Neighborhood-Oriented Policing in Rural Communities: A Program Planning Guide.


MENU TITLE: Neighborhood-Oriented Policing
Series: BJA Monograph
Published: August 1994
107 pages
201,343 bytes

NEIGHBORHOOD-ORIENTED POLICING IN RURAL
COMMUNITIES: A PROGRAM PLANNING GUIDE

Acknowledgments

Production of this monograph would not have been
possible without the hard work of a significant
number of people who are dedicated to the
improvement of policing in America. The Bureau of
Justice Assistance wishes to acknowledge the
contributions of the following individuals and
organizations.

Gary Cordner from Eastern Kentucky University
served as both an editor and contributing author.
He drew upon his experience as a police officer and
small-town police chief to tailor the guide to the
realities of rural law enforcement. 

The National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC)
contributed its considerable expertise in writing
and producing the monograph. Betsy Lindsay
contributed a chapter in cooperation with Bonnie
Wood and Robert Coates, who additionally helped
with reviews. Mac Gray managed the development
process and reviewed each draft.

The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) oversaw
the initial planning of the monograph, and staff
members Drew Diamond, Rana Sampson, and Darrel
Stephens each contributed a chapter to the effort.
Susie Mowry managed the work for PERF and reviewed
the monograph at each step.

Barbara Webster, from the Institute for Law and
Justice, contributed a chapter and served on the
committee that developed the initial framework.

The Community Policing Consortium--composed of the
International Association of Chiefs of Police, the
National Sheriffs' Association, the Police
Executive Research Forum, and the Police
Foundation--prepared the chapter on evaluation.
This chapter was drawn from the BJA-published
monograph entitled Understanding Community
Policing: A Framework for Action.


Margaret Heisler, Program Manager of the
Neighborhood-Oriented Policing Program, Bureau of
Justice Assistance, provided initial guidance and
substantive comments during reviews of each of the
drafts.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction
  Evolving Police Strategies
  Rural Law Enforcement
  Overview of This Monograph

Chapter 2: Getting Started in the Community 
  The Planning Team
    Identifying Planning Team Members  
    Structure and Leadership
  Planning Team Implementation and Maintenance
    Planning
    The Elements of a Plan
  Planning Team Challenges

Chapter 3: Needs Assessment and Planning 
  The Value of a Needs Assessment
  Describing the Community
    Population and Other Demographics
    Economics, Employment, and Housing
    Education and Training
    Health and Welfare
    Other Resources and Issues
  Crime and the Criminal Justice System
    Drug and Related Crime Problem Questions
    Criminal Justice Resources and Strategies
  Community Surveys and Public Forums
  Resource Acquisition
  Implementation
  Monitoring and Evaluation

Chapter 4: Law Enforcement Responsibilities
  Mission
  Strategies
  Internal Assessment
    Staff Capabilities
    Staff Utilization
    Information and Analysis
    Structure
    Supervision and Management
    Executive Leadership
  External Considerations

Chapter 5: Problem Solving

  How Does Problem Solving Work?
    Drug Dealing in Mobile Home Parks
    Peninsula Skating Rink
    Unloading a Problem
    Repeat Calls From a Bar
  How Is Problem Solving Done?
    Scanning
    Analysis
    Response
    Assessment

Chapter 6: Implementation
  The Implementation Plan
    Goals, Objectives, and Tasks 
    Timeframes 
    Communication
    Training
    Monitoring
  Major Challenges
    Officer/Deputy Versus Special Unit
    Managing Change
  Making NOP Work

Chapter 7: Evaluating the Progress of NOP
  Assessing Internal Changes
  Three Criteria for Assessment
    Effectiveness
    Efficiency
    Equity
  Refining the Assessment Process

Appendix A: 25 Reasons to Plan

Appendix B: Traditional Versus Community Policing

Appendix C: Community Policing: Key Operational
Steps

Appendix D: Statement of Purpose, Mission
Statement, Goals, and Call to Action for Portland,
Oregon, Police

Appendix E: Police Management: Principles of
Quality Leadership

Appendix F: Problem Solving: Guide to Collaboration

Appendix G: Problem Solving: Problem Analysis Guide
(Topic Headings)

Appendix H: Problem Solving: The Range of Possible
Alternatives

Appendix I: Problem Solving: Situational Crime
Prevention Techniques

Appendix J: Sources for Further Information

Appendix K: References and Suggested Reading

Chapter 1: Introduction

This monograph can be used by any police or
sheriff's agency. It should be especially useful to
citizens and law enforcement officials in rural and
small town settings. The work was prepared to aid
participants in a national demonstration program--
Innovative Neighborhood-Oriented Policing in Rural
Jurisdictions (Rural INOP)--developed and funded by
the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), Office of
Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The
jurisdictions participating in this program were
selected through competition. The sites are
Caldwell, Idaho; Fort Pierce, Florida; Richmond,
Maine; and Newton County, Indiana.

