Community policing has become the paradigm of contemporary policing, evolving significantly over the past 20 years. That which was called community policing in the late 1970s and early 1980s only somewhat resembles community policing as it is practiced today. This article presents a conceptual framework characterizing community policing as having moved through three generations, which can be labeled appropriately as innovation, diffusion, and institutionalization. Conceptualizing community policing as having evolved through three generations can alleviate some of the confusion over the term, and knowing where we have been can assist us in knowing where community policing is going in the future.History in illuminating the past illuminates the present and in illuminating the present illuminates the future.-Benjamin N. Cardozo Community policing has become the primary formulation for police practices and the provision of police services in the United States and several other democratic nations as well, such as Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and Iceland. As a result, it has become a popular subject of commentary among the media, in government circles, for many citizen groups, and to an ever-increasing degree among both police practitioners and criminal justice I would like to thank my wife, Judy Ilaria Oliver, for her support, faith in my ideas, and insistence that I write this article and to the anonymous reviewers who enhanced the clarity of this article greatly.

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The theory of presidential influence over public opinion is used to predict the impact of presidential rhetoric on the public's concern for crime as the "most important problem facing the country." The more attention presidents give to the issue of crime, the more concerned the public becomes with crime. Utilizing a time-series regression analysis of data collected from the Public Papers of the President of the United States and the Gallup poll's "Most Important Problem" series from 1945 to 1994 and controlling for crime rates, unemployment rates, and media influence, presidential attention to crime is found to influence the public's perception that crime is an important issue.

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While the topic of depolicing is often discussed in political rhetoric, media reporting, and reports on police behavior, there exists little empirical analysis of the phenomenon at the police officer (individual) level. To further our understanding of the phenomenon of depolicing, the present study draws on a convenience sample of 25 police officers from across the United States to provide an inductive understanding of the nature, scope, and causes of depolicing. Among the findings is a strong belief that depolicing is a real and growing phenomenon, that it is more widespread than most agencies are willing to admit, and that its causes are highly varied, but include civil litigation, new laws and policies, and accusations of racial profiling. The article discusses the implications of depolicing and the need for future research.

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The theoretical framework for community policing attempts to answer many of the questions revolving around the new paradigm in policing. The paper traces the evolution of community policing as a paradigm in the Kuhnian sense, then proceeds to articulate how it has moved from “revolutionary science” to “normal science”. It then articulates some of the current research in community policing theory and calls for the creation of a theoretical framework under which community policing can be analyzed and evaluated. This paper then commences to articulate a theoretical framework that analyzes all of the factors bearing on this paradigm, ranging from the macro to the micro.