The Field

The seeds of community policing were sown in London in 1829, when Sir Robert Peel (the founder of London’s police force) offered that “the police are the public and … the public are the police,” and by establishing patrol beats, officers could get to know their citizens and thus have better opportunities to gather information concerning crime and disorder. In the United States, however, that close police-public association over time often led to powerful political influences and corruption (in terms of who was hired, promoted, and could bring in the most votes), which in turn led to the onset of the reform era in the 1930s (including the removal of the police from the community and political influence, the creation of civil service systems, and so forth); for the next half-century, police operated as though they alone could control crime and thus maintained a level of detachment from the public.

As a result, from the 1930s to the 1980s, the dominant police strategy under the reform era shifted to an emphasis on motorized patrol, rapid response time, numbers of arrests, and retrospective investigation of crimes; officer productivity was often measured quantitatively, including the number of miles driven during a duty shift, citations issued, arrests made, and so on. These strategies were not designed to address root community problems; rather, they were designed to detect crime and apprehend criminals—hence the image of the “crime fighter” cop.

Following the social unrest of the 1960s and 1970s, this schism between the police and the public became so wide—fomented by increasing crime rates, frequent race riots, and five national commissions calling for sweeping changes in policing—that police agencies were forced to open their doors to researchers and reveal their methods. Research findings indicated the reform-era police methods were ineffectual, so community policing began to gather momentum in the early 1980s and to develop partnerships between the police and those they served. In essence, the advent of community policing meant bringing back a modern version of Peel’s “bobbie on the beat,” with the police drawing on the public’s fount of knowledge concerning where problems recur and which criminals repeatedly offend. Society came to understand that new police methods and measures of effectiveness were required. Current wisdom holds that the police cannot unilaterally attack the burgeoning crime, drug, and gang problems that beset our society, draining our federal, state, and local resources. Communities must police themselves.

Problem-oriented policing, which began to develop in the mid-1980s, was grounded in principles different from but complementary to community-oriented policing (thus, the term community-oriented policing and problem solving is widely used). Problem-oriented policing is a strategy that puts the community policing philosophy into practice. It advocates that police examine the underlying causes of recurring incidents of crime and disorder. The problem-solving process helps officers to identify problems, analyze them completely, develop response strategies, and assess the results. Police must be equipped to define more clearly and to understand more fully the problems they are expected to handle. They must recognize the relationships between and among incidents—for example, incidents involving the same behavior, the same address, or the same people. The police must therefore develop a commitment to analyzing problems—gather information from police files, from the minds of experienced officers, from other agencies of government, and from private sources as well. It can also require conducting house-to-house surveys and talking with victims, complainants, and offenders. It includes an uninhibited search for the most effective response to each problem, looking beyond just the criminal justice system to a wide [Page xxi]range of alternatives; police must try to design a customized response that holds the greatest potential for dealing effectively with a specific problem in a specific place under specific conditions.

Thousands of police agencies both in the United States and abroad have now implemented new strategies and practices for addressing crime and disorder, focusing on training officers and agencies to conduct more in-depth analyses of recurring problems; obtaining problem-solving assistance from other government organizations, businesses, social service agencies, and the community at large; and evaluating the resulting efforts by going far beyond mere arrests or the issuance of citations or warnings.

These police agencies have broken away from their reactive, incident-driven methods that characterized the reform era. This change in philosophy and strategies goes far beyond merely creating a “crime prevention specialist” position, a “community relations unit,” a foot or bicycle patrol, or a neighborhood mini-station. Today, community-oriented policing and problem solving involves radical changes in police organizational culture and structures, management styles, and external relationships. It requires a cultural transformation with the entire police agency, involving changes in recruiting, training, awards systems, evaluation, and promotions. Furthermore, new technologies have been designed to effect this change; and personnel training, evaluation, and reward systems have all been altered to accommodate this philosophy. At its core, this approach embraces a closer collaboration between the police, the public, and other governmental agencies, so as to develop more thoughtful crime control and prevention strategies. It is a long-term process that involves redefining the role throughout the ranks, from chief down to street officer.