The focus of this monograph is on redirecting the
use of policing resources to achieve greater
effectiveness in handling public safety problems
such as crime, fear of crime, drug abuse, violence,
and disorder.

This monograph was prepared to help guide the
demonstration program. However, it is part of a
developmental process and should be considered in
that light. As sites implement the concepts and
action steps discussed in the guide, new
information will undoubtedly become available.

Evolving Police Strategies

The basic strategies upon which American law
enforcement has been based for the past few decades
are changing. The so-called professional model has
been criticized for creating too many barriers
between police and citizens. Research revealed that
the cornerstones of modern police operations--
motorized preventive patrol, rapid response, and
followup investigations--are, by themselves,
ineffective.1 Bureaucratic and autocratic police
organizations seem less and less able to satisfy
either the citizens being served (customers) or
their employees.2

Mark Moore and Darrel Stephens recently identified
seven "problematic realities" that now face police
executives and police organizations and that
require creative responses:3

1. The police are having a very tough time dealing
with crime all by
themselves.

2. Effective crime control depends on an effective
working partnership between the police and citizens
in the communities they serve.

3. Public police are losing market share in the
security business.

4. Public police contribute to the quality of life
in their communities in many ways other than by
controlling crime.4

5. The administrative instruments now being used to
ensure accountability and control of police
officers cannot reliably do so.

6. The police are routinely held accountable for
the fairness and economy with which they use force
and authority, as well as money.

7. Rather than seek insulation from political
interference, it is more appropriate for police
agencies to make themselves more accountable to
political institutions and citizens alike.

A variety of police strategies are now being
developed to respond to these problematic
realities. They are often known by their acronyms.
The list below probably only scratches the surface:

o Community-Based Policing (CBP).

o Community-Oriented Policing (COP).

o Citizen-Oriented Police Enforcement (COPE).

o Community Patrol Officer Program (CPOP).

o Neighborhood-Oriented Policing (NOP).

o Police Area Representative (PAR).

o Problem-Oriented Policing (POP).

Although these programs differ in acronyms and
labels and may even have some real differences,
most incorporate the same two important
ingredients: community engagement and problem
solving. They attempt to get citizens and community
institutions to share the responsibility for
dealing with crime and crime-related problems, and
they try to reorient police work away from mere
reactive incident-handling and toward more
proactive and substantive problem solving.

This work tries to avoid getting bogged down in a
debate over which label is best. It occasionally
uses terms such as neighborhood-oriented policing
and community policing when describing the
community engagement function. It sometimes refers
to problem-oriented policing when the focus is on
the problemsolving function. The reader should
ignore the labels and concentrate instead on the
two key ingredients, community engagement and
problem solving, that distinguish developing
strategies from earlier models of policing.5


While on the topic of terminology, it should be
emphasized that when the term "police" is used, it
includes sheriffs, troopers, and other public
police protection personnel, regardless of their
official titles. Similarly, the term "law
enforcement" includes police and sheriffs and
related personnel. Certainly, sheriffs' deputies
and State officers provide a substantial portion of
all "police" services in many rural areas. The term
"police" is used solely for convenience and is not
meant to exclude any law enforcement official with
a different title.

Rural Law Enforcement

Not much has been said about rural law enforcement
in the research literature on policing. Most of
what is known from research about police behavior,
police officer attitudes, police management, police
community relations, and police strategy
effectiveness has come from studies of large
agencies located in metropolitan areas. The
National Institute of Justice of the Office of
Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, is
conducting research on rural policing that will
produce valuable information on the structure and
operation of law enforcement organizations in rural
areas. This information will be available in the
next few years.

There is some relevant basic information, though,
on the structure of American policing.6 For
example, in 1990 there were approximately 3,100
sheriffs' departments and 12,288 general-purpose
local police departments among this country's
17,000 publicly funded State and local law
enforcement agencies.

Of these, 2,268 sheriffs' departments and 11,722
local police departments served areas with fewer
than 50,000 residents. Thus, about 73 percent of
sheriffs' departments and 95 percent of local
police departments served rural populations.

As suggested by these figures, most sheriffs'
departments and local police departments are fairly
small organizations. Well over half of all
sheriffs' departments have fewer than 25 sworn
personnel, while fully half of all local police
departments have fewer than 10 sworn officers.

