Effectiveness of police patrol strategies and outcomes

Criminal Justice

Effectiveness of Police Patrol

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and analyze the topic of police patrol. Specifically, it will discuss the purpose and effectiveness of police patrol. The two articles utilized for this study are "Reducing Firearms Violence Through Directed Police Patrol" by Edmund F. McGarrell, Stephen Chermak, Alexander Weiss, and Jeremy Wilson, and "What Can Police Do to Reduce Crime, Disorder, and Fear?" By David Weisburd and John E. Eck.

The first article looks at a project in Kansas City, Missouri, which utilized specific police patrols in areas of the city that experienced a severe amount of violent crime. The officers heavily patrolled the area looking for illegal firearms, and did not answer other police calls, which is known as "directed patrol." The authors of this article note, "The results of the project were striking. The increased traffic enforcement led to a 65% increase in seizures of illegal firearms. This, in turn, was associated with a 49% decrease in gun-related crime in this area" (McGarrell et. al 119). However, the study only ran for six months in one area of the city. The authors wanted to do a similar study in another area to see if they could find a correlation. First, they study several other earlier studies of police patrol effectiveness. Most found that increased police patrols positively affected crime rates in the areas.

For example, another study, "analyzed data from the same project and found a positive relationship between the amount of time the police were present at a hot spot and the amount of time the location remained crime-free" (McGarrell et. al 123). The authors conclude that specific crimes, such as gun violence crimes in Kansas City, can be impacted by increased police patrols, they can make neighborhoods safer and reduce crime. However, their study also found this impact depends on the neighborhood and how specific the target areas area. In their Indianapolis study of gun crime, crime was reduced in one neighborhood, but not another. Thus, police patrols must be very specific in what they are looking for and target the right neighborhoods to have the most positive affect on reducing the crime rates.

The second article looks at specific types of police patrols, including directed patrol and hot-spot patrol, two methods geared toward effectively managing crime in certain hot spots of crime activity in cities. Again, these authors focus on different studies completed in the past, and analyze their results. They note that police patrols are still the most common method of police activity to deter criminal activity. They write, "Random preventive patrol across police jurisdictions has continued to be one of the most enduring of standard police practices" (Weisburd and Eck 49). They found that while many police patrols were not as effective at reducing crime, directed, or hot spots policing was much more effective. They note, "The study found that the experimental as compared with the control hot spots experienced statistically significant reductions in crime calls and observed disorder. In another randomized experiment, the Kansas City Crack House Raids Experiment, crackdowns on drug locations were also found to lead to significant relative improvements" (Weisburd and Eck 54). Thus, police patrols that are directed to specific areas for specific purposes are often more effective than general police patrols.

Both of these articles do reach the same basic conclusions. They study many different types of police patrols and community policing, and discover that generally, common police patrols are not that effective in reducing and maintaining reduced crime levels. However, directed or hot spots police patrols, that are geared specifically toward cracking down on one area of crime, such as gun violence, are effective at reducing crime and altering crime rates for a specific target area. The authors cite different studies, but both cite studies from the past to help lead them to their conclusions. While they use different studies and methods, it is interesting to note that their conclusions are so similar. Police patrols may deter crime in specific areas, and increased police patrols help bring down crime statistics sometimes, but for the best results, police patrols must target a specific criminal activity and then be solely dedicated to a specific area of a city or town. The authors conclude, "Studies that focused police resources on crime hot spots provide the strongest collective evidence of police effectiveness that is now available" (Weisburd and Eck). Both articles show that standard policing methods are now outdated, and new, community oriented policing tactics work more effectively in most policing situations. Both articles also imply that police departments must be flexible and willing to change with the times, rather than simply maintaining police patrols due to historic effectiveness or tradition. The studies show this focus is not as effective as other forms of police patrols, and departments must learn from studies like these to create new and different solutions to the crime problem.