U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services

Community Policing Explained: 
A Guide for Local Governments

Lead Author:
Gayle Fisher-Stewart, Ph.D.
Senior Criminal Justice Consultant, ICMA



This project was supported by Cooperative
Agreement 2003-CK-WX-K070 by the U.S.
Department of Justice Office of Community
Oriented Policing Services. Points of view or
opinions contained in this document are those of the
author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official
position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

References to specific companies, products, or services 
should not be considered an endorsement by the author(s) 
or the U.S. Department of Justice. Rather, the references are 
illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues.

International City/County Management 
Association

Mission Statement:
To create excellence in local governance by developing
and fostering professional local government management
worldwide.

International City/County Management Association
777 North Capitol Street, N.E.
Suite 500
Washington, DC 20002-4201
202.289.4262
www.icma.org

July 2007


Community Policing Explained:
A Guide for Local Governments

Lead Author:
Gayle Fisher-Stewart, Ph.D.
Senior Criminal Justice Consultant 
ICMA

Project Manager:
E. Roberta Lesh
Director, Police Program
ICMA

For More Information:
Mosi Kitwana
Team Leader, ICMA Professional Services
E. Roberta Lesh
Director, Police Program
International City/County Management Association 
777 North Capitol Street, N.E., Suite 500
Washington, DC 20002-4201
Telehone: 202.289.4262 
Fax: 202.962.3500 or 3605
E-mail: mkitwana@icma.org/rlesh@icma.org


Foreword

Founded in 1914, the International City/County 
Management Association (ICMA) is the professional 
and educational organization for nearly 8,200 appointed 
administrators, assistant administrators, and other local 
government professionals serving cities, counties, regions, 
and other local governments. ICMAs membership 
also includes directors of state associations of local 
governments, members of the academic community, and 
concerned citizens who share the goal of improving local 
government. ICMA members serve local governments in 
the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the 
United Kingdom, and many other countries.

ICMA has developed and implemented a number of 
programs including member publications, professional 
activities, books and other publications, and management 
information services. Other activities include an 
annual awards program, annual conference, citizenship 
education, contract- and grant-funded research, 
international management exchange program, local 
government consortia and special-interest programs, 
public policy, survey research, and a training institute.

Public Safety Technical 
Assistance

Ensuring the safety and security of communities is one of 
the primary responsibilities of local government. ICMA 
has a long history of providing support for police, fire, 
and emergency medical services. 

ICMA has a unique opportunity and ability to bring 
together local governments and their communities 
to practice and implement a problem-solving process 
focused on identifying and using resources that already 
exist within those communities to resolve local problems 
and issues. Focusing on the smaller jurisdictions (fewer 
than 50,000 people), ICMA discovered a need for 
specialized training and technical assistance in the 
public safety area to enhance the skills already present in 
these communities.

ICMA has provided such training and technical assistance 
to local government officials (appointed and elected), law 
enforcement executives, local government agency heads, 
line employees, members of the business, media, social 
services, and faith communities, nonprofit organizations, 
and most important, grassroots community members.

Since 1996, 1,268 workshop participants from 56 
jurisdictions have been trained by ICMAs Police 
Program. Most participants come from communities of 
fewer than 50,000 inhabitants. These individuals reflect 
only a small segment of the total number of people 
affected by the training. Workshop attendees are chosen 
for their senior decision-making positions and their 
ability to influence others to bring about change that 
affects the entire population of a jurisdiction. Taken in 
this context, these community leaders are overseeing 
the way to successfully implement community-oriented 
policing, which can affect more than 1.4 million citizens.


Acknowledgments

This volume, Community Policing Explained: A Guide 
for Local Governments, is a product of ICMAs Police 
Program. In existence since 1996, the program has 
provided training, technical assistance, and information 
on the benefits of community policing to communities 
throughout the United States. ICMA has received 
invaluable assistance from a number of individuals 
committed to changing the relationship between local 
government and its citizens, particularly focusing on 
crime prevention and the improvement of the quality of 
life in this nations communities.

We are grateful to the subject matter experts who have 
served as advisors for ICMAs Police Program: Ondra 
L. Berry, Lydia D. Bjornlund, Scott P. Bryant, Roger L. 
Evans, Charles D. Fowler III, Mary M. Grover, Judith 
Mohr Keane, James P. McDonnell, Leonard Matarese, 
David R. Mora, Christine OConnor, Peter Ronstadt, 
Edward J. Spurlock, Cynthia G. Sulton, and Albert J. 
Sweeney. Representing policing, education, community 
activism, appointed and elected officials, and federal 
and local government, these individuals, through their 
wisdom, candor, and ongoing collaboration, assisted 
in developing the content, design, and process for the 
community policing training workshops and materials. 
This challenging project was developed, overseen, and 
coordinated by Dr. Gayle Fisher-Stewart, ICMAs senior 
criminal justice consultant.

Several ICMA professionals should also be thanked: Mosi 
Kitwana, director of ICMA Results Networks, for his 
leadership and insightful critique; Jacen McMillen, senior 
project manager, for his subject matter and administrative 
guidance; Cory Fleming, senior project manager, for her 
editorial expertise; and the excellent staff of ICMA for 
their outstanding professional support.

Our thanks to the Office of Community Oriented 
Policing Services (COPS Office) of the U.S. Department 
of Justice, whose support made this document a reality. 
We also appreciate the past support of Beverly Alford and 
Karl Bickel of the COPS Office. Special thanks goes to 
Albert A. Pearsall III, COPS Office program manager, 
for his invaluable guidance on this project, and to Judith 
Beres, a contract employee of the COPS Office, for her 
editing of this document.

We trust that this guide will provide a better understanding 
of community oriented public safety among local 
government executives, law enforcement professionals, and 
the communities we are pledged to serve.

E. Roberta Lesh
Director, Police Program
ICMA


Contents

Foreword ............................................................. v

Public Safety and Technical Assistance ............................... v

Acknowledgments .................................................... vii

Purpose of Guide ..................................................... 1

Introduction ......................................................... 1

Community Policing: A Brief History .................................. 2

Practical Considerations ............................................. 6

Defining Community Policing .......................................... 8

Community Policing versus Societal Problems ......................... 10

Measuring Effectiveness ............................................. 11

Involving Local Government .......................................... 12

Maintaining Enthusiasm .............................................. 13

Ensuring Sustainability ............................................. 14

Assessing Results ................................................... 15

Defining a Mission .................................................. 15

Setting Goals and Objectives ........................................ 16

Developing Appropriate Community Policing Performance Measurements .. 17

Examples of Performance Measurements ................................ 18

Gathering and Analyzing Data ........................................ 22

Conclusion .......................................................... 24

Summary of Key Concepts ............................................. 25

Appendix: Community Policing Checklist .............................. 29


Purpose of the Guide

This guide serves several purposes. First, it will assist 
communities in determining what questions to ask about 
community policing. Second, it will provide guidance in 
how to tailor community policing to community needs 
and available resources. And finally, it will help guide 
local government managers and administrators with their 
thinking about how to measure the effectiveness of a 
community policing approach. 

Introduction

Ensuring the safety and security of communities is one 
of the primary responsibilities of local government. 
Local government managers well know that few issues 
will cause more public concern and dialogue. Certainly, 
considerable public dollars and other resources are 
devoted to providing public safety and security.

Since the early 1990s, the International City/County 
Management Association (ICMA) has provided training 
and technical assistance in community-oriented 
policing for thousands of community members, local 
government officials, police personnel, and private-sector 
members. This guide is based, in part, on evaluation 
research conducted in conjunction with this training. 
ICMA surveyed participants 6 to 12 months after their 
community policing training to learn more about their 
experience in instituting community policing within their 
community. While the sample for this research was select 
and limited to only those communities participating in 
ICMA training, survey respondents were representative 
of the different types of groups and organizations that 
should be involved in implementing community policing 
efforts at the local level. As such, the research reflects a 
wide variety of community perspectives.

While community policing has been in existence for 
more than 3 decades, ICMAs research has shown that 
communities, both large and small, still continue to 
grapple with the change its name implies. Three central 
questions dominate discussions at the training seminars 
that ICMA offers:

What is community policing?

How do we implement and tailor community 
policing to the needs of our community?

How do we know if community policing is 
working?

These questions are not easy to answer, in part, because 
the nature of community policing is continually 
changing and evolving. Community policing functions 
differently in each community that adopts it. It 
is, however, a new way of doing business in most 
communities. It expands the traditional role of the 
police and allows officers to be proactive by using 
problem-solving strategies to help prevent crime and 
to address the fear of crime. 


This guide draws on the expertise of local government 
officials and community residents in implementing 
a community policing approach. It is meant to help 
guide the thinking of managers and administrators in 
determining whether community policing might work in 
their communities.

Community Policing: 
A Brief History 

The roots of community policing come from the history 
of policing itself, and draw on many of the lessons taught 
by that history. 

Modern law enforcement began in England with the 
formation of the London Metropolitan Police District in 
1829 by Sir Robert Peel. The new police force was created 
to address the soaring crime rates in Great Britains 
capital. Peel, the first chief of the police force, is credited 
with developing several innovations that are still practiced 
today. First, he assigned his officers to regular foot-patrol 
areas, charging them with the task of preventing and 
suppressing crime in their assigned geographic areas. 
Patrol beats enabled the police officers to get to know 
their assigned neighborhood and for residents to become 
familiar with members of the local police department. 1

To support the officers on their beats, Peel also adopted 
a paramilitary command structure for his new force. Peel 
believed that only military discipline would ensure that 
the police officers walked their beats and actually enforced 
the law. Military-style uniforms instilled a sense of personal 
pride in officers and enabled citizens to identify the police 
easily whenever their assistance was needed.