How successful these small law enforcement agencies
are in dealing with crime, drugs, and other
problems is not well documented.7 Crime rates and
other indicators are generally lower in rural areas
than in urban areas, but they may be rising faster.
Drug-related problems in some rural areas are just
as serious in proportion to population as in many
metropolitan areas. Rural agencies generally deal
with smaller-scale problems, but they have fewer
resources as well. They have fewer personnel and
are much less likely to employ specialists,
although they may have specialized services
available to them from Federal, State, county, or
neighboring local law enforcement agencies.

The stereotypical view is that police officers in
rural areas naturally work more closely with the
public than do officers in metropolitan areas. To
what extent this stereotype is accurate is not at
all clear. Many rural areas have quite transient
populations and include within them towns and small
cities with urban-like problems. Although it does
seem to be the case that rural communities enjoy
stronger informal social controls, it does not
necessarily follow that residents of rural areas
are any more (or less) interested than urban
dwellers in participating with police in formal
programs.

The proper approach to take might well be to
recognize that considerable diversity exists among
rural communities and rural law enforcement
agencies--at least as much diversity as is found
among metropolitan areas. Each community needs to
carefully identify its own crime, drug, and related
problems. Response to these problems should involve
both police-citizen collaboration and a problem-
solving approach, but the mix and nature of
problems will vary from place to place, as will
community characteristics and police capabilities.

Overview of This Monograph

The remainder of this monograph is about
developing, implementing, and assessing a rural NOP
program. Chapters 2 and 3 have an external focus
(from the police agency's point of view),
explaining how to initiate greater community
participation and how to identify and analyze
community needs. Chapters 4 and 5 have a more
internal focus, describing how to take stock and
assess police organizational needs and then
detailing the problemsolving process. Chapters 6
and 7 integrate the external and internal views and
focus on planning, implementation, and evaluation--
the extremely important process of figuring out 
what to do, doing it, and seeing what happens as
the result.

Although chapters in a monograph must be presented
sequentially, some efforts to develop
neighborhood-oriented policing should proceed on
parallel tracks. In particular, efforts to
encourage police-citizen collaboration and to
develop problemsolving habits should occur
simultaneously. 

This monograph also includes a number of appendixes
containing useful information, including suggested
reading, national resource agencies, problemsolving
guides,a sample police agency mission statement,
and suggestions for planning and management.

Finally, some words of caution and encouragement
are in order. The kind of collaboration among
citizens, law enforcement personnel, and other
officials encouraged by neighborhood-oriented
policing can be very difficult to accomplish. Some
people are apathetic, some have huge egos, some
have their own agendas. Initial collaboration
efforts may not go smoothly. There will be hurdles
to overcome and there may be slippages and
failures.

Police officers may resist adoption of community
engagement and problem solving. Some officers may
lack the confidence to work closely and openly with
citizens and other officials. Others may simply
prefer not to share their authority and
responsibility. Officers may resist the problem-
solving approach if it is not well understood, if
it seems to conflict with their preferred image of
policing, or if it simply sounds like more work.

The problems that are tackled by NOP programs--
drugs, crime, disorder, fear--are very difficult
and perplexing problems. Sometimes the very best
efforts do not seem to have much effect. External
factors beyond local control, such as the economy,
may undermine or offset program successes. It is
easy to become frustrated and depressed when
immediate improvements fail to materialize.

The evidence suggests, however, that community
engagement is possible, that police officers can
adopt the problemsolving approach, and that these
techniques may have a longer term impact than their
alternatives. The effort involved in developing and
implementing the rural NOP program is worth it.

Chapter 2: Getting Started in the Community

The key to successful neighborhood-oriented
policing (NOP) programs in the community is
strategic planning. As the adage states, "When you
fail to plan, you plan to fail." A strategic plan
with measurable long- and short-range goals:

o Provides a "road map" for the rural NOP work.

o Helps allocate or reallocate resources.

o Supports the evaluation of program efforts.

o Establishes the approach as professional in the  
eyes of your agency, other agencies, and funding 
sources.

o Provides continuity.

Simply stated, planning must take place before
individual commitment can be transformed into
collective action (see appendix A, "25 Reasons To
Plan"). It is the principal device for getting
started.

The Planning Team

The first step in strategic planning is
establishing a planning team. There are seven
factors to consider when identifying the agencies,
organizations, and leaders to include in the
planning team:

1. What are the scope and purposes of the program?

2. Who is knowledgeable about the community and has
access to valuable information?

3. Who will be affected?

4. What public policies or procedures will be
affected?

5. Who might hinder program progress if not invited
to help in the design?

6. Who could contribute leadership and other
skills?

7. Who are the key individuals and institutions
that can effect change as it relates to the
identified quality of life and to crime, violence,
and drug abuse problems?  