To help to further discern community-oriented policing and problem solving as it compares with traditional policing, consider another scenario: In a relatively quiet neighborhood, police officers have recently responded to a series of disturbances. All of the disturbances—loud music, fighting, screeching tires, people displaying lewd behavior on and near the premises—appear to be related to a recently opened live-music dance club. In a month’s time, police officers have been sent to the club to restore order on more than 50 occasions. As per traditional practice, swing- (evening ) shift officers respond to the club and restore order for a short period of time; later, graveyard- (night) shift officers often must return to the club after midnight to again restore calm. Usually when officers arrive, however, the offenders are already gone, so a report is taken and the officer returns to the patrol car and leaves.

Adopting the community policing and problem-solving approach, however, police would address this situation as follows, using the concept’s SARA (scanning, analysis, response, assessment) problem-solving process:

While scanning the problem, the area patrol sergeant establishes that there have been large increases in the area’s calls for service (CFS) on both shifts, that several realtors had contacted council members to complain about declining market interest in the area, and that a local newspaper was about to run a story on the increase in vehicle burglaries, noise complaints, fighting, and other criminal or inappropriate behaviors in and around the club’s premises. Additional information is gathered from crime reports, the reporter who is writing the newspaper story, neighboring business owners, and the department’s crime analysis unit. Information is also gathered concerning possible zoning and health department violations. Officers first arrange a meeting wcrime analysis unit. Information is also gathered concerning possible zoning and health department violations. Officers first arrange a meeting with the club manager-operator and representatives from the city’s business licensing division, during which the consequences for continued problems are explained. This also results in the manager’s removal of an unsavory employee and his “following” of drug users and other undesirable characters at the club. The hours of the club’s live music are limited, and the manager and employees are trained in relevant sections of the municipal code covering disturbing the peace, minors in liquor establishments, trespassing laws, disorderly behaviors, and so on. The officers also arrange a meeting with the club’s landlord, who agrees to install more lights in the parking lots and a “sound wall” around the business to buffer the area residents. A later assessment reveals that a reduction in CFS in the area was realized, and area residents, although not entirely happy with the continuing existence of the business, acknowledged satisfaction from their complaints; no further newspaper stories appeared regarding the noise and disorder in the neighborhood.

This scenario illustrates some of the differences between police responses to crime and disorder under the traditional reactive, incident-driven mode of policing and how a problem might be addressed [Page xxii]under the community-oriented policing and problem-solving strategy.

Rationale for the Encyclopedia

It is apparent that the field of policing has witnessed tremendous change and growth during its span of nearly two centuries. With the ever-widening range of topics that now compose the field, there is no single extant reference source that captures the diverse and sophisticated nature of the discipline. In addition, with the increasing visibility of community-oriented policing and problem solving, and the fact that this strategy is both a science and a practice, there is a growing need for a single resource that explains the comprehensive nature of the field and is accessible to both experts and nonexperts. The Encyclopedia of Community Policing and Problem Solving was created to provide that service and to fill that void in the literature.

This encyclopedia is thus also intended to serve a diverse audience, providing a basic resource for high school and college/university undergraduate students, beginning graduate students of criminal justice and related social sciences, lay audiences seeking a nontechnical description of the field and its practices, practitioners wishing to keep abreast of the changes and updates in the field, and even the doctoral-level academic seeking a portal into the discipline.

Organization of the Entries

This encyclopedia has explicitly attempted to examine every substantive topic that pertains to community-oriented policing and problem solving. That is, of course, a lofty goal and one that, arguably, could not be achieved. Nonetheless, the editorial board and I have attempted to be as comprehensive as possible without being overly redundant. To accomplish this, the entries include several associated topics and cross-references.

To assist the reader in navigating the encyclopedia, a Reader’s Guide is provided, which includes an alphabetical listing of the entries in nine broad categories or themes; then, within each theme the individual entries are also presented alphabetically. Finally, following each entry is a Further Readings section that can take the reader to the next level.

Note: It may be helpful for the reader to begin by reading entries in the “Foundations” section in order to better understand how community policing and problem solving evolved, several key definitions and practices, and a number of related concepts. Similarly, it may be good to defer reading entries in the “Future Considerations” section until last, after developing a contemporary understanding of the concept.

These nine thematic categories are arranged alphabetically, as follows: The first describes how the police agency’s culture must be changed—in some cases, radically—to accommodate this strategy. The next category discusses crime analysis technologies and techniques that are needed and exist for performing the work of police problem solving, and the following section concerns methods for evaluating and assessing community-oriented policing initiatives.

