The thin blue line meets the bottom line of community policing

Abstract

Increasingly police departments throughout the United States are in transition between traditional and community-based law enforcement. Community policing is thought to increase effectiveness by engaging members of the community in the coproduction of public safety. At the same time, the nature of police activities naturally encourages the formation of bonds between officers. Although bonds between officers are helpful, organizationally, in many ways, these same bonds can also become barriers between police and the citizens they serve. This “bond-barrier" relationship is popularly referred to as the "thin blue line.” The effectiveness of community policing and the use of public safety dollars depends on changes in internal operations as well as the departmental interface with citizens. This paper uses the input of over 300 law enforcement officers to examine an agency in transition between traditional to community policing including the application of a systems approach to articulate transitional concerns. In addition, this paper develops a Satisfaction-Mission Expectation Classification System and uses it to examine law enforcement officers' perceptions of the organization and its environment.