This team will play an important role in overall
needs assessment, identification of specific
problems, design of solutions, marshaling of
resources, implementation, and evaluation. The
planning team oversees NOP planning and
implementation. The planning team should:

o Identify data sources for problem identification.

o Collect data from a variety of sources.

o Identify and describe problems.

o List in order of priority the problems to be
addressed by the NOP program.

o Identify NOP target areas.

o Define objectives and identify tasks.

o Identify strategies for problem resolution.

o Prepare the NOP workplan with goals, objectives,
strategies, timelines, and budget.

o Identify and secure resources (volunteers,
in-kind support, additional funding, etc.).

o Implement NOP.

o Monitor NOP program progress.

o Develop the evaluation design.

o Evaluate NOP impact and effectiveness.

o Identify and secure continuation funding, if
needed.

o Develop or review reports and other products.

There are many advantages to the team approach to
planning. It provides a comprehensive way to
address drug, alcohol, and related crime problems,
increases coordination among team members, and
fosters the feeling that no agency stands alone in
the fight against crime and drug-related problems.
If the effort is successful, the team experience
can easily be transferred to another neighborhood
in the community or to other kinds of crime and
drug-related problems. The involvement of a team of
agencies and community leaders also may attract the
media attention and support needed for a successful
program.

Without a planning team, the success of NOP will be
jeopardized. The drug and crime problems
challenging law enforcement officials today are
much more complex than the problems of a decade
ago. These problems require multidisciplinary
solutions. If NOP jurisdictions do not look beyond
law enforcement approaches, the impact of NOP will
be short-term at best. The planning team needs to
include all city and county agencies,
organizations, and community leaders (formal and
informal) who have knowledge of and a stake in the
community.

Identifying Planning Team Members

Agencies and organizations that should play
significant roles in planning and implementing NOP
include religious institutions, schools,
businesses, social clubs and organizations,
community organizations, government agencies
(education, housing, health, recreation, fire,
human services, community development), elected or
appointed officials, criminal/juvenile justice
agencies, the media, and drug and alcohol treatment
facilities. If the drug and crime problems in the
community are significantly influenced by the
problems in nearby jurisdictions, representatives
from other law enforcement agencies and 
organizations also may need to be included on the
planning team.

In addition to agency and organization
representatives, informal community leaders who
represent the racial, age, and economic diversity
of the community need to be identified and
meaningfully involved. These resident leaders may
not hold formal positions or titles, but they have
influence within the community. 

Experience in other communities has shown that
citizen involvement plays a vital role in improving
the community by changing the way that residents
perceive themselves and others, their neighbor-
hoods, and the agencies and organizations that
serve their communities. One way to identify
community leaders is to hold open community
meetings to educate residents about drug and crime
problems, to inform them about the benefits of NOP,
and to recruit those who are interested in becoming
involved. Not all of the interested citizens will
be appropriate for the planning team, but followup
with all residents will be needed to discuss ways
in which they can become involved in NOP.

Another way to identify community leaders is to
talk to citizens and knowledgeable representatives
of agencies and organizations to determine:

o Who influences attitudes and behavior within the
community.

o The source of their influence.

o Who is influenced by these individuals.

o The effect their influence has upon the life of
the community.

o How their influence can be used to further the
purposes of NOP.

Other processes may be employed for identifying
planning team members; however, the process needs
to include all components of the community. As a
checklist, the planning team should include (but
not be limited to):

o Residents.

o Law enforcement.

o Religious institutions.

o Youth.

o Businesses.

o Schools.

o Social service agencies.

o Community-based organizations.

o Key individuals and institutions with a stake in
changing the crime and drug problems in the
community.

Once selected, potential members of the planning
team need to be contacted by the Sheriff or Chief
of Police. During the initial conversation, each
potential team member should be briefed on the
nature of the drug/alcohol/crime problem, the
purpose of NOP work, the role of the planning team,
the commitment required, and the benefits that will
be derived from participation on the planning team.
When all planning team members have committed to
participate, a letter should be sent to each,
confirming his or her commitment and letting him or
her know who the other partners on the team are.

Structure and Leadership

To achieve the full potential of NOP, the law
enforcement agency must facilitate the active
involvement of all members on the planning team and
ensure that the process for planning and
implementing the program proceeds smoothly. It is
important to pay attention to how the group is
working together. Techniques that have been used by
groups to enhance their effectiveness include:

o Repeatedly emphasizing the collaborative nature
of the effort and being specific about the
potential benefits.

o Being clear about the task the group is to carry
out and the time commitment that will be expected.

o Being clear about the roles and responsibilities
of group members.

o Ensuring that all meetings are well-planned and
facilitated.

o Building in time for the group to identify and
appreciate their accomplishments.

o Developing a system for ongoing communication.