In the United States, policing developed in a fashion 
similar to the British experience. Most major U.S. 
cities had established municipal police departments by 
the Civil War. Initially, the police were used to control 
certain populations such as slaves or recent immigrants. 
They also provided many community services, such as 
maintaining health and sanitation, regulating commerce, 
and controlling vices.2 Two key differences set them apart 
from their British counterparts, however. First, American 
police officers carried guns, giving them a very definite 
power over the average citizen. Second, they served 
under politically-appointed local precinct captains. These 
differences set the stage for future problems in what has 
been called the Political Era of policing.3

The Political Era (approximately 1830/40 to 1920/30) 
was marked by corrupt behavior on the part of the police, 
including police brutality. The police ruled largely by 
physical coercion. Controlling industrial and race riots 
became the central focus of many urban police departments. 
Shoot first, ask questions later was widely seen as the 
primary operating mode of law enforcement, especially on 
the western frontier. Graft and corruption were abundant. 
Many Americans did not trust the police who were seen as 
in the pockets of big-city political machines. 

1Patterson, Jeffrey, Community 
Policing: Learning the Lessons of 
History, FBI Law Enforcement 
Bulletin, November 1995.
www.lectlaw.com/files/cjs07.htm.

2 Gaines, Larry K., and Roger 
LeRoy Miller, Criminal Justice 
in Action: The Core, 3rd ed., 
California: Thomson-Wadsworth, 
2006.

3 Ibid.


Modernization of the American police force began during 
the Reform Era (1930 to 1970) when police administrators 
implemented strategies and used technology to increase 
the distance between their personnel and the citizens they 
served. This effort was undertaken in large part to lessen the 
corrupting influence believed to come from the community, 
including politicians. Civil service merit systems for hiring 
police officers replaced local spoils systems. 

During this era, many departments adopted a top-
down hierarchical management style based largely on a 
military model, which imposed greater accountability 
on police management. Greater professionalism was 
lauded, and several major universities established new 
education programs for professional police administration. 
Written policies and procedures were adopted to define 
and structure the police role within the community. 
The automobile, telephone, and radio allowed police to 
respond to calls for services quickly and efficiently. At the 
same time, police officers no longer walked beats nor got to 
know the neighborhoods residents on a first-name basis.

When the social unrest of the 1960s led to urban riots, 
assassinations, and increased gang violence, police-
community relations again suffered. Some people viewed 
the police as an occupying force. Police brutality often led 
to civil disorder, and some members of the public saw the 
police at the forefront of maintaining the status quo of an 
unjust and discriminatory society.4

With rising crime rates and the inability of the police to 
stem the tide, police administrators realized that they needed 
to return to their community roots if they were to do 
anything about crime and disorder. This required relating 
differently to the communities they served; thus in the 
1970s, the Community Policing Era began,5 though most 
law enforcement agencies did not fully embrace the concept 
until the 1980s. The concept and practice of community 
policing has been in existence for nearly 3 decades. 

Building on the lessons learned from history, community 
policing seeks to incorporate the early community service 
functions from law enforcements origins with the Reform 
Eras support of greater professional development through 
education and training. It attempts to minimize and 
eliminate some of the historically negative perceptions of 
police. Community policing places considerable emphasis 
on police-community relations, and actively seeks to 
engage citizens in partnerships with the police to build safer 
communities through proactive problem-solving efforts.

The definition of community policing is an evolving one. 
The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services 
(COPS Office) of the U.S. Department of Justice 
describes community policing as follows: 

Community policing focuses on crime and social 
disorder through the delivery of police services that 
includes aspects of traditional law enforcement, as 
well as prevention, problem-solving, community 

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.


engagement, and partnerships. The community 
policing model balances reactive responses to calls 
for service with proactive problem-solving centered 
on the causes of crime and disorder. Community 
policing requires police and citizens to join together 
as partners in the course of both identifying and 
effectively addressing these issues.6

Community policing comes with its own unique set 
of challenges that will be explored in the next section, 
Practical Considerations. Communities, however, 
should recognize that several fundamental concepts and 
core elements are involved in any community policing 
effort. These are outlined in Table 1. 

These conceptscommunity partnerships, problem 
solving, and organizational transformationmust 
support the general operating principles that govern 
police-community relationships. The actual structure 
of the department may vary from community to 
community while still adhering to these core elements. 
Community policing requires that the broader 
community and the law enforcement agency understand 
and believe that public safety and security can be best 
achieved through collaborative efforts. If public safety is 
seen as the exclusive purview and responsibility of the law 
enforcement agency alone, a community policing effort 
will not succeed. 

There are many ways these core elements can be 
incorporated into a community-oriented policing 
program. Consider that community partnerships between 
law enforcement and citizens rarely, if ever, occur in 
isolation from other branches of local government. For 
such partnerships to grow and evolve, local governments 
must be willing to reach out to their citizens and actively 
engage them in the process of local government, whether 
that is community-oriented policing or economic 
development or public works or any other program or 
service a local government provides. In short, there must 
be a community-oriented philosophy that drives the 
whole local government and encourages collaboration 
and cooperation. 

Problem solving is a critical element in any community 
policing approach. This capability must exist at all levels 
of the law enforcement organization, including the 
patrol officer, to achieve long-term success. Putting this 
element in place, however, often involves a fundamental 
shift in thinking for many law enforcement agencies. 
Most police departments operate in a paramilitary style. 
A very structured chain of command exists for most 
decision making, with formal procedures defined for 
responding to problems. Allowing law enforcement 
officers the latitude to respond creatively to problems 
that come before them and engage in problem-solving 
efforts directly with residents represents very different, 
and perhaps at times, an unfamiliar and uncomfortable 
way of doing things. Nevertheless, new training methods, 

6 What Is Community Policing? 
Office of Community Oriented 
Policing Services, U.S. 
Department of Justice.
www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.
asp?Item=36.


Table 1: Framework for Community 
Policing Principles

Community Policing Definition 

Community Policing Elements 

Community Partnerships

Collaborative partnerships between the law 
enforcement agency and the individuals and 
organizations that they serve, or including 
anyone with a stake in the community.

Agency has multidisciplinary 
partnerships with community 
partners, including other government 
agencies, nonprofit and community 
groups, businesses, the media, and 
individuals.

Existing partnerships bring appropriate 
resources and level of commitment to 
community policing activities.

Level of interaction between the law 
enforcement agency and community 
partners.

Problem Solving

The process and effect of problem solving 
should be assessed at each stage of the 
problem-solving process.

General problem-solving approach

Problem-solving processes
- Scanning
- Analysis
- Response
- Assessment

General skill in problem solving

Organizational Transformation
- Agency management
- Agency climate and culture
- Leadership
- Labor relations
- Decision making
- Planning and policies
- Organizational evaluations
- Transparency

Organizational structure
- Geographic assignment of officers
- Despecialization
- Resources and finances

Personnel
- Recruitment, hiring, and selection
- Personnel evaluation and supervision
- Training

Technology and information systems
- Communication and access to data
- Quality and accuracy of data

Source: Taylor, Bruce et al. Community Policing Self-Assessment Tool Users Guide - Documenting 
Today and Planning for Tomorrow. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice Office of 
Community Oriented Policing Services, Fall 2007


including Problem Based Learning (PBL), an advanced 
learner-centered educational method focused on 
developing problem-solving capabilities in officers, are 
being tried in jurisdictions such as Reno, Nevada, and 
Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, providing law 
enforcement personnel with new capabilities and skills. 

Finally, organizational transformation requires 
experimentation with different organizational structures, 
perhaps changing the delivery of patrol services or 
empowering personnel with decision-making authority. 
The key to such a transformation, however, may lie in 
identifying and attracting a different kind of individual to 
policing, someone who is oriented toward service rather 
than adventure. 7 Accomplishing this requires developing 
new recruitment and selection methodologies that are 
consistent with the goals of community policing. 

What becomes readily apparent in reviewing Table 1 
and considering each of the three fundamental elements 
is that the overall orientation of community policing is 
about being proactive and taking positive steps to create 
a safer, more secure community rather than simply 
responding to crime and other incidents as they happen 
in the community. Incorporating this fundamental 
change in thinking into the daily operations of a local law 
enforcement agency is central to the long-term success 
and sustainability of community policing. 

The actual mechanics and methodologies of 
implementing community policing vary across jurisdictions 
according to the size and structure of the agency and 
the size and needed services of the community it serves. 
Considerable differences also exist in police-community 
interactions across cities and among neighborhoods in 
a single city. Even within a law enforcement agency, 
different styles can be adapted to meet the general 
department philosophy on community policing. Duffee 
et al. note that discovering such variation(s)is very 
important for understanding how they related to improved 
safety, quality of life and citizen satisfaction. 8 

Clearly, each local jurisdiction must find its own direction 
for implementing community policing in a way that works 
best for the larger community. There are a number of 
considerations that local government officials should discuss, 
however, as they develop appropriate implementation 
strategies for their community. Such considerations are 
discussed in the next section, Practical Considerations. 

Practical Considerations

Community policing comes with its own unique set of 
challenges. It should not be presented to the community 
as a simple solution, and residents should understand 
from the outset that it will not put an end to crime. 
What it does is establish a partnership between the police 
and the community, involving residents in efforts to solve 
community problems. According to Cordner and Biebel, 

7 Scrivner, Ellen. Innovations 
in Police Recruitment and 
Hiring: Hiring in the Spirit of 
Service. Office of Community 
Oriented Policing Services, U.S. 
Department of Justice, 2001.

8 Duffee, David E., Brian C. 
Renauer, Jason D. Scott, Steve 
Chermak, and Edmund F. 
McGarrell. Community Building 
Measures: How Police and 
Neighborhood Groups Can Measure 
Their Collaboration. National 
Criminal Justice Reference 
Service, Document 
No. 213134, February 2006.


community policing has a more preventive orientation. 
It reduces crime by engaging the public as a partner in the 
fight against crime rather than relying on aggressive law 
enforcement as the only solution to community problems.9

Included in this report is a Community Policing 
Checklist (Appendix) that covers a comprehensive list 
of behaviors posed as questions to determine an agencys 
commitment to community policing. Drawn from 
the groundbreaking publication, Community Policing: 
How to Get Started, by Robert Trojanowicz and Bonnie 
Bucqeroux,10 the checklist provides a starting point for 
thinking about how community policing should work in 
a given community. Not all of these questions need to 
be asked in every city, town, or village, but they do give 
some sense of the numerous and complex issues that a 
local government will need to grapple with if it decides to 
pursue a community policing approach.

