Team Policing

Team policing was intended to improve policecommunity relations and police crime control effectiveness by permanently assigning a group of police officers to a particular small geographic area as a neighborhood. This team of officers was responsible for providing all police services, such as patrol and investigations, to that specific neighborhood and developing appropriate police strategies and programs for that neighborhood. Team policing represents an important early experience in reforming police work to be more focused on addressing community concerns and developing positive policecommunity relationships. This entry briefly reviews the development and implementation of team policing, summarizes the available evaluation evidence, and concludes by comparing community policing and team policing concepts.