Community Policing Instructions: Review Literature Locate Article

Community Policing

Instructions: Review literature locate article study addressing a Criminal Justice Organization deals: Community Policing Changes operations a result terrorist attacks 9/11 if a corrections facility, operations a result technology, regulations, demographics.

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Community policing article review

Lord, V.B., Kuhns, J.B., & Friday, P.C. (2009). Small city community policing and citizen satisfaction. Policing, 32(4), 574-594. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/13639510911000713

Community policing has become a popular approach to improve neighborhood-police relations in many cities, but according to the article "Small city community policing and citizen satisfaction," few studies have been conducted to examine its efficacy in more intimate contexts. The article's profiled a small, Southern city which had implemented a community-oriented policing approach and surveyed citizen perceptions before and after the implementation (Lord, Kuhns, & Friday 2009). The research study was quantitative and used a comparative, longitudinal approach to analyzing the data.

The authors noted that measuring changes that are due to community policing can be challenging, given that many other factors within the environment -- social as well as economic shifts -- can contribute to a rise or decrease in crime, regardless of the type of philosophy underlining the departmental approach. Using satisfaction surveys of the citizens in terms of their perceptions of law enforcement was thought to be more reflective of program efficacy, versus an absolute increase or decrease in crime or physical improvement or deterioration of the local environment. The citizen survey used to measure overall program efficacy consisted of "perceptions of crime and problems in the neighborhood, personal experience of crime and interactions with police officers, awareness of community-oriented policing and demographic information" (Lord, Kuhns, & Friday 2009).

The change in the police department was primarily organized by the chief of police, however the shift to community policing had already been embarked upon by the city at an earlier date in an incomplete fashion. "Prior to 2002, most of the officers had not been adequately and formally trained in the SARA/problem solving process. By 2005 community policing and problem solving was more thoroughly integrated into the departmental mission and training processes, and formal documentation of problem-solving projects and accountability for performance were expected by officers across the department" (Lord, Kuhns, & Friday 2009). Overall, the officers' perceptions of community policing were extremely positive at the beginning. The approach to community policing contained what are considered the four critical pillars of implementing community policing: philosophical; strategic; tactical; and organizational changes.

To support the philosophy of greater community-officer dialogue officers were assigned to "citizen input and partnership building…neighborhood, business, and individual-citizen meetings" (Lord, Kuhns, & Friday 2009). All officers received training in problem-oriented policing and were expected to implement the problem-oriented model into their daily lives in the form of the SARA model or Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment (SARA model, 2013, CPOP). From a strategic perspective, officers were assigned to specific districts in satellite police stations to reduce the length of time needed for community members to access police assistance. Tactically, there was a shift to more non-confrontational approaches to policing in the community, and members in neighborhood associations were asked to collaborate with officers "in prioritizing and resolving problems" (Lord, Kuhns, & Friday 2009). The organizational structure was shifted to give more responsibility to district captains, thus making the police more responsive to immediate needs.

To assess these changes, the affected citizens in a random sampling were surveyed before the change occurred in 2002 and after the full implementation in 2005. It was hypothesized that satisfaction and awareness of policing efforts would increase, fear would decrease, and that these relationships between the variables would be consistent across all demographic groups. However, these hypotheses were not supported by the survey results: "even though the police department indicated that they were investing a great deal of time building partnerships with neighborhoods, there were no significant changes between 2002 and 2005 in satisfaction in police or in fear of crime" (Lord, Kuhns, & Friday 2009). There was some heightened awareness of police presence, given a rise in police contacts, but most of these contacts were perceived as negative.

The authors attributed this apparent ineffectiveness to the fact that crime was relatively low in the city before the implementation. This suggests that the effects of a shift to community policing may be less dramatic if residents are already relatively satisfied with the police's current initiatives to protect and defend. There may have been a lack of motivation to foster new relationships with the police amongst the citizens, although officers may have been willing to change. But although not speculated upon by the authors, it is also important to note that three years is a relatively short duration of time to even foster subjective (much less objective) changes in data related to crime.

In previous studies it has been hypothesized that race plays a significant factor in affecting community perceptions of fear of and satisfaction with the police. In this survey, income was a more significant factor -- persons in wealthier neighborhoods tended to feel more secure. For all respondents, the crimes of greatest concern were relatively minor compared with previous studies in larger cities, such as traffic violation and loitering youths. This lack of many meaningful crimes in the city might be why one of the cornerstones of community-oriented policing, situational crime prevention -- or the reduction of circumstances likely to give rise to crime -- was not made a priority or deemed to be of great importance, according to the initiatives of the program (Situational crime prevention, 2013, CPOP). Crime was already low as were situations likely to give rise to crime.