[Note: The COPS Office has supported the development 
of the Community Policing Self-Assessment Tool (CPSAT) 
that will allow agencies to assess their implementation 
of community policing. CPSAT operationalizes the 
philosophy of community policing across different ranks 
and provides resources that will assist an agencys efforts 
in determining its strengths and gaps in problem solving, 
partnerships, and organizational transformation. This 
resource will be available in Fall 2007.] 

The underlying tenet of community policing is the need 
or desire to change behaviors of the police, community 
residents, local government officials, and others. In some 
sense, community policing is just the tip of a community 
approach to the management of local government, defined 
by a philosophy that citizens should be involved in the day-
to-day decisions that affect their lives. 

Community policing must be tailored to the needs and 
desires of a specific community and involves negotiation 
and consensus. The community must come to an 
agreement on the mission of community policing as well 
as on the goals and objectives it wants to fulfill through 
community policing. Community leaders need to 
consider what specific strategies they want to initiate and, 
before implementing any strategy, they should determine 
what they expect the strategies to accomplish as well as 
the costs of those changes. 

Many communities, for example, have adopted bike 
patrols as a means of improving police-community 
relations and to provide a greater beat-level visibility 
and crime deterrent. Before implementing bike patrols, 
though, leaders need to think through what such patrols 
can accomplish and how such a strategy fits into the 
larger overall community policing approach. For example, 
what will be expected of the officers while on bike patrol? 
How will a bike patrol improve the ability of officers to 
solve community problems? Community leaders also 
need to consider the cost of that strategy and weigh it 

9 Cordner, Gary and Elizabeth 
Biebel. Research for Practice: 
Problem-Oriented Policing in 
Practice. National Criminal 
Justice Reference Service, 
Document No. 200518, 
June 2003. 

10 Trojanowicz, Robert C., 
and Bonnie Bucqeroux, eds., 
Community Policing: How to Get 
Started, 2nd ed., Cincinnati, 
Ohio: Anderson Publishing Co., 
1988.


against the cost of other strategies. In some communities, 
bike patrols make the community feel safer. Reducing 
fear is a valid goal, but the cost of feeling safe needs to be 
weighed against the reality of what services a bike patrol 
can reasonably be expected to provide. If the community 
is willing to accept these costs, then instituting bike 
patrols may be an effective strategy. 

Every community has different needs and concerns when 
it comes to public safety. One jurisdictions approach 
to community policing may not work in another 
jurisdiction; in fact, even within communities, what 
works in one neighborhood may not work in an adjacent 
neighborhood. All stakeholdersthe police, residents, 
and local government officialsneed to be prepared 
to try many different techniques and strategies in the 
process of developing a community policing approach 
that fits. Stakeholders in community policing also need 
to be prepared to support good-faith efforts and not walk 
away if the first few activities happen to fail. Ongoing 
communication, a willingness to experiment, and a 
commitment to keep trying are hallmarks of successful 
community policing programs.

Learning from the experiences of other communities 
and their community policing programs, however, is 
not without benefit. To evaluate its community policing 
training and technical assistance, ICMA sent participants 
a follow-up survey 6 to 12 months after their training. 
ICMA researchers asked participants to assess whether 
and what kind of progress had been made since the 
conclusion of the training and to share their successes and 
problems with implementing community policing. The 
survey was sent to the local hosts of the sessions, the city or 
county manager, the chief law enforcement officer, other 
community leaders, neighborhood representatives, and 
private-sector interests.

In studying the survey results, ICMA researchers 
identified six areas that could either assist or thwart 
the communitys effort to institutionalize community 
policing. The responses provide an in-depth look at some 
practical considerations that communities should think 
about before instituting community policing.

Defining Community Policing 

If you ask 100 people what community policing 
means, you will probably receive 100 different answers. 
How can local governments better define community 
policing and its resultant activities so that there is less 
misunderstanding about what it involves and what it can 
realistically accomplish?

One might think that defining community policing is fairly 
easy, but a literature review finds many different definitions. 
David L. Carter, a professor in the School of Criminal 
Justice at Michigan State University, said the following:


Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux define community 
policing asa new philosophy of policing based on 
the concept that police officers and private citizens 
working together in creative ways can help solve 
contemporary community problems related to 
crime, fear of crime, social and physical disorder, and 
neighborhood decay. The philosophy requires that 
police departments develop a new relationship with the 
law-abiding people in the community, allowing them 
a greater voice in setting local priorities, and involving 
them in efforts to improve the overall quality of life in 
their neighborhoods. It shifts the focus of police work 
from handling random calls to solving problems.11 

In an online editorial, DeVere D. Woods, Jr., an associate 
professor of criminology at Indiana State University, 
observed: Part of the difficulty evaluating community 
policing is defining the term . . . the term has been 
twisted and expanded to the point it has little meaning.12 
He went on to say, We have always subscribed to (the) 
Robert Trojanowicz definition of community policing: 
a philosophy of full-service, personalized policing where 
the same officer patrols and works in the same area on a 
permanent basis, from a decentralized place, working in 
proactive partnership with citizens to identify and solve 
problems.13 

From these two examples, it is apparent that there are 
even different interpretations of Trojanowiczs definition. 
In this case, is the focus of community policing on 
solving community problems and improving overall 
quality of life (Carters interpretation) or on providing a 
full array of services to neighborhood residents (Woods 
interpretation)? While the difference may seem minor to 
some, very real conflict can arise from not understanding 
what a term means. 

The community must reach some agreement on the exact 
meaning of the terms, while still understanding that 
there will be some who will want to put their own spin 
on them. It may be helpful to break down the concept 
of community policing into three primary functions as 
defined earlier: 

Fostering a partnership of police and citizens to 
involve the whole community in strategies to 
promote greater public safety.

Taking a problem-solving approach to identify 
and effectively address the underlying conditions 
that give rise to crime and disorder.

Transforming the organization to respond to 
community needs more effectively. 

By developing strategies that can further the goals of these 
three primary functions, community policing enables the 
community improve its overall capacity to reduce crime 
and increase public safety.14 

11 Carter, David L., Ph.D., 
Measuring Quality: The Scope 
of Community Policing. 
In Quantifying Quality in 
Policing, Larry T. Hoover, 
ed., (Washington, DC: Police 
Executive Research Forum, 
1996), pp. 7394. http://www.
cj.msu.edu/~people/cp/
cpmeasure.html

12 Woods, DeVere D., Jr., The 
State of Community Policing. 
1996. (NOTE: This editorial 
was originally published online 
at http://web.indstate.edu/crim/
state.html and http://concentric.
net/~dwoods/state.htm. Both 
web sites are no longer available.) 

13 Ibid.

14 Scheider, Matthew C., Robert 
F. Chapman, and Michael F. 
Seelman. Connecting the Dots for 
a Proactive Approach. National 
Criminal Justice Reference Service, 
Document No. 204424, 2003.


Limiting the scope of the definition may also be valuable. 
As Woods writes, A police department is not engaged 
in community policing until it fulfills each element of 
the definition.15 An extensive or convoluted definition 
may set up the police department and the community 
for conflict, disappointment, and claims that community 
policing does not work.

Survey respondents indicated that defining community 
policing is a daunting experience because of the diversity 
of opinions that exist about what community policing 
is. Rather than concentrate on obtaining agreement on a 
definition, respondents said that it might be more important 
to determine what community policing is supposed to 
do and what it is supposed to accomplish. Respondents 
also noted that it was important to focus on the desired 
outcomes of community policing and determine what tasks 
and activities could help achieve those outcomes. 

Community Policing versus 
Societal Problems

Many community problems do not have a police 
solution, such as lack of recreational opportunities, 
lack of educational opportunities that can lead to 
viable employment, lack of parental involvement 
and supervision, and illicit drug use. How can local 
government and police administration best manage 
community expectations and help residents understand 
the limitations of community policing?

While an editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education, D.W. 
Miller offered that to policymakers and citizens eager 
to know whether smart policing (community policing) 
can prevail over the root causes of crime, social scientists 
have been forced to say: We may never know.16 The 
reality is that even with the best data, it is impossible to 
determine with any degree of certainty just how policing 
affects crime. As one New England police department chief 
stated, Winter is our best ally in our fight against crime.

The police do not have the resources or skills to 
deal with all the root causes of crime. They are not 
equipped to solve the causes and problems of poverty or 
unemployment. They are not psychologists or counselors 
who can uncover the reasons for spousal or child abuse. 
They are not educators who can give people hope for a 
productive life. These larger societal issues are best handled 
by agencies set up to address those problems with input 
from the citizens they serve.

Law enforcement officers can identify problems and, 
in many cases, take a leadership role in addressing the 
problems. For example, the police can partner with 
community health organizations to educate high school 
students about the dangers of drinking and driving. Or 
they can team with community nonprofits to identify 
members of the homeless population who need a helping 
hand. But all involved in community policing should 
work to avoid the dangers of mission creep, expecting 
more of law enforcement than is realistic, given their 

15 Woods, The State of Community 
Policing.

16 Miller, D.W., Poking Holes in 
the Theory of Broken Windows, 
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 
February 9, 2001. www.chronicle.
com/free/v47/i22/22a01401.htm.


training and experience. Publicly recognizing the role 
of community policing in addressing complex societal 
problems is key to managing community expectations.