Then an examination of the evolution and foundations of policing in general—and community policing in specific—are presented, to include its British origins and subsequent development in the United States (as it experienced movement through three distinct eras). The meaning and importance of community and partnerships is examined in this section as well as some of the early experiments and research studies of police functions. This category generally serves to explain how and why community-oriented policing and problem solving came into existence.

The next thematic category reviews the future of this concept; specifically discussed are the possible impact on community-oriented policing and problem solving that will be caused by future crime and demographics. Then several public safety issues are examined that lay at the root of the need for police problem solving; included are such crime problems as domestic violence, drug crimes, gangs, and youthful offenders.

The foci of the following category are the supporting legislation and organizations that helped to foment the development of, and funding, literature, training, and personnel for community-oriented policing and problem solving. Then, the requisite training and curriculum for sworn and non-sworn personnel are discussed.

Finally, a review is presented next of “what works”—selected examples of community-oriented policing and problem-solving strategies that are in use in a variety of settings, including colleges and universities, public housing, rural areas, and state [Page xxiii]patrol agencies. Furthermore, this section includes characteristics of community policing strategies for addressing the aforementioned public safety issues, including domestic violence, drug abuse, gangs, and other types of crimes.

To provide additional examples of and insight into the processes and practices of community policing and problem solving, selected case studies are shown describing actual problem-solving initiatives throughout the United States; most of the examples shown are winners or finalists for the highly reputed Herman Goldstein Award for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing, conferred annually by the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing. Each case study demonstrates the use of the SARA problem-solving model and includes the kinds of creative responses that police can develop to address crime and disorder.

Long entries, approximately 3,500 words in length, represent the most important and well-developed topics in the field, for which extensive and general research and theory exists. Medium-length entries, approximately 2,500 words in length, discuss subjects that have attained significance in the field as core topics. Short entries of 1,500 words for the most part describe topics that are relatively new to the field or that are less central to understanding community-oriented policing and problem solving.

It will be seen throughout that emphasis is placed on the practical or applied aspects of community-oriented policing and problem solving. Indeed, both esteemed practitioners as well as scholars have been selected to contribute the entries (and many of them possess both practitioner and academic experience). Responses to crime and neighborhood disorder must be realistically tied to available resources and police ingenuity. Furthermore, in these times of fiscal crisis and greater accountability, it is essential to know what works and will afford cost effectiveness. Policy decisions are also implicated, and the best way to make such decisions is through intelligent thinking, sound reasoning, and open discussions— thus being able to better effect long-term solutions to society’s problems rather than short-term fixes.

Viewed in total, this encyclopedia provides a ready reference for comprehensively learning how, why, and what the police have done to effect a sea change toward bringing about a profoundly new and better approach to their mission of “serve and protect.”

Acknowledgments

This project had its genesis with my being contacted by Jim Brace-Thompson, Senior Acquisition Editor with SAGE Publications. Jim, along with his staff, did the requisite marketing analyses to establish that such an encyclopedia was desirable and necessary; we remained in contact throughout the project duration, and Jim served as a valuable resource throughout. My primary point of contact as the project developed, however, was Carole Maurer, Senior Developmental Editor, whose steady hand at the keel (and exceptional editing skills) helped my editorial “apprenticeship” greatly and kept the project on course. SAGE Reference Tracking training and operation was provided by Laura Notton and Leticia Gutierrez. All of these SAGE professionals were exceedingly professional, patient, and efficient from beginning to end, and a huge debt of gratitude is owed to them.

I also appreciate the tremendous assistance of my editorial board, whose names and affiliations are listed in the front matter; I am obviously biased, but I have to believe that this group of experts is as stellar as any that could be convened for this purpose. They, too, realize that this project represents an exciting yet challenging opportunity to organize and convey the body of knowledge that comprises this discipline. I am very pleased and proud that they opted to join me in this effort. The board was most invaluable in reviewing the headword list that guided the essay contributions, and provided me with many names of possible contributors.

Certainly my editorial assistant—also one of my most capable and intelligent former students and now a successful academic in her own right— Pamela Everett, was key to this project as well. Pam concentrated on several key portions of each entry to ensure they met certain criteria and specifications. As has been the case during the nearly two decades I have observed Pam perform such tasks, her work was stellar.

Finally, this encyclopedia is most of all a testament to those contributing authors who devoted their time, effort, and expertise toward developing their entries and thus served to explicate community policing and problem solving. I wish each of them the very best in both their professional and personal endeavors.