The planning team structure can be informal or
formal, depending upon the phase of development. 

Another structural issue to consider is the
creation of subcommittees or working committees. It
will be necessary for the entire planning team to
hold regular meetings to establish and reestablish
its purpose, set direction, review progress, and
make necessary decisions. However, some of the work
required for successful implementation of NOP may
be more efficiently completed by a smaller group or
committee. If such smaller groups or committees are
employed in the name of efficiency, however, it is
crucial that (1) they report back frequently to the
full planning team and that (2) open and regular
communication be maintained. Otherwise, efforts can
become fragmented and disjointed, and the overall
sense of purpose can get lost.

In any effort to reduce or prevent crime, there
needs to be a boost of leadership to start the
process and get others involved in the program. The
police or sheriff's department should organize the
planning team and should provide leadership and
guidance, but all member organizations and
community leaders need to be recognized as equal
partners on the team.

From the beginning, the law enforcement agency and
the planning team need to be clear about who will
ultimately have ownership of the NOP program. There
are three options to consider. In some communities,
the police or sheriff's department serves only as
the catalyst, with community groups assuming full
responsibility for their respective areas after the
initial demonstration and implementation. That
option is not recommended because it tends to lead
to a nonprogrammatic approach and in all likelihood
will not change the way that policing occurs on a
long-term basis or result in long-term community
police partnerships.

As a second option, in some communities the police
or sheriff's department assumes full responsibility
for the initial implementation and continuation of
all aspects of the work. This option is not
recommended, because it, too, affects the
partnerships that are critical for success.

A third option, and the one that is most strongly
recommended, is to have the law enforcement agency
share program responsibility with the community. If
the first or third option is chosen, the department
will need to assess the skills of the community in
problem identification, problem solving, and
resource identification; it may be that the 
community's skills in these areas need to be
upgraded as an initial step in NOP planning.

A final issue regarding planning team structure and
leadership is decisionmaking style. The experience
of other groups has shown the consensus style to be
the most successful. Consensus does not mean
compromise on the part of planning team members.
What consensus does mean is collective opinion that
incorporates the points of view of all the members
in the final decision that is made. Decisions made
using the consensus model ensure that they will be
supported by all members of the planning team.

Planning Team Implementation and Maintenance

The initial meeting of the planning team is a
critical step in the planning and implementation of
NOP efforts. It should provide an opportunity for
social interaction and team-building experiences.
To start effective planning, the meeting should
focus on the following:

o The purpose of NOP.

o Why the jurisdiction needs the NOP approach.

o Information about quality of life, violence, 
drugs, alcohol, and related crime problems.

o Exploring a common ground among the team members.

o Identifying specific roles and responsibilities.

o Motivating members to become committed to the
long-term impact.

After the first planning team meeting, it may be
desirable to meet with others from the police or
sheriff's department to discuss how the team
members functioned as a group, the level of
individual motivation and commitment, and potential
leaders. In addition, other information and skills
training that the members may need in order to
participate meaningfully and as equal partners
should be discussed. The entire planning team may
need additional information and training, or
members of a particular committee may need to
receive training in basic program elements such as
problem solving or in particular program strategies
such as crime prevention through environmental
design (CPTED).

Planning

A common misconception is that planning is
cumbersome, complicated, and impractical. In fact,
planning is crucial to good programming and
requires mainly just common sense. Planning does
take time and effort, but lack of planning almost
always costs valuable time.

To make the planning process work, one needs to
understand first what planning is and then the
basic elements of a plan. Planning is nothing more
than bridging the gap between where one is and
where one wants to be. It involves taking stock of
the current situation (i.e., assessing needs),
identifying goals, reviewing alternatives, and
designing methods for achieving goals.

The Elements of a Plan

The planning process should result in a workplan
that includes the following:

o Goals--statements of what is intended. The
statements indicate the changes that should result
from the program.

o Objectives--statements specifying what is to be
done to achieve a goal. They should be detailed,
time framed, and measurable, and should reflect the
desired outcome.

o Strategies--approaches to be implemented in
addressing identified crime and drug problems.

o Activities--tasks that are the elements of the
chosen strategies.

o Roles and responsibilities--designation of who
will carry out specific objectives or activities.

o Resources--all resources that will be needed to
implement the plan and how they can be secured.

o Potential problems and proposed solutions--things
that could go wrong during implementation of the
plan and contingency plans to resolve crises or
alleviate problems that could impede progress.

During the planning process, planning team members
must also consider issues of monitoring and
evaluation. Is the plan specific enough to allow
for adequate monitoring of progress? Are goals and
objectives clear, measurable, and feasible?