Respondents to ICMAs survey noted that often the process 
of defining community policing becomes an exercise in 
determining what community policing should do. The 
ability to differentiate between the two tasks is required when 
working with the public. In public meetings, a good facilitator 
can point out the differences and guide the audiences 
thinking about the issues. Respondents to the survey 
recommended recruiting the media as an active partner in this 
process, presenting stories that get the definition out into the 
community, and using public service announcements to keep 
the definition in the forefront of the publics mind.

The participants also noted that the roles and responsibilities 
of the police must be periodically revisited, setting new or 
updated realistic goals and strategies. There can be, and 
must be, buy-in by the police, the community, and the 
local government. It is critical to remember that no goal or 
strategy is going to receive 100 percent agreement. In the 
final analysis, and based on the information available to 
them, the police will be in the best position to determine 
what their mandate will be and how best to meet it.

Measuring Effectiveness

Research indicates that there are still questions about the 
effectiveness of community policing. How should the 
effectiveness of community policing be measured?

The police saturate a particular neighborhood in the 
community, and the number of muggings plummets. Did 
the police activity cause the decline? Possibly. The weather 
might also have gotten dramatically colder, the number 
of tourists in the area might have dropped, or a transient 
gang may have moved on to another cityall of which 
could cause the number of muggings to decrease. 

Not only is crime prevention and order maintenance 
part of policing, organizational changes, community 
interaction and interventions, and government processes 
also fall under the rubric of community policing. The first 
question that must be asked is, What is being measured 
when we assess the effectiveness of community policing? 
If we are talking about the prevention or reduction of 
crime and disorder, care must be taken when discussing 
causation and correlation. 

Measuring the effectiveness of community policing is not 
a simple matter of implementing a given strategy to see 
if crime drops. It involves defining specific, measurable, 
and attainable goals set for a given period, and tracking 
that data over time to measure change. John Eck, an 
associate professor of criminal justice at the University 
of Cincinnati, notes that decision makers need to have 
a detailed understanding of the problem, of how the 
response is supposed to reduce the problem, and of the 
context in which the response has been implemented17 
in order to assess and evaluate the effectiveness of a 
chosen response. (Further information is found in 
the next section, Assessing Results.) ICMA survey 

17 Eck, John E., Assessing 
Responses to Problems: An 
Introductory Guide for Police 
Problem-Solvers, Problem-
Oriented Guides for Police 
Problem-Solving Tools Series, No. 
1. U.S. Department of Justice 
Office of Community Oriented 
Policing Services, 1999.


respondents indicated that outcome-based performance 
measures are needed and that community policing is a 
tool or an approach for achieving desired goals. 

Involving Local Government 

How can we encourage more participation in community 
policing by local government agencies that may view it as 
strictly a police program?

Community policing brings together not only the people 
who live and work in the community, but also local 
government agencies, to improve community quality of 
life. While the police are not equipped to deal with the 
root causes of crime, community policing can enable 
the police to create bridges to the agencies charged 
with dealing with those root causes. Law enforcement 
officers can serve as ombudsmen, providing a critical 
link to public and private organizations that offer help, 
according to Victor Kappeler and Larry Gaines, authors 
of Community Policing: A Contemporary Perspective.18

Bringing people together to work on a common 
problem is difficult under the best conditions. Most 
bureaucracies are a maze, complete with diverse roles, 
territorial boundaries, and politics. For the beat officer 
who might be trying to arrange for social services for an 
impoverished family as a means of preventing domestic 
violence, such a maze can be overwhelming. Officers 
cannot be left to their own devices to make the right 
connections. Support for community policing must come 
from all of local government; it is a shared responsibility 
among departments and agencies.

In a neighborhood where muggings have increased, 
for example, the code compliance department can 
step up its efforts to make property owners maintain 
their buildings. The public works department can 
review street lighting and ensure that all lights 
are working properly. Environmental services and 
waste collection can bring in special bins to collect 
junk and help clean up the neighborhood. And the 
community development department can look at its 
capital improvements program to determine if there 
are infrastructure improvements that could be made 
to make the neighborhood a safer place. These actions 
taken together serve to further support the goals of 
community policing.

Collaboration requires more than a vision statement, a 
list of values, or even a policy mandating collaboration. 
Those who are truly committed to change must create the 
desire for change and create an environment where it is 
to the benefit of people involved to lessen turf struggles. 
Those committed to change must understand that such 
change will take hold one person at a time.19 

Survey respondents believe that successfully involving 
local government means that change needs to be made 
less threatening to other government personnel through 
ongoing discussions and educational opportunities. 

18 Kappeler, Victor E. and Larry 
K. Gaines, Community Policing: A 
Contemporary Perspective. 4th ed., 
Philadelphia: Matthew Bender & 
Company, Inc., a member of the 
LexisNexis Group, 2005.

19Miller, Poking Holes in the 
Theory of Broken Windows,
p. 172.


There must be commitment by top management to lead 
by example by forming interagency teams and providing 
needed support.

In the final analysis, it is imperative to develop 
partnerships among local government agencies to get the 
entire governmental structure on board with community 
policing. Effective collaboration among law enforcement, 
other local government departments, community-based 
organizations, and the citizens can go a long way toward 
achieving community goals.

Maintaining Enthusiasm

Often the excitement and enthusiasm coming out of 
a training workshop will last only until the realities 
of everyday work return. How can the community 
maintain the enthusiasm of residents and local 
government personnel who come together to work on the 
implementation and evaluation of community policing 
after the training ends?

 After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the American 
Red Cross called for volunteers to enter its training 
programs, not only for the current emergency, but also 
for future crises. The head of the Red Cross stated that 
although there had been a great influx of volunteers after 
September 11, 2001, interest had waned over time, and 
many of those who had been certified were no longer 
active, necessitating the call for new volunteers.

When a crisis occurs, a community will mobilize and 
respond. Politicians sponsor town meetings, community 
organizations ratchet up their meetings, and interest is 
at an all-time high. Task forces are organized, and small 
group meetings are planned. In the ensuing months, a 
core group of people work to resolve the issue(s) that 
brought them together. 

Once the immediacy of an event is over, people tend to 
go back to their daily lives. Among those who attempt 
to carry on are activists whose job is to be involved in 
the community. Many Neighborhood Watch groups 
continue, gaining and loosing strength at different 
times of the year. Other communities have orange-vest 
or orange-hat patrols comprising a small number of 
dedicated souls. 

Life tends to get in the way of efforts to maintain the 
momentum and enthusiasm of these groups. But community 
policy requires community involvement, so what does it take 
to keep community policing vital and active?

Just as leadership is a key to implementing community 
policing at the organizational level, it is also important 
for maintaining enthusiasm. Survey respondents offered 
that not only is leadership important, follow-up is also 
needed. Government and community leaders must 
constantly emphasize the importance of the task at hand 
and encourage involvement on the part of those who will 
benefit from community policing. 


This leadership must maintain contact with committee or 
group members, encouraging them, providing information, 
and receiving feedback. There must be a cheerleader. If several 
groups are involved, someone should serve as liaison to share 
information among the various groups, committees, and 
individuals. The liaison is the administrative glue that keeps 
the groups interested, involved, and in the information loop.

Maintaining the interest of a community is difficult, 
especially when a crisis is not at hand. Failure to actively 
engage the community does not necessarily mean that the 
programs or strategies are not worthwhile. It does mean 
that those who initially came together because of a crisis 
have other priorities in their lives, and it most likely will 
take another crisis to garner their interest again.

Ensuring Sustainability 

How can community policing be institutionalized, in 
whatever form is decided by the community, so that 
it can withstand changes within local government and 
police administrations?

There are no simple answers for ensuring the 
sustainability of community policing. Policing, for all 
of its problems, periods of corruption, successes, and 
failures, has managed to survive because it is needed in 
any society or culture that wants to maintain its values 
and operate within a set of laws. The rule of law helps 
maintain order and gives people a sense of security that 
ultimately makes for a better quality of life.

Local government officials who participated in the 
training conducted by ICMA proposed that written 
policies and continued successful practices are important 
for sustaining community policing. If the city manager 
or county administrator emphasizes the importance of 
public involvement by adopting performance measures 
that take into account interaction and communication 
between the police and the community, it will promote 
the institutional procedures necessary to support 
community policing.

Ultimately though, there must be support from the police. 
The law enforcement commander and first-line supervisors 
play a critical role in sustaining community policing. 
By aligning department policy and practices with an 
orientation toward community service rather than strictly 
providing law enforcement, police administrators can 
foster a work environment that will contribute to a greater 
quality of life in the community If police officers are vested 
in the practice, find it helpful for doing their jobs, and see 
its benefits in the community, community policing will 
likely be around for the long term.

Community policing must become the way of doing 
business, and not be seen as a new initiative. While 
community policing initially can be seen as a journey, 
every journey has an end. Akin to when the children ask, 
Are we there yet? someone has to say, Yes, this is where 
we are supposed to be.


Assessing Results

Developing and maintaining a successful community 
policing effort requires considering at the outset how it 
will be evaluated and assessing the results over time. The 
community must have some sense that it has reached its 
destination and that the effort is accomplishing what it 
set out to do.

Defining a Mission

Evaluating the success of community policing begins with 
defining its mission. The community must decide what it 
hopes to accomplish through community policing before 
it can begin to assess whether the approach and adopted 
strategies work. 

Defining a mission is complicated. All too often, mission 
statements become a conglomeration of mission, values, 
beliefs, and strategies. Consider the following example:

The mission of the [Anytown] Police Department is:

To safeguard freedom by preserving life and 
property, protecting the constitutional rights of 
individuals, maintaining order, and encouraging 
respect for the rule of law by the proper 
enforcement thereof.

To earn the respect of all individuals, including 
minority and disadvantaged persons, by 
maintaining a knowledgeable, responsive, 
well-trained, and accountable work force that 
discharges its duties and responsibilities with 
evidence of fairness, tolerance, and equality.

