Community Policing: The Middle Manager’s Perspective

Abstract

Community policing has evolved as the new organizational orthodoxy of policing. Volumes have been written on the subject by academics and research scholars. However, the voices of those who are charged with the reorganization of their departments and the implementation of community policing have been relatively silent. This article presents data drawn from the content analysis of the written views of community policing held by a select sample of middle managers from across the country. The respondents were attending the administrative officers course at the Southern Police Institute at the University of Louisville. During the course of their studies, they read current anthologies on community policing research. These findings identify and discuss a number of problems that they have encountered in the implementation of community policing. As such, they represent a practitioner’s assessment of community policing.

Evidence-Based Triage in Prosecuting Arrestees

“…All the evaluations commented on the need for an effective and informed champion in middle management. This finding chimes with the lessons of research into the implementation of police innovations such as team policing (Sherman, Milton, & Kelly, 1973;Walker, 1993), problem solving and hot spotting (Irving & Dixon, 2002;Sherman et al, 2014), community policing (Vito, Walsh, & Kunselman, 2005), mental health diversion programs (Reuland, 2004), and domestic violence experiments (Sherman, 1992). In addition, it was quite apparent that the more effective programs operated within a strategic framework in which encouraged multiagency efforts that had been agreed by senior management across the agencies concerned (Haines et al, 2012;ICPR, 2012).…”

Appraising the appraisal process

“…Even with this work to conceptualise COP performance measures, empirical studies suggest that departments with a COP approach may still be struggling with implementation (Vito et al ., 2005) and measurement. Lilley and Hindjua (2006, 2007) found that, of the 600 municipal and county policing agencies surveyed, many continue to use enforcement stats, and only some have developed additional COP performance measures.…”

Complex Harmony: The Military and Professional Models of Policing

“…Many criminal justice scholars, acceding to the reform tradition, find there is no set paradigm to replicate, and thus no scientific way to evaluate the model, as it tries to be all things to all people, becoming a rather amorphous idea of having a friendly police presence in the neighborhood with no organizational guidelines. A major scholarly criminal justice problem with this model has been trying to define just what a community is, so that it is possible to decide if the police are policing the community according to its norms and values (Strecher 2006;Vito et al 2005;Hunter and Barker 1993;Klockars 1979;Mastrofski 1991;Skolnick and Bayley 1986;.…”