Directed Patrol, Studies of

Early Patrol Strategy

When Sir Robert Peel established the London Metropolitan Police Department in 1829, he determined that the purpose of uniformed agents of social control was to reduce crime and fear of crime in the communities they served. It was believed that a uniformed police presence would deter criminal activity. The logical thing for officers to do was stroll through neighborhoods as a sort of advertisement that the community was safe and protected. This activity was believed to deter criminals from committing crimes and, at the same time, to provide a sense of security to the law-abiding citizens. This policing “myth” endured until the 1970s.

Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment

Although not specifically a study of directed patrol, the Kansas City preventive patrol experiment convinced police administrators that there were more efficient and effective ways of deploying their officers than random patrol. Beginning in October 1972 and continuing through 1973, the Kansas City Police Department permitted researchers to examine the effectiveness of random patrol. Patrol was eliminated in some districts so that officers only responded to calls for assistance and then returned to other patrol districts. Patrol was enhanced in some districts, with patrol units doubled and sometimes tripled, while it remained the same as before in districts used as control groups for research purposes.

At the conclusion of the research, change in crime rate was used as one measure of patrol effectiveness. It was assumed that crime would go up in districts where patrol was eliminated, remain unchanged in districts where the number of patrol units remained the same, and go down in districts where patrol was enhanced. Instead, the research found no change in the crime rate in the combined districts. In effect, random patrol had no measurable influence on crime.

One significant finding was that approximately 60% of an officer’s time was uncommitted. This meant that officers were waiting on calls for service. Police managers began to consider that this time could be better spent in a directed form of police patrol.

Directed Patrol: A Change of Paradigm

Capitalizing on the Kansas City preventive patrol experiment, police managers began to alter the use of patrol. They told their officers to focus their efforts in high-crime areas—which in effect meant that for officers on the street, they could be anywhere in their beats. But without specific direction on where to go and what to do, officers simply continued to patrol in the same manner in which they had been done for decades.

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