To reduce the opportunity for the commission 
of crime by implementing effective crime-
prevention strategies, fully investigating 
crimes when they occur, and expeditiously 
apprehending criminal offenders.

To identify, address, and resolve the root causes 
of community problems and concerns in concert 
with citizen groups and representatives through 
the use of community oriented policing strategies.

While the statement is laudable in the values it expresses, 
not many agency personnel would be able to recite it 
in its entirety without making a significant effort to 
memorize it. The statement is all-encompassing in its 
nature, promising virtually everything to everyone. 

A mission statement needs to be clear, concise, and easily 
understood by all stakeholders. It should tell the world 
the primary purpose of the organization. If there is a 
need to clarify the meaning of the statement or there 
are questions about its meaning, the statement is not 
fulfilling its intended purpose.


Two examples of good mission statements include:

The Glendora Police Department, in partnership with 
the community, is committed to enhancing the safety 
and security of the community by providing professional 
enforcement service. From the city of Glendora, 
California (population 52,500).

Safety, prevention, and services through community 
partnership and law enforcement. From the city of 
Holland, Michigan (population 16,864).

Both statements reflect what the respective law enforcement 
agencies view as important. The statements focus on the 
desired outcomes and results for their communities. They 
also are easy for agency personnel and community members 
to understand, remember, and repeat. 

Setting Goals and Objectives

Goals and objectives provide the means for fulfilling 
the mission of community policing. They need to be 
integrated and thoughtfully constructed as part of a 
broader plan for community policing. Without such a 
comprehensive approach, community policing efforts will 
likely become a disparate list of programs and initiatives 
that achieve no lasting effects in the community.

Goals define the end results the community wants to 
realize through community policing, and they must be 
mission-related. Goals represent the destination, the place 
where the community ultimately wants to be. Goals, 
therefore, need to be specific, measurable, and attainable 
over a given period, with a mix of short-, intermediate, 
and long-term goals. 

Goals should also be within the power of the community 
and the police department to achieve. For example, the 
goal of having a crime-free community is impossible 
to achieve because the causes of crime are numerous, 
and there is simply no way to control all the variables 
that lead to crime. More realistic examples of goals for 
community policing might include the following:

Initiate a neighborhood improvement program.

Increase the number of Neighborhood Watch 
programs.

Create a citizen ride-along program.

Work with local schools and community groups 
to establish a K12 program for drug prevention.

Have the racial and ethnic make-up of the police 
department more closely match the community 
served.

Enhance communication with limited-English-
speaking residents.


Objectives specify how the goal will be met by outlining 
the tasks and activities that will be undertaken to 
achieve a goal. Objectives are tools for meeting a goal. 
Returning to a goal from above, Initiate a neighborhood 
improvement program, examples of objectives for 
achieving this goal might include the following:

Establish a monthly walk-through by police 
beat officers to look for and ticket unlicensed or 
abandoned vehicles.

Assign the code enforcement staff to review, 
each month, neighborhood buildings to look for 
broken windows or other damages to property, 
both public and private.

Involve public works employees in a monthly 
check for needed repairs to sidewalks, curbs and 
gutters, low tree branches, and potholes.

Develop a neighborhood e-newsletter and web 
site to report current happenings.

The terms goals and objectives can be easily confused. 
A simple question can help clarify the difference between 
the two: Is this an end or a means to an end? Goals are 
the end; objectives are the means to the end.

Developing Appropriate Community 
Policing Performance Measurements

Traditional policing tends to focus on crime rates, arrests 
made, convictions secured, and other measures that the 
police have very little ability to control. Much of daily 
police work focuses on responding to emergencies and 
other calls for service, for example, redirecting traffic after 
an accident or quieting a neighborhood party that has 
gotten a bit loud. Police organizations do many things, 
the aggregate of which constitutes the output of a police 
organization. Maguire and Uchida argue that relying 
on arrest, clearance, and crime statistics as measures of 
police productivity simply does not adequately reflect the 
quantity and quality of the overall output.20

When selecting appropriate community policing 
performance measurements, it is important to understand 
what performance measurements can and cannot do. 
They can help determine if progress is being made toward 
achieving community goals and objectives by providing a 
basis for evaluation and accountability. They also can be 
used for comparative rating within the police department 
over time or with other police departments.

Deciding on what kind of data to collect to measure 
the effectiveness of community policing strategies is 
challenging. Duffee et al. note that groups need to select 
performance measures that examine the process as well 
as the outcome in order to determine not only the results 
achieved, but how those results were achieved so that 

20 Maguire, Edward R. and Craig 
D. Uchida. Measurement and 
Explanation in the Comparative 
Study of American Police 
Organizations. In Measurement 
and Analysis of Crime and 
Justice; Criminal Justice 2000, 
V 4, P 491557, David Duffee, 
ed. National Criminal Justice 
Reference Service, Document 
No. 182411, 2000. 


they can learn from success and failure.21 Performance 
measurements are not a substitute for a careful and 
thorough evaluation of whether a specific strategy or 
program is producing the desired results. Theodore 
Poister, author of Measuring Performance in Public and 
Nonprofit Organizations, points out that performance 
measures cannot by themselves determine cause and 
effect. Nor can they definitely say whether a program or 
agency is responsible for producing the results observed.22

Just as community policing must be tailored to the 
needs and desires of the individual community, so must 
the performance measurements. There are a variety of 
performance measurements that a community could 
adopt to help determine if progress is being made toward 
its goals and objectives for community policing. Selecting 
community policing performance measures most 
appropriate for a given community is largely a function of 
how the community intends to use them (for budgeting, 
strategic planning, quality improvement) and what kind 
of resources (money, staff, equipment) it wants to devote 
to collecting the data.

Examples of Performance 
Measurements

The ICMA Center for Performance Measurement (CPM) 
is dedicated to helping local governments measure, 
compare, and improve municipal service delivery. ICMAs 
Comparative Performance Measurement Program 
currently assists more than 150 cities and counties in the 
United States and Canada with the collection, analysis, 
and application of performance information.

CPM annually surveys its members about community 
policing indicators. The presence of community policing 
is viewed as an indicator of favorable relations between 
police and the community. Table 2 lists the questions 
that are asked on the survey.

CPM also gathers data on citizen satisfaction 
indicators because one of the underlying purposes 
of community policing is to improve the perception 
of safety and neighborhood quality of life. The 
participating jurisdiction or local government 
department conducts the citizen surveys and sends 
the data to CPM. Table 3 lists the questions about 
citizen satisfaction.

CPMs indicators are by no means the only examples of 
possible community policing performance measurements. 
Carter describes a number of potential performance 
measurements that might be used to gauge the 
effectiveness of community policing. His suggestions 
include the following:

- Types of problems within the community

- Alternative solutions to the problems

21 Duffee et al, Community 
Building Measures.

22 Poister, Theodore H., 
Measuring Performance 
in Public and Nonprofit 
Organizations, San Francisco, 
California: Jossey-Bass, 2003.


- Solutions that have been implemented

- Quality of the relationship between the police 
and other departments and agencies

- Fear of crime

- Signs of crime within the community; for 
example, broken windows or graffiti 

- Employee job satisfaction

- Degree of citizen involvement in program 
implementation and problem-solving activities

- Complaints about police behavior (looking at 
the types of complaints, not numbers)

- Responsiveness to citizen demands

- Effectiveness of the management system

- Efficiency of the management system

- Crime patterns

- Patterns in the flow and distribution of unlawful 
commodities

- Changes in demography.23 

Gary T. Marx, professor emeritus in sociology, M.I.T., 
advocates the value of using performance measurements 
that come from sources external to the police department. 
External measures in the form of citizen feedback can 
help departments better understand what citizens see as 
their needs, what priorities they have, what experiences 
they have had in police encounters, and how they view 
particular situations.24 He suggests that actual public 
behavior can be considered as performance measurements, 
particularly those that indicate citizen cooperation or 
hindrance. Examples he offers include the following:

- Quantity and quality of information about 
serious crimes from the general public

- Damage to police property and false alarms

- Attacks on police

- Citizens assisting officers in need of help

- Proportion of those sought as witnesses who 
agree to testify

- Number and nature of complaints and 
compliments about police.25

23 Carter, David L., Ph.D., 
Considerations in Program 
Development and Evaluation of 
Community Policing. A policy 
paper for the Witchita State 
University Regional Community 
Policing Institute, 2000. www.
wsurcpi.org/papers/policy_papers/
CP%20Devel%20and%20Eval.
pdf.

24 Marx, Gary T. Alternative 
Measures of Police Performance, 
Criminal Justice Research, 
E. Viano, ed., Lanham, 
Maryland: Lexington Books, 
1976. http://web.mit.educ/
gtmarx/www/alt.html.

25 Ibid.


Table 2. Community Policing (CP) Indicators

Does your department have a formal community policing program for officers?

Does your department assess citizen attitudes toward your community policing program at least annually?

Does your department have a formal program for training citizens to establish partnerships with police?

Does your department measure citizen fear of crime at least annually?

Does your department meet with representative groups in the community to discuss police-community 
relations problems and potential solutions at least annually?

Does your department meet with representative groups in the community to deal with problems that require a 
multi-agency response at least annually?

Is decision making decentralized to precinct commanders?

Are beat assignments permanent?

Does your department have a program in which an officer is assigned as liaison to neighborhood associations?

Does your department have a program for crime-free multifamily housing program (officer assigned)?

Please list any community policing performance measures your jurisdiction currently collects.

Does your jurisdiction have a formal procedure for reviewing complaints against sworn personnel? If yes, please 
check the term that best describes your departments complaint review procedure.

. Internal review . Citizen oversight . Internal review with citizen oversight . Citizen review

How many complaints were made against sworn personnel during the reporting period?

How many complaints against sworn personnel were sustained during the reporting period?

Percentage of complaints that were sustained during the reporting period (calculated).

