Police Foundation

The Police Foundation is a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting innovation and improvement in policing through its research, technical assistance, training, and communications programs. Established in 1970 through a grant from the Ford Foundation, the Police Foundation has conducted seminal research in police behavior, policy, and procedure and works to transfer to local agencies the best new information about practices for dealing effectively with a range of important police operational and administrative concerns.

One of the guiding principles of the Police Foundation is that thorough, unbiased, empirical research is necessary to advance and improve the field of policing. Furthermore, the connection to the law enforcement and the academic and scientific communities will provide the impetus for new ideas that will help stimulate the field and provide solutions to the complex problems facing policing.

The Police Foundation's focus and perspective is the whole of American policing, rather than any single facet. Motivating all of the foundation's efforts is the goal of efficient, effective, humane policing that operates within the framework of democratic principles and standards including openness, impartiality, freedom, responsibility, and accountability.

Sometimes foundation research findings have challenged police traditions and beliefs. When police agencies employed routine preventive patrol as a principal anticrime strategy, a foundation experiment in Kansas City showed that routine patrol in marked patrol cars did not significantly affect crime rates. When police officials expressed reservations about using women on patrol, foundation research in Washington, D.C., showed that gender was not a barrier to performing patrol work. Foundation research on the use of deadly force was cited at length in a landmark 1985 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Tennessee v. Garner. The court ruled that the police may use deadly force only against persons whose actions constitute a threat to life.

The Police Foundation has done much of the research that led to questioning the traditional model of professional law enforcement and to a new view of policing–one emphasizing a community orientation–that is widely embraced today. For example, research on foot patrol and on fear of crime demonstrated the importance to crime control efforts of frequent police–citizen contacts made in a positive, nonthreatening way.

The Police Foundation is a partner in the Community Policing Consortium, along with four other leading national law enforcement organizations including the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Police Executive Research Forum, National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and the National Sheriffs' Association. In that capacity, the Police Foundation plays a principal role in the development of community policing research, training, and technical assistance.

The Police Foundation's Crime Mapping and Problem Analysis Laboratory works to advance the understanding of computer mapping, to support problem analysis in policing, to pioneer new applications of mapping, and to explore the spatial element of all Police Foundation research.

The Police Foundation has completed significant work in the areas of accountability and ethics, performance, abuse of authority, use of force, domestic violence, community-oriented policing, organizational culture, racial profiling, and civil disorders. Seminal research includes (chronologically) the Kansas City preventive patrol experiment; the big six report on Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia; the Los Angeles civil disorder report; the national study of use of force; and the national survey of abuse of authority. The Police Foundation frequently invites scholars to present their ideas in a publication series known as Ideas in American Policing. The Police Foundation is headed by a president who serves under the direction of the board of directors, composed of leaders and scholars from public service, education, and private industry.

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