The value and benefits of planning are realized
only when planning is used as a tool to do the work
required and to get the desired results. Having a
well-written plan on paper means little unless it
is used to direct and coordinate the efforts of
everyone participating in the program and to gain
the support of the community. Being able to explain
what is to be done and why and to demonstrate
concrete thinking about a problem enables the
planners to convince others that the plan could 
work. The test of any plan is whether it is used by
those doing the work.

Planning Team Challenges

Once the planning team is organized and
operational, methods of maintaining the momentum of
the team must be devised:

o Keeping team members informed through regular
communications.

o Identifying and understanding the reasons
individual members are involved in the planning
team and addressing their particular concerns.

o Providing opportunities for team members to learn
new information, gain new skills, and assuming
leadership responsibilities.

o Being realistic about the time and effort that
need to be invested.

o Recognizing team members for their efforts and
contributions.

o Building a strong belief among team members that
their collective vision can be realized.

o Keeping the process moving and taking action.

o Evaluating team progress.

o Celebrating successes.

Activities should be designed that contribute to
achieving the planning team's goals. The experience
of many groups has shown that when members are not
regularly informed about activities and progress,
their interest in and commitment to the group
lessen. The key to maintaining momentum is
communication. Phone calls, letters, minutes from
meetings, committee reports, newsletters, and
regular "updates" are all valuable techniques.

Even when planning teams have the best people,
selected with great care, conflict may arise and
the team may lose momentum as it progresses.

Suggestions for meeting the challenges to the
productive functioning of the NOP planning team
draw on many of the principles and practices
already discussed in this section of the manual.
Suggestions include:

o Providing training in planning techniques.

o Providing an appropriate environment and/or
facilitator to talk about and help resolve
differences.

o Reviewing the purpose of neighborhood-oriented
policing and its benefits to the community.

o Restating the common ground that exists among the
members.

o Recruiting and developing new members.

o Committing to consensus decisionmaking.

o Facilitating the meaningful involvement of every
planning team member.

o Recognizing and celebrating individual and
collective efforts.

o Evaluating and integrating lessons learned.

o Developing and publicizing a plan to correct a
program failure or negative publicity.

o Simplifying policies and procedures.

The success of NOP depends on the full cooperation
and support of all agencies, organizations, and
community leaders concerned about the problems of
drugs, alcohol, and related crime in your
community. The mechanism for ensuring cooperation
and support is the planning team. This chapter has
provided the information needed to establish and
maintain an effective planning team, the key to a
successful long-term effort. The chapters that
follow provide further explanation of the tasks and
activities upon which the planning team will focus.

Chapter 3: Needs Assessment and Planning

The term "needs assessment" refers to the
collection and analysis of information required to
determine the nature and extent of crime in the
community, community residents' perceptions of
crime and how they are affected by it, and
information about the environment or conditions of
a community. If planned and conducted well, the
assessment will identify specific needs and
problems that can be addressed through crime and
drug abuse prevention.

The overall purpose of the needs assessment is to
determine--and exchange information about--specific
types of community drug and crime problems, their
causes, their effects, and the resources available
to combat them. Ultimately, the results of the
assessment will enable the team to plan a course of
action in line with the community's real and
perceived needs and resources.

This chapter outlines some of the main benefits of
conducting a comprehensive assessment and offers
some suggestions on how to do it.

The Value of a Needs Assessment

A needs assessment lays the foundation for a
community's entire NOP effort. A community needs
assessment is not--or should not be--a paper and
pencil exercise that is then filed on a shelf.
Although it can take time and effort, much of the
information that needs to be assembled is readily
available, and there are many potential payoffs for
taking a close look at it.

There are many reasons to conduct a community needs
assessment. The assessment will:

o Document, list in order of priority, and clarify
the existing crime and drug problems.

o Provide a view of resident perceptions about the
crime and drug problem.

o Provide an excellent means of involving the
community in problem identification.

o Provide information to the public about problems.

o Provide baseline data for evaluation.

o Provide initial direction for developing a
workplan.

o Assist in setting program goals, strategies, and
objectives.

Before the community needs assessment can be
completed, the planning team needs to determine as
specifically as possible what it needs to know.
This may include information on crime, drug abuse,
fear of crime, quality of life, violence issues,
and related community conditions. When the planning
team has identified its information needs, it
should:

o Determine the best methods for obtaining the
information, such as obtaining official statistics,
conducting surveys or interviews with a large
number of residents, interviewing neighborhood
leaders, holding community meetings, and through
direct observations.

o Design data collection instruments (such as
questionnaires) as necessary. 

o Develop a plan and timeframe for collecting the
information.

o Collect the data, which might include:

  o Demographic information.

  o Community opinions and attitudes.

  o Officers' knowledge of the community.

  o Employment, housing, education, and health
    information.

  o Uniform Crime Reports.

o Local crime statistics.

o Analyze the data, discuss the findings, and draw
tentative conclusions on the nature and extent of
crime, drug abuse, and fear of crime.

o Conduct a planning meeting and establish
priorities on the crime and drug abuse problems to
be addressed.

o Prepare a report on the results of the needs
assessment.

o Identify and select target neighborhoods and
manageable areas.

o Report results to the community and test the
conclusions.