Number sustained complaints per 100 sworn personnel (calculated)

Source: ICMA Center for 
Performance Measurement. Data 
available for FY 19962005.


Table 3. Citizen Satisfaction Indicators

Year administered

Method of administration 

Number of surveys distributed (not percentage) 

Number of surveys completed and returned (not percentage) 

Response rate (calculated) 

Survey Questions (based on scale below)
1. Very safe. 2. Somewhat safe. 3. Somewhat unsafe. 4. Very unsafe. 5. Dont know.

How safe would you feel walking alone in your neighborhood in general? 
How safe would you feel walking alone in your neighborhood after dark? 
How safe would you feel walking alone in your neighborhood during the day?
How safe would you feel walking alone in business areas after dark?
How safe would you feel walking alone in business areas during the day?
During the past 3 months, were you or anyone in your household the victim of any crime?
During the past 12 months, were you or anyone in your household the victim of any crime? If yes, did 
you report all of these crimes to the police?

. Yes . No . Dont remember/dont know

During the past 12 months, have you had any contact with the police department? If yes, how would 
you rate the contact?

. Excellent . Good Fair . Poor . Dont remember/dont know

Source: ICMA Center for 
Performance Measurement. Data 
available FY 19962005.


Marx also points out the following less obtrusive measures:

Number of people out on the street at night 
in a given neighborhood (controlling for 
density, proximity of area to commercial and 
entertainment centers, availability of public 
transportation, and other appropriate factors.)

Increases in the sale of weapons, watch dogs, 
property insurance, special locks and alarm 
systems, use of private guards, letters to media 
about crime, and community police patrols.26

Gathering and Analyzing Data 

Performance measurements generally should focus on 
qualitative information or how well something is being 
done rather than on how much is being done. The 
problem is that qualitative information is much more 
difficult to collect, analyze, and base decisions on than 
quantitative information, according to Carter.27 Creative 
thinking and inventiveness can help surmount such issues. 

Identifying the types of data to collect and how to collect 
those data should be a joint effort of the police and 
the community. The process of arriving at a common 
understanding of how performance will be measured will 
enable all involved to better assess the effectiveness of 
community policing strategies. Community organizations 
and neighborhood groups can also be helpful in 
collecting information, for example, by distributing 
and gathering community surveys or conducting 
neighborhood straw polls. Such efforts also help build 
awareness of the community policing effort.

William Coplin and Carol Dwyer, authors of Does 
Your Government Measure Up?, offer a list of what 
they consider the bare essentials or steps any law 
enforcement agency, including local departments, should 
take when implementing a system for performance 
measurement. These steps include the following:

Complete a state or national accreditation 
process. (The most common national program 
is the Law Enforcement Accreditation Program 
offered by the Commission on Accreditation 
for Law Enforcement Agencies [CALEA]. Some 
states also offer accreditation programs.)

Conduct customer surveys at least once a year.

Maintain a high case-clearance rate. (A high 
case-clearance rate indicates a high percentage of 
criminal cases resolved by the agency.)

Obtain feedback from employees and the public.

Maintain a clearly defined and adequately 
funded community involvement program. (For 
example, a citizens police academy can help 
educate citizens on agency operations.)

26 Ibid.

27 Carter, Considerations in 
Program Development and 
Evaluation of Community Policing.


Establish clear procedures for handling 
complaints against the law enforcement agency.

Promote nondiscriminatory personnel 
practices.28 

Coplin and Dwyer also recommend that agencies 
make a practice of adopting benchmarks for the cost 
of police services and the efficiency of police services.29 
Such standards allow local government officials and the 
public to compare results over time; for example, helping 
to determine how the agency is performing this year 
compared with previous years. Benchmarks also enable 
comparisons to be made with other communities of 
similar size and circumstances.

There are several tools that can be used to collect such 
qualitative performance measurement data. Surveys of 
the community and members of the department can 
help measure perceptions of how community policing 
is working in general or about specific strategies that 
have been adopted. Table 3 (page 21) offers examples of 
pertinent questions that could be asked on such a survey.

Personal interviews and focus groups, again with the 
community at large or within the department, can 
reveal current concerns or emerging issues of interest 
to the community policing effort. A focus group with 
neighborhood residents, for example, might identify 
concerns such as poor lighting on a particular street 
or shrubbery maintenance in a pocket park as problems 
that affect public safety.

Observational data, collected by simply recording what 
a person sees, offers an important starting point for 
drawing comparisons over time. For example, data can be 
collected on how neighborhood parks are used and who is 
using the parks. Likewise, the condition of neighborhood 
housing and the general streetscape offer important 
information on the quality of the environment in which 
residents live. Photographs and videos of a neighborhood 
can document the transformation of an area and generate 
support for future activities.

Geospatial analyses, using geographical information 
systems (GIS) technology, are especially useful for 
identifying where different kinds of crimes are happening 
in the community and under what conditions. When 
combined with a solid understanding of crime theory, 
crime mapping helps guide police action and determine 
the best way to respond.30 These data can be gathered 
fairly easily from police service call reports, which are 
location-based. A GIS analysis, for example, can show 
if previous domestic violence calls have come from the 
location of a service call and help officers prepare an 
appropriate response.31

Temporal analyses, which look at when and how often 
different kinds of crime occur, can be used to understand 
community crime patterns. A temporal analysis may 

28 Coplin, William D., and Carol 
Dwyer, Does Your Government 
Measure Up? Syracuse, New York: 
Syracuse University Press, 2000.

29 Ibid.

30 Eck, John E., Spence Chainey, 
James G. Cameron, Michael 
Leitner, and Ronald E. Wilson, 
Mapping Crime: Understanding 
Hot Spots, National Institute of 
Justice MAPS Program Special 
Report, 2005.

31 Anderson, Eric A., Overview, 
The GIS Guidebook for Local 
Government Officials, Cory 
Fleming, Ed., Redlands, 
California: ESRI Press, 2005. 


show, for instance, that much of juvenile crime and 
vandalism happens between 3:00 PM and 6:00 PM, 
after school has let out and before parents have come 
home from work. Such information can enable the 
community to develop appropriate strategies to prevent 
such problems. 

Performance measurements provide critical evidence 
of success or lack thereof. They can serve as a basis for 
making resource allocation decisions based on objective 
criteria. While time, effort, and resources are required 
to collect performance measurement data, the payoff 
comes in having better information with which to make 
decisions about which strategies are working and which 
strategies are not working.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, crime is a part of the social fabric of most 
countries, so the need for policing will never disappear. 
The police, therefore, have a critical role in making 
communities safe and secure. How the police go about 
doing that job is at the heart of community policing.

Much of police work goes on behind the scenes. It is 
not glamorous or exciting, and far different from what is 
portrayed on television and in the movies. Marx points 
out, Assisting at a traffic accident, returning a lost child, 
or arbitrating a family dispute [are the] areas where police 
spend the most time, are most directly helpful to people, 
and probably are the most effective.32 And crime-
prevention efforts, such as mentoring neighborhood 
children or providing security tips to local businesses, 
have long-term benefits for the community that are 
difficult to measure, but important nonetheless.

Community policing helps build stronger bonds with 
the community to accomplish these more routine tasks. 
Adopting a community policing approach does not 
mean radical change overnight; it is not about making 
the big bust or solving the latest crime. Community 
policing involves rethinking the police-community 
relationship, proactively and collaboratively addressing 
citizens concerns,and taking incremental steps together 
to improve the communitys sense of safety and security. 
It is about law enforcement and the community adopting 
a problem-solving approach to public safety and security.

Changing the culture of an organization, particularly 
a police department, is difficult. Culture is composed 
of values, mores, beliefs, and traditions. It is made real 
by the behaviors of those who are part of the culture. 
Changing the culture requires changing behaviors. 
Once it is determined which behaviors will lead to 
safer communities, the task of changing organizational 
and individual behaviors will become apparent. Both 
police personnel and local government officials need 
to manage community expectations by recognizing 
that community policing cannot guarantee a crime-
free or disorder-free community. Even with the best 

32 Marx, Alternative Measures 
of Police Performance.


managed police departments, with the most actively 
involved communities, and the most committed local 
governments, problems will continue to occur because in 
the final analysis human beings are not infallible.

Community policing can and does work, but the 
community must remain motivated and dedicated to 
the ongoing search for solutions. With understanding, 
communication, and cooperation between local 
government officials and the communities they serve, 
communities can be made safer places to live, work, and 
play for everyone.

Summary of Key Community 
Policing Concepts

Community Policing: A Brief History 

Policing has experienced a number of different 
eras, where different philosophies governed 
the management of local police departments. 
This history has greatly influenced the kind of 
relationship the police have with the community.

The concept and practice of community policing 
has been in existence for nearly 3 decades.

Community policing comprises three primary 
elements: community partnerships, problem 
solving, and organizational transformation.

Every community must define for itself what 
community policing involves. There is no one-
size-fits-all strategy that can be adopted to make 
community policing work.

Practical Considerations 

Community policing comes in many different 
forms and involves numerous strategies. These 
strategies need to be integrated with each 
other and built into a comprehensive plan for 
community policing based on the needs of the 
individual community.

Societal problems that are the root cause 
of crime cannot be addressed by a police 
department alone. Solving problems such as 
unemployment and drug abuse requires the 
involvement of agencies established specifically 
to address such problems.

Measuring the effectiveness of community 
policing strategies is not a simple task; it requires 
defining specific, measurable, and attainable 
goals set for a given period.


City managers and other local government 
leaders must help break down the territorial 
barriers that exist among local government 
agencies that prevent the successful 
implementation of community policing and 
foster cross-agency partnerships.

Attention needs to be directed toward 
maintaining community interest and enthusiasm 
for community policing. Regular communication 
and coordination among community stakeholders 
are keys to a sustained and successful effort.

Community policing strategies must be deemed 
effective by the community to be sustained. 
Written policies and continued successful 
practices can help ensure that the police receive 
the support they need to be effective.

