Impact of Community Policing at the Street Level:  An Observational Study in Richmond, Virginia, 1992

This study's purpose was twofold: to investigate the nature
 of police patrol work in a community policing context and to
 field-test data collection instruments designed for systematic social
 observation. The project, conducted in Richmond, Virginia, where its
 police department was in the third year of a five-year plan to
 implement community policing, was designed as a case study of one
 police department's experience with community policing, focusing on
 officers in the patrol division. A team of eight researchers conducted
 observations with the police officers in the spring and summer of
 1992. A total of 120 officers were observed during 125 observation
 sessions. Observers accompanied officers throughout their regular work
 shifts, taking brief field notes on officers' activities and
 encounters with the public. All of an observed officer's time during
 the shift was accounted for by either encounters or activities. Within
 15 hours of the completion of the ridealong, the observer prepared a
 detailed narrative account of events that occurred during the
 ridealong and coded key items associated with these events. The study
 generated five nested quantitative datasets that can be linked by
 common variables. Part 1, Ridealong Data, provides information
 pertinent to the 125 observation sessions or "rides." Part 2, Activity
 Data, focuses on 5,576 activities conducted by officers when not
 engaged in encounters. Data in Part 3, Encounter Data, describe 1,098
 encounters with citizens during the ridealongs. An encounter was
 defined as a communication between officers and citizens that took
 over one minute, involved more than three verbal exchanges between an
 officer and a citizen, or involved significant physical contact
 between the officer and citizen. Part 4, Citizen Data, provides data
 relevant to each of the 1,630 citizens engaged by police in the
 encounters. Some encounters involved more than one citizen. Part 5,
 Arrest Data, was constructed by merging Parts 1, 3, and 4, and
 provides information on 451 encounters that occurred during the
 ridealongs in which the citizen was suspected of some criminal
 mischief. All identification variables in this collection were created
 by the researchers for this project. Variables from Part 1 include
 date, start time, end time, unit, and beat assignment of the
 observation session, and the primary officer's and secondary officer's
 sex, race/ethnicity, years as an officer, months assigned to precinct
 and beat, hours of community policing training, and general
 orientation to community policing. Variables in Part 2 specify the
 time the activity began and ended, who initiated the activity, type,
 location, and visibility of the activity, involvement of the officer's
 supervisor during the activity, and if the activity involved
 problem-solving, or meeting with citizens or other community
 organizations. Part 3 variables include time encounter began and
 ended, who initiated the encounter, primary and secondary officer's
 energy level and mood before the encounter, problem as radioed by
 dispatcher, and problem as it appeared at the beginning of the
 encounter and at the end of the encounter. Information on the location
 of the encounter includes percent of time at initial location,
 visibility, officer's prior knowledge of the initial location, and if
 the officer anticipated violence at the scene. Additional variables
 focus on the presence of a supervisor, other police officers, service
 personnel, bystanders, and participants, if the officer filed or
 intended to file a report, if the officer engaged in problem-solving,
 and factors that influenced the officer's actions. Citizen information
 in Part 4 includes sex, age, and race/ethnicity of the citizen, role
 in the encounter, if the citizen appeared to be of low income, under
 the use of alcohol or drugs, or appeared to have a mental disorder or
 physical injury or illness, if the citizen was representing an
 establishment, if the citizen lived, worked, or owned property in the
 police beat, and if the citizen had a weapon. Also presented are
 various aspects of the police-citizen interaction, such as evidence
 considered by the officer, requests and responses to each other, and
 changes in actions during the encounter. Variables in Part 5 record
 the officer's orientation toward community policing, if the suspect
 was arrested or cited, if the offense was serious or drug-related,
 amount of evidence, if the victim requested that the suspect be
 arrested, if the victim was white, Black, and of low income, and if
 the suspect represented an organization. Information on the suspect
 includes gender, race, sobriety level, if of low income, if 19 years
 old or less, if actively resistant, if the officer knew the suspect
 adversarially, and if the suspect demonstrated conflict with
 others. Some items were recoded for the particular analyses for which
the Arrest Data were constructed.

Tags: arrests, citizen-attitudes, community-policing, law-enforcement, police-community-relations, police-departments, police-effectiveness, police-officers, police-patrol, police-performance, police-training, richmond, united-states, virginia
Organization: Department of Justice