Describing the Community

In some communities the assessment process will not
need to start from scratch. Reliable and detailed
crime statistics may already be available, for
example, or a recent community survey may have been
conducted. Frequently, though, assessment-related
information is not readily available, because it
has never been gathered or at least has never been
pulled together.

The planning team will need to have a common frame
of reference for describing the community as a
whole. Following are lists of questions the
planning team should ask, grouped by topic. Not all
of the questions in the next section have a direct
bearing on drugs and crime, but they do pertain to
conditions that can either encourage or discourage
crime and disorder.

Population and Other Demographics

o What is the overall population? The population
density? Is the area gaining or losing population?
Why?

o What is the average household size? The average
number of children per family?

o How many single-parent families are there? In how
many families do both parents work outside the
home? What are the day-care options for these
families?

o Are there a significant number of single adults
in the community? Retirees? Young children?
Households composed of unrelated persons?
Transients? Migrant communities? Homeless persons?

o Are there seasonal variations in population (for
such reasons as colleges, agriculture, or tourism)?
What impact do variations have on the provision of
police, public safety, and other services?

o What type of racial and ethnic diversity is found
in the jurisdiction? What is the history and what
is the current status of relations among persons of
different races or ethnic backgrounds?

o What are the jurisdiction's natural and designed
borders or boundaries (such as shoreline,
mountains, and interstate or major highways)? What
relevance do they have to drug trafficking and
crime?

o Has annexation occurred recently, or is it
planned?

Possible sources of information include:

o U.S. Census data.

o County and city planning, research, and
transportation departments.

o State planning agencies.

o Social service agencies.

o Day-care organizations.

o Police and sheriff's departments.

Economics, Employment, and Housing

o What is the average household income? Are there
pockets of extreme poverty? Where are they?

o What is the jurisdiction's unemployment rate? Is
this rate significantly higher for teenagers?
Minority residents?

o What portion of the jurisdiction's economy is
represented by:

  o Agriculture?

  o Light industry?

  o Heavy industry?

  o Wholesale?

  o Retail?

  o Service businesses?

  o Tourism?

o What new industry is contemplated for the area?
What existing industries are experiencing or
planning layoffs or shutdowns? What portion of
adults in the jurisdiction own their own homes?

o Are there institutions in the area such as
prisons, nursing homes, residential youth centers,
mental health facilities?

o What percentage of the population is receiving
some form of public assistance? Who are they in
terms of age, sex, race, employment status? Where
do they live? What are their employment prospects?
What special services and support do they need, and
how were these needs identified?

o Is there publicly assisted housing in the area?
If so, what is its age and condition? How many
people reside in public housing units?

Possible information sources include:

o U.S. Census data.

o The Chamber of Commerce and other business
organizations.

o Labor departments.

o Housing departments.

o Social service agencies.

Education and Training

o What is the educational level of community
residents?

o What is the size of the public school population?
What are the schools' strengths and weaknesses?
What private schools are located in the
community?

o What are the school dropout and truancy rates?

o What proportion of school children come from
single-family homes? From homes in which both
parents work?

o Are school buildings available for use by other
agencies or community groups after school hours?
Are fees for their use reasonable?

o To what extent are police or deputies involved
with the schools? Do they conduct safety or drug
education programs?

o How accessible are colleges and universities?
What relationships exist with them for police
officer training and education? Are there faculty
members who could serve as a resource for NOP
implementation or evaluation?

Possible information sources include:

o The Chamber of Commerce.

o U.S. Census data.

o School board, administrators, teachers, and
guidance counselors.

o Parent-teacher associations.

o State boards of education.

o Colleges and universities.

o Police department.

Health and Welfare

o Is there a hospital in the community? Does it
provide specialized services such as drug and
alcohol detoxification? Drug and alcohol abuse
treatment? Inpatient psychiatric services? Mental
health outpatient counseling?

o What other health and counseling services are
available in the community? For example, where can
people find help with problems related to alcohol
and drug addiction? Domestic violence?

o What is law enforcement's relationship with these
agencies?

o Is there a public transportation system? How are
residents in need of services being assisted with
transportation?