Dedicated resources (staff time, financial 
support, for example) are required for problem 
solving and partnership efforts to support 
community policing.

Assessing Results 

A clear understanding of the police departments 
mission is needed. A mission statement must 
focus on the overall goal of the department 
rather than on how the police will do their jobs.

Defining the goals and desired outcomes of 
policing is more important than coming to 
an agreement on a definition of community 
policing.

Much of community policing involves managing 
expectations so that people understand the 
limitations of the strategy.

Measuring the effectiveness of community 
policing is not a simple task, but performance 
measurements are needed if the strategy is to be 
sustained over the long term.


Appendix: Community 
Policing Checklist

 Trojanowicz, Robert C., and Bonnie Bucqeroux, 
eds., Community Policing: How to Get Started, 2nd ed., 
Cincinnati, Ohio: Anderson Publishing Co., 1988.

In their groundbreaking text, Robert Trojanowicz and 
Bonnie Bucqeroux defined 10 principles of community 
policing. While these principles continue to be refined 
by the profession, they have value for guiding a discussion 
of how community policing should be viewed within the 
community. The ten principles are the following:

1. Philosophy and organizational strategy. 

2. Commitment to community empowerment.

3. Decentralized and personalized policing.

4. Immediate and long-term proactive problem 
solving.

5. Ethics, legality, responsibility, and trust.

6. Expanding the police mandate.

7. Helping those with special needs.

8. Grassroots creativity and support.

9. Internal change.

10. Building for the future.

Based on these principles, the checklist below was 
developed to assist communities assess their community 
policing programs. Use this checklist to review your 
police department periodically and gauge its progress in 
maximizing community policing.

Vision/Values/Mission

- Has the police department written or revised 
these statements to reflect an organization-wide 
commitment to the philosophy and principles of 
community policing?

- Does the process include soliciting input from 
all levels of the police department, including 
sworn, nonsworn, and civilian personnel?

- Does the process include soliciting input from 
outside the police department: the community, 
business, civic officials, public agencies, 
community institutions (schools, hospitals, and 
religious organizations), nonprofit agencies, 
formal and informal community leaders, and 
community residents?


Code of Ethics

- Has the police department written or revised 
a code of ethics that reflects the principles of 
community policing?

- Does producing a new code of ethics encourage 
input from inside and outside the department?

- Does the code of ethics discuss issues such 
as civility, courtesy, respect for civil rights 
(including the right to privacy), and sensitivity 
to diversity?

Leadership and Management Style

- Does the department support and exhibit 
leadership at all levels in implementing, 
institutionalizing, and maintaining community 
policing? Does the department empower the 
community to support and exhibit leadership in 
this regard?

- Does the implementation plan reflect inverting 
the power pyramid, shifting power, authority, 
and responsibility to line level?

- Do managers serve as facilitators who 
access resources from inside and outside the 
department in service of community building 
and problem solving?

- Do managers act as coaches who inspire and 
instruct?

- Do managers act as mentors who guide and 
support?

- Does the internal management style exhibit a 
striving for collaboration and consensus?

- Does the department have a mechanism to 
prevent, identify, and deal with burnout?

Role of Top Command

- How does top command exhibit leadership 
internally and externally for the commitment 
to, and changes required by, implementing 
community policing?

- How does top command express the philosophy 
and 10 principles in its work?

- How will top command translate the vision 
into practice? How will that planning process 
model community building and problem solving 
internally?

- How will top command plan for dealing with 
the internal resistance?


- Does top command cut red tape and remove 
bureaucratic obstacles that stifle creativity?

- How does top command create a structure 
to allow new ideas from all levels of the 
organization, including line-level personnel, to 
bubble to the top?

- Does top command back those who make well-
intentioned mistakes?

- Does top command jump the chain of command 
on occasion to reinforce the commitment to 
community policing within the organization?

- How has top command operationalized and 
institutionalized zero tolerance for abuse of 
authority and use of force?

- How does top command deal with marginal 
employees who are unwilling or unable to 
translate the community policing practice into 
the hard and risky work of effecting real change?

Role of Chief Executive 

- How will the CEO deal with the internal 
resistance/backlash, particularly from middle 
managers, first-line supervisors, and others who 
perceive community policing as a rejection of 
the prevailing police culture?

- How can the CEO cut red tape and remove 
bureaucratic obstacles that stifle creativity?

- How does the CEO express openness to new 
ideas from all levels of the department, including 
line-level personnel?

- Does the CEO back those who make well-
intentioned mistakes?

- Does the CEO jump the chain of command 
on occasion to reinforce the commitment to 
community policing within the department?

- How has the CEO committed the organization to 
deal with the small percentage of bad apples whose 
actions can undermine the trust of the community?

- How will the CEO deal with marginal 
employees who are unwilling or unable to 
translate the community policing practice into 
the hard and risky work of effecting real change?


Role of Middle Managers and First-Line 
Supervisors

- How do middle management and first-line 
supervisors exhibit leadership internally and 
externally for the commitment to and changes 
required by implementing community policing?

- How do middle management and first-line 
supervisors express the philosophy and 10 
principles in their work: leading by example?

- Are middle management and first-line 
supervisors supporting the departments 
transition to community policing?

- How do middle managers and first-line 
supervisors practice the principles of community 
policing internally within the department?

- Are middle managers and first-line supervisors 
encouraged and supported for cutting red tape 
and removing barriers that inhibit implementing 
community policing as outlined in the 
community policing principles?

- Are middle management and first-line 
supervisors given the autonomy to innovate?

- How do middle managers and first-line 
supervisors express their roles as facilitators, 
models, coaches, and mentors?

- How does the department support their efforts 
at innovation, including support if well-
intentioned efforts fail?

- How does the department support middle 
managers and first-line supervisors who are 
attempting to redefine success through positive, 
qualitative change achieved in the community?

- How does the department address its typical 
concerns that the transition to community 
policing threatens to reduce its power and 
authority? (This may become a reality in 
departments that flatten during the change to 
decentralization.)

Role of Line Officers

- How do line officers exhibit leadership internally 
and externally for the commitment to, and 
changes required by, implementing community 
policing?

- How do line officers express the philosophy and 
10 principles through their work?


- Do line-level officers engage in community 
building and problem solving in their work? Are 
they given the time, freedom, autonomy, and 
opportunity to do so?

- Do line-level officers receive support from 
management in carrying out their commitment 
to community policing?

- How do ideas from line level move upward 
within the department?

- Has the job really changed?

Role of Nonsworn and Civilian 
Personnel

- How do nonsworn and civilian personnel 
exhibit leadership internally and externally for 
the commitment to, and changes required by, 
implementing community policing?

- How do nonsworn and civilian personnel express 
the philosophy and 10 principles in their work?

- Do nonsworn and civilian personnel engage in 
community building and problem solving within 
the scope of their work? Are they given the 
freedom, autonomy, and opportunity to do so?

- Do nonsworn and civilian personnel receive 
support from management in carrying out their 
commitment to community policing?

- How do ideas from this level move upward 
within the department?

- Has the job really changed?

Information Management

- Does the organization have a system to collect, 
analyze, and share relevant information on 
problems in the community internally (among 
all levels of the department, including sworn, 
nonsworn, and civilian personnel) and externally 
(with the broader community)?

- Does the department gather and analyze 
information on social and physical disorder and 
quality-of-life concerns in addition to crime data? 
Is the information analyzed by geographic areas?

- Are data and analysis provided in their most 
useful forms?

- Are there formal and informal opportunities for 
information gathered at the line level to bubble 
to the top within the department? Is there a two-
way flow of information?


- Are there formal and informal opportunities 
for officers assigned permanent beats to share 
information with other officers who patrol the 
same areas? Are such opportunities encouraged 
at all levels?

- Has the organization developed a means of 
capturing and documenting (tracking and 
evaluating) problems solved in neighborhood 
areas including solutions that do not involve 
arrest or other traditional data points?

Planning/Evaluation

- Has the department devoted sufficient time and 
resources to make the most of strategic planning 
to implement community policing?

- What mechanisms are used to solicit input from 
inside and outside the organization to ensure 
input from line-level police personnel and 
community residents?

- Does the strategic planning process itself 
provide opportunities to begin building new 
partnerships?

- Does the strategic planning process itself provide 
opportunities to empower line-level personnel?

- As a reality check, can the participants involved 
in planning clearly describe what the plan is 
designed to achieve?

- How does the department inject objectivity 
into the process, as a guarantee that the tough 
questions will be asked?

- Does the monitoring process include capturing 
qualitative as well as quantitative outcomes?

- Can the planning/program evaluation staff cross 
organizational lines and coordinate directly with 
management information staff?

- Have program assessments changed to reflect the 
many different kinds of success, such as overall 
harm reduction?

- Is there a plan to keep modifying and tweaking the 
implementation plan? Is there a strategy for staying 
abreast of new opportunities and new problems?


Resources/Finances

- Have funding priorities been revised to reflect 
community policing priorities?

- Has the department realistically analyzed its 
resource needs to implement community 
policing? Has the police department clearly 
justified the need for additional resources?

- Has the police department fully explored local, 
state, and federal grants available for community 
policing?

- Are residents of the jurisdiction willing to pay 
more in taxes to obtain community policing?

- Has the police department received any 
fully private sources of funding (businesses, 
foundations, for example)?

- Has the police department restructured and 
prioritized workload and services to free up 
patrol time for community policing? Has the 
department worked with the community on 
developing alternatives to traditional handling of 
calls for service?

- Has the police department considered flattening 
the management hierarchy as a means of creating 
more patrol positions for community policing?

- Has the police department considered decentralizing 
(eliminating, reducing, or restructuring specialized 
units) as a means of creating more patrol positions 
for community policing?

- Has the police department made the best possible 
use of civilians and volunteers as a means of freeing 
patrol officer time for community policing?

