, 2010). The author of this study suggested that the use of federal dollars might have moderated any biases that could have otherwise arisen; however, a centralized form of government was found to be a strong predictor of community-policing adoption.

The strongest predictor of community policing adoption was robbery rates, such that more crime predicted use of community policing strategies (Morabito, 2010). Yet, when organizational structure was controlled for, as measured by pay disparity within police agencies and the number of sworn officers, it was found that community characteristics play only a minor role in determining community policing adoption. This conclusion is supported by the finding that organizational commitment to community policing is by far the biggest factor influencing adoption, and the bigger the police agency, the more likely they will commit to community policing.

Shifting the focus of a police department from professional to community policing is therefore influenced by the size of the agency. In addition, having in place police administrators willing to innovate and the resources to manage innovative changes play a critical role (reviewed by Morabito, 2010, p. 581). Regarding the latter point, smaller departments may not have the resources in terms of personnel and funding to compensate for the additional training required to implement community policing. Rural jurisdictions, where the 'community' is spread out over a large area, are not viable communities for community policing strategies (reviewed by Morabito, 2010, p. 565). This would explain why the city of Chicago was able to commit fully to community policing, because it had innovative administrators and sufficient resources to implement the necessary changes.

A more recent assessment of the success of community policing suggests that police agencies are starting to move away from community policing, in favor of what has been called the 'order maintenance' strategy, or 'broken windows' theory (Lombardo, Olson, and Staton, 2010, p. 587). Broken windows theory suggests that letting minor crimes go unchallenged will lead to the impression that no one cares and crime will increase in both prevalence and severity (CJCJ, 1999). Some administrators though, interpreted 'broken windows' as a policy of 'zero tolerance' towards any criminal activity or form of disorder. Former mayor Rudolf Giuliani has been heralded as a tough-on-crime politician because his 'zero tolerance' broken windows policy resulted in a dramatic decrease in crime in New York City during the late 1990s.

The Chicago Alternative Policy Strategy (CAPS) primarily emphasized community mobilization, in addition to addressing physical decay and social disorder (reviewed by Lombardo, Olson, and Staton, 2010). To implement community policing, duties were divided among community police officers tasked with mediating solutions to a broad range of neighborhood problems, and patrol units responding to 911 emergencies. Municipal services stood ready to address physical decay complaints and civilians were hired to augment police officers on the beat.

The success of the CAPS program can be measured in terms of community satisfaction with policing (Lombardo, Olson, and Staton, 2010, p. 596-597). For example, the perception of the prevalence of criminal activity will have a direct impact on a citizen's quality of life. In order to assess the success of the CAPS program, researchers measured several variables and how well these variables predicted community satisfaction with policing. Two concepts were measured: (1) how effective are the police in fighting crime and (2) how effective are the police in combating disorder. When prototype CAPS neighborhoods were compared to non-CAPS neighborhoods, community policing was found to have improved residents perceptions (61%) of crime prevalence, fear of crime, and their quality of life; however, the ability of the police to control disorder was not found to be better in CAPS neighborhoods. Importantly, the demographics and socioeconomic status of survey respondents did not seem to influence the results of this study, although ethnicity was not examined.

Despite these gains, Lombardo and colleagues (2010) interviewed Chicago police officers and many reported that community policing is being replaced by "intelligence-led" policing. Such reports are consistent with the findings of Morabito (2010) that the primary determining factor of the success of community policing programs is organizational commitment. In Chicago at least, community policing appears to have already overstayed its welcome, despite its effectiveness in reducing citizens' perceptions of crime prevalence.

