Performance Gap as it Relates to Community Policing

Performance Gap Policing A performance gap exists when the police department's performance does not meet organizational expectations or citizens expectations. Management is a critical success factor for managing a performance gap when it exists. Many police administrators are contemplating community policing projects due to performance gaps. In order to solve the problem of a performance gap, police agencies must look internally and externally for solutions.

They must develop an action plan that includes organizational goals and community goals in order to narrow the gap and foster a collaborative and successful work environment. Many view community policing as an answer, as a means of "developing communication with the public and interest groups" and encouraging active participation from community members and police agents to further the best interests of the community as a whole (Fielding, 1995).

Community policing strategies are being widely adopted in many police agencies as a means of improving the relationship between organizations and citizens and narrowing the expectation gap that exists between these two groups. Others have suggested that performance assessment and solid performance monitoring practices are critical to organizational performance and narrowing the gap between expectations and actual work performance (Bouckaert & Halachmi, 1996:1). However for measurement systems to work they must be linked to employees directly.

Thus for police agents to willingly adopt a performance system that might actually improve performance, they should be part of the development process. This means they should have the opportunity to provide input on the performance appraisal system and recommend changes where relevant. Still others suggest more standardization of processes and procedures in order to increase the quality of service delivered to the community and to the public (De Vries & Van Der Zijl, 2003).

This would benefit many police agencies tremendously, as many agents are accustomed to working individually rather than collectively, allowing room for a wide range of variation of services. In reality, all of these factors need to be considered to narrow the performance gap that exists. The internal thinking of many agencies can be changed to be quality oriented rather than quantity oriented, which it currently exists as in many agencies (De Vries & Van Der Zijl, 2003).

Police quality is a concept that is closely connected to organizations and community members, thus one can not simply consider one without considering the other. Many agencies or individual officers too often focus on the quantity of work they provide, such as the number of arrests or calls completed successful. Their needs to be a shift of focus so that more officers are encouraged to deliver quality over quantity if the performance gap is to be reduced significantly.

Initiatives should be based on the principles of inclusions and collaboration between police, chiefs, and citizens to elicit the best possible outcome and facilitate communication and understanding among all parties involved (Reiner, 2000). Community policing may.