- What mode of transportation is the best for officers 
engaged in community policing in different areas with 
different needs (e.g., patrol cars, scooters, bicycles)?

- Do neighborhood-based officers require office 
space? Is free space available? What about 
furniture? What about utilities?

Recruiting

- Has the police department considered expanding 
its recruiting efforts to reach college students in 
nontraditional fields, such as education and social 
work, to educate them about how community 
policing might provide an appealing alternative?

- Has the department succeeded in finding ways 
to attract women and minorities?

- Does recruiting literature explain new the new 
demands required by a community policing 
approach? Does it also discuss job satisfaction?


Selection and Hiring

- Has the department conducted a job-task 
analysis of the new community policing entry-
level officer position and developed a new job 
description?

- Do individuals and groups inside and outside 
the department have opportunities for input in 
developing criteria for the selection process?

- Do selection criteria emphasize verbal and 
written communication skills, the ability to work 
closely with people from all walks of life, and 
interest in developing skills in conflict resolution 
and creative problem solving?

- Do civil service requirements reflect the 
principles of community policing?

- Are candidates directly informed about the 
expectations of officers involved in community 
policing?

- Is the screening process designed to weed out 
those who categorically reject the principles of 
community policing?

Training

- Do plans include the eventual training of 
everyone in the department, sworn, nonsworn 
and civilians, in the philosophy, practice, and 
principles of community policing?

- Do plans include building community policing 
into all training opportunities: recruit, field 
training, in-service, roll call, and management?

- Has the department recently conducted a 
comprehensive training skills needs assessment 
to determine the actual knowledge, skills, and 
abilities needed to perform community policing 
as an officer?

- Does the department provide new and existing 
line-level personnel with sufficient skills training 
in communication, interpersonal relationships, 
conflict resolution, problem solving, and 
sensitivity to diversity?

- Do field training officers practice the principles 
of community policing so that recruits see how 
they are put into practice?

- Does middle managers and first-line supervisors 
training address how their role changes in a 
community policing department?


- Is there a system in place to capture suggestions 
and recommendations on training from individual 
groups inside and outside the department?

- Has the department considered bringing culturally 
representative residents in to recruit training to work 
with recruits on real-life problem-solving exercises? 

- Does the department maintain a library of 
information on a wide range of topics that can 
broaden experience and understanding? Does 
the department provide opportunities for further 
learning through the Internet and the World 
Wide Web?

Performance Evaluation

- Are performance evaluations based on job 
descriptions that reflect the principles of 
community policing and that emphasize taking 
action to make a positive difference in the 
community as the yardstick of success?

- Did the process of developing performance 
evaluations reflect broad input from inside and 
outside the organization?

- Are performance evaluations written from the 
customers point of view (the public who are the 
recipients of police service), rather than serve the 
departments bureaucratic needs?

- Do performance evaluations encourage risk-
taking by avoiding penalties for well-intentioned 
mistakes and by rewarding creativity?

- Do performance evaluations for managers and 
supervisors reflect the shift from controller to 
facilitator, as well as the roles of model, coach, 
and mentor?

- Do performance evaluations for managers and 
supervisors reward efforts to delegate not only 
responsibility but authority? 

- Do performance evaluations for managers and 
supervisors reward them for cutting red tape and 
removing bureaucratic obstacles that can stifle 
creativity?

- Do performance evaluations for managers 
and supervisors reward their efforts to secure 
scarce resources for community building and 
community-based problem solving?

- Do performance evaluations for managers 
and supervisors reward them for developing 
collaborative partnerships with individuals and 
groups outside the organization?


- Do performance evaluations for managers and 
supervisors reward them for efforts to generate 
internal support for community policing?

- Do performance evaluations for managers and 
supervisors reward actions taken to reduce 
internal/friction/backlash?

- Do performance evaluations for special units 
(e.g., detective, traffic officers) reward members 
for initiating, participating in, and/or supporting 
community policing, specifically community 
building and community-based problem solving?

- Do performance evaluations for nonsworn and 
civilian personnel reward them for initiating, 
participating in, and/or supporting community 
policing, specifically community building and 
community-based problem solving?

- Do performance evaluations for patrol officers 
reward them for using their free patrol time to 
initiate community building and community-
based problem solving?

- Do performance evaluations for officers reward 
meeting the special needs of specific groups: 
women, the elderly, minorities, juveniles?

- Do performance evaluations for officers reward 
sensitivity to diversity?

- Do performance evaluations for officers reward 
developing and strengthening collaborative 
partnerships?

- Does the performance evaluation process allow 
the community opportunities for formal and 
informal input into the assessment?

- Do performance evaluations for officers reward 
them for initiating and maintaining community 
building and community-based problem-solving 
initiatives? Creativity? Innovation? Risk-taking? 
Preventing problems?

- Do performance evaluations for officers gauge 
success on whether their efforts attempted to 
improve quality of life in the community?


Promotions

- Did the development of promotional criteria 
include broad input from inside and outside the 
organization?

- Do promotional criteria reflect qualitative as well 
as quantitative criteria?

- Do promotional exams, interviews, and 
oral boards require candidates to express the 
knowledge and support for the philosophy and 
principles of community policing?

- Do civil service requirements reflect the philosophy 
and principles of community policing?

- Does the process allow one or more 
representatives from the community to sit on 
oral board panels?

- Does the promotional process result in managers 
and supervisors able and eager to make the 
transition from the controller to facilitator 
model? Does it produce managers who act as 
models, coaches, and facilitators?

- Do officers who work directly in the community 
receive credit in the promotional process for the 
skills and expertise acquired by serving in this 
capacity?

- Does the promotional process recognize the 
well-intentioned failure or mistakes that should 
not necessarily be a minus? Just as a clean slate is 
not necessarily a plus if it is indicative of a rote 
and perfunctory performance?

- Are the right people being promoted?

Discipline

- Has the department adopted a determined 
leadership approach toward those whose behavior 
has the potential to undermine community policing?

- Does the department provide formal and 
informal support to whistleblowers on this issue?

- Does the department reject the excuse that trivial 
infractions do not warrant the time expended on 
paperwork to enforce discipline?

- Is the community a partner in accountability?

- Has the department adopted a zero-tolerance 
approach to abuse of authority and use of 
excessive force?


Honors/Awards

- Does the formal and informal honors and 
awards process allow those who do an 
extraordinary job of community-based problem 
solving to be recognized for the efforts?

Unions

- Are unions directly and immediately involved as 
partners in the planning process to implement 
community policing?

- How does the police department plan to educate 
union representatives about the need to change 
some terms in the contract to implement 
community policing (e.g., providing officers 
greater work autonomy and flexibility, assigning 
officers to permanent beats and work hours)?

- Should the union address the issue of whether 
community policing is implemented as a change 
for all patrol officers or as a specialized assignment?

Structuring and Delivery of 
Patrol Services

- Must the CEO decide whether to deliver 
neighborhood-level community policing with a 
generalist or a specialist approach?

- Does the police department prioritize calls to 
free patrol time for community building and 
community-based problem solving by all patrol 
officers?

- Has the department involved the community 
in decisions about prioritizing calls for service? 
Are call takers and dispatchers trained in an 
acceptable protocol to explain to callers why 
they may have to wait for a response to a 
nonemergency call or have their call handled by 
an alternative? Are communications personnel 
trained to use discretion in these situations?

- How do various levels of the police department 
address the need to educate the public about 
the rationale for prioritizing calls as a means 
of enhancing opportunities for community 
engagement and problem solving?

- Does the police department have a range of 
alternatives ready to handle nonemergency calls 
for service to relieve officers of the responsibility?


Beat Boundaries (where applicable for 
community policing officers 
and teams)

- Do beat boundaries correspond to neighborhood 
boundaries?

- Do other city services recognize the police beat 
boundaries?

- Considering the severity of the problems in the 
area, is the size of the beat manageable?

- Are patrol officer/teams assigned to a specific 
area long enough to make a difference?

- Does the police department have a policy to 
reduce or eliminate cross-beat dispatching? Are 
dispatchers adhering to the policy?

- Are patrol officers assigned to beats assured that 
they will not be used to substitute whenever 
priority or permanent vacancies occur elsewhere 
in the department?

- Does the department avoid pulling these officers 
for special duty (e.g., parades, special events)?

- Are patrol officers/teams assigned to permanent 
shifts long enough to make a difference?

- Do work rules permit officers to change their 
hours of work as needed with a minimum or no 
red tape?

- Do officers/teams assigned to beats have the same 
opportunities to receive overtime for appropriate 
activities as other patrol counterparts do?

Assignment Issues

- Has the department clarified and documented 
that putting in unpaid overtime hours in 
the community is appreciated, but that such 
dedication is not a requirement of the job nor 
is it considered in performance review and 
promotional processes?

- Does the assignment process ensure that such 
duty is not used as punishment or as a dumping 
ground for problem officers?

- How has the department addressed the 
perception that this is special duty with special 
perquisites? What strategies are used to reduce 
internal dissent?


Integration of Other Systems

- Has the department considered ways of 
integrating its efforts with other elements of 
the criminal justice system: prosecutors, courts, 
corrections, and probation and parole? Has the 
department explored opportunities to work 
toward a community criminal justice system?

- Has the department considered ways of 
integrating its efforts with other agencies that 
deliver public services: social services, public 
health, mental health, code enforcement? Has 
the department explored opportunities to work 
toward community-oriented public service/
community-oriented government?

- Are the police and community prepared to serve 
as the catalyst to integrate service into a total 
community approach?

- Has the department explored strategies such 
as a neighborhood network center concept as 
a means of encouraging a total community 
approach?

- Is the department planning to take full 
advantage of new technology, including the 
Internet and World Wide Web, as a means of 
interacting with the community?


For More Information

U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services
1100 Vermont Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20530

To obtain details on COPS programs, 
call the COPS Office Response Center at 800.421.6770

Visit COPS Online at www.cops.usdoj.gov

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