The organizational resistance to community policing reforms is not unique to the United States. A recent review of studies examining community policing in the Netherlands found striking parallels (Terpstra, 2011). The general goals of community policing in the Netherlands are increasing the proximity of police and citizens, addressing a broad range of community problems, use of both preventive and reactive policing, and establishing partnerships with other agencies and citizens. As in Chicago, community policing has only been partially implemented. In addition, police support for community policing is waning as accountability and governance bureaucracies are instituted that counter the community policing paradigm of increased officer discretion and flexibility. In addition, community apathy towards the goals of community policing has led to the perception by community police officers that they are caught between a 'rock and a hard place'. On the one hand, police administrators are returning to a command and control, or centralized approach to policing, while on the other hand, citizens seem to be somewhat indifferent to community policing efforts and goals. Any gains in crime and disorder control that community policing promised are thus being lost over time.

Other factors also play a role in how successful community policing programs are. A recent study examined what factors influenced police cynicism regarding the cooperative attitude of neighborhood residents on their beat (Sobol, 2010). The least cynical officers were found to be those with more experience and those who were patrolling neighborhoods with relatively low crime rates. Cynicism levels were not related to whether officers were assigned to random, reactive patrols or to community policing. Officers working in Indianapolis, IN were also more cynical than those in St. Petersburg, FL, which may be a reflection of the different styles of police management between the two municipalities. Race, gender, and educational level were not correlated with officer cynicism. These results suggest that efforts to control crime in high crime neighborhoods will result in officer burnout more quickly, regardless of whether a community-policing program has been instituted.

An Issue of Ownership

As reviewed by Huey and Quirouette (2010), one of the central goals of community policing is shifting the responsibility for controlling crime and disorder away from a police agencies to parties with a stake in policing outcomes. The authors mentioned a study of the success of community policing in three Seattle neighborhoods, which found that neighborhoods were often unable to provide the political leadership required to accept responsibility for policing. This was found to be especially true for poor neighborhoods.

Huey and Quirouette (2010) further examined the question of leadership for shared policing responsibility by examining a program intended to help the homeless in Edinburgh, England and two cities in Canada. Although interviews with participants revealed a generally positive attitude toward the goal of community policing, on behalf of victimized homeless, a freedom of information request provided data that revealed the system was rarely used to report crime after the first year of implementation. During the first year, 15 incidents were reported, but five years later only one incident was reported. Huey and Quirouette (2010) interpreted these results as indicating that neither the service providers, nor the police, took on a leadership role to ensure the success of the program.

Given the often incomplete implementation of community policing programs in the United States and Netherlands, and officer cynicism towards high crime neighborhoods, the failure of the homeless victimization program could probably attributed to police leadership apathy towards community policing efforts in general and the homeless population more specifically. Stated another way, the most vulnerable communities are least likely to benefit from community policing programs because of a lack of leadership and organizational commitment.

Independent Measures of Community Policing Success

The Chicago's CAPS program developed a community policing strategy called "positive loitering," the purpose of which was to make life uncomfortable for 'negative' loiterers, such as day laborers hanging out on street corners waiting for an opportunity to work (Rai, 2011, p. 66). Positive loitering involves citizens getting together who have a stake in the aesthetics of, and criminal activity within, their neighborhoods. These citizens are actively supported by community policing officers while they loiter within the same space as day laborers and homeless people. The overall goal is similar to broken windows theory and entails making the day laborers and homeless so uncomfortable that they leave the location. A number of slogans have been voiced to justify such activities, such as "… citizen action, public good, community will, and democratic participation & #8230;" (Rai, 2011, p. 67).

However, Rai (2011) argues that the CAPS program is often used as a tool for gentrification of neighborhoods. New homeowners moving into previously poor and blue-collar neighborhoods want to see a Starbucks on the corner, for example, not day laborers. Although positive loiterers justify their actions as an exercise in civil rights, civic participation, democratic ideals, and a more humane approach than 'hyperpunitive' police actions, Rai argues that community-policing activities are effectively driving away long-term residents who can no longer afford to live in these neighborhoods and who are trying to earn income as day laborers. In support of her argument, Rai (2011) present a table of crime rates for different neighborhoods in Chicago (p. 71). The neighborhood studied by Rai, actually has a much lower crime rate than other neighborhoods along the lakefront. This is relevant because positive loitering and other related CAPS activities are justified in part due to the perception that day laborers represent a criminal element.