Possible information sources include:

o Hospitals and clinics.

o Private physicians.

o Public and private drug and alcohol prevention,
education, and treatment services.

o Public and private mental health services.

o Protective services.

o Rape and domestic violence programs.

o Courts and court services agencies.

o Police and sheriff's departments.

Other Resources and Issues

o What sports, recreational, and cultural
opportunities exist in the community? Are they
accessible? What is the extent of resident
participation?

o What service clubs and organizations might assist
the NOP effort?

o What resident or neighborhood associations exist?
How active are they in addressing crime and drug
issues?

o What role do religious institutions play in
addressing issues related to crime and drugs?

Possible information sources include:

o Recreation and parks departments.

o Service clubs (e.g., Kiwanis, Elks).

o Social clubs.

o Religious institutions.

o Youth organizations.

o Neighborhood organizations.

Crime and the Criminal Justice System

The police or sheriff's department will be one of
the main sources of information about drugs and
crime, but it is certainly not the only source.
Many incidents of crime and disorder are never
reported to law enforcement. There are many reasons
for this, including distrust of the police, fear of
public embarrassment, fear of retribution, lack of
confidence in the criminal justice system, and
simply the opinion that an incident or a piece of
information is not important enough to bring to
police attention.

Thus, while some of the information needed about
drugs and crime is available from police records,
many other sources of information will need to be
tapped. These sources include not only other
agencies, but also residents and business people.
It may be time to conduct a community survey or a
series of public forums to identify residents' most
pressing concerns and needs. These options are
discussed more fully at the end of the chapter.
Listed below are some key questions to ask about
drug and related crime problems, along with some
possible information sources. Also included are
some questions to consider about the criminal
justice resources available to deal with these
problems.

Drug and Related Crime Problem Questions

o What are the most commonly abused illegal drugs
in the jurisdiction? How has this changed in recent
years? Are drugs that have not been a problem in
the past becoming available?

o How have the number of drug-related arrests and
citizen complaints changed in recent years?

o Where and how are the drugs sold? On the streets?
Only in certain neighborhoods? From private
residences or businesses scattered throughout the
area? In the schools? Primarily in a neighboring
jurisdiction?

o If drug activity centers around specific
neighborhoods, what are the physical conditions in
those neighborhoods, such as type and condition of
housing, lighting, blight, abandoned cars, and
traffic patterns?

o Who are the drug sellers? Who are the drug
purchasers? Adults or juveniles? Residents or
transients? Unemployed? Employees of local
industries or businesses? Persons on probation for
drug or other crimes? Students? Gangs or those
associated with gangs?

o What are the nature and extent of violence
associated with drug activity? Of other criminal
activity (such as burglaries, robberies, or auto
thefts) associated with drugs?

o Is marijuana grown in the jurisdiction or
surrounding area?

o Is the jurisdiction a distribution point for
illegal drugs (e.g., because of its airstrips,
shoreline, easy access to interstate highways)?

o Have any clandestine drug laboratories been
identified in the area?

o What drug problems are occurring in surrounding
jurisdictions? What is the likelihood that these
problems may spill over into this jurisdiction?

o To what extent are the community's youth
experimenting with drugs and alcohol? What is the
typical age of first use? What are users' attitudes
about drugs and alcohol? What is their level of
knowledge about the health, social, safety, and
legal consequences of drug use?

o What are the main problems associated with the
abuse or illegal use of alcohol (illegal sales to
minors, bar fights, domestic assaults, drunk
driving, public disturbances)?

Possible information sources include:

o Local police and sheriff's departments:
call-for-service data, incident reports, arrest
reports, field contact cards or reports, citizen
complaints, analysis of community "hot spots,"
internal reports, officers' experiences and
observations, school liaison officers, crime
tip-lines or crime-solvers programs, and
Neighborhood Watch information.

o Other criminal justice sources: regional drug
enforcement task forces, State police, police and
sheriff's departments in surrounding jurisdictions,
Federal law enforcement agencies, local and Federal
prosecutors, probation and parole officers,
juvenile and adult court judges and court services
workers, and State departments of criminal justice.

o Sources outside the criminal justice system:
public and private drug and alcohol treatment
services; employee assistance programs; social
service personnel; school records and reports;
principals, teachers, coaches, and counselors; code
enforcement, health, zoning, and related agencies;
State alcoholic beverage control boards; crime
victim assistance services; resident and business
surveys; public forums; and community groups.

Criminal Justice Resources and Strategies

o What strategies has law enforcement tried in the
past to deal with drug and related crime problems?
How well did they work?

o How many officers are assigned to drug cases?

o What training and experience have officers had in
drug investigations? What training is needed?

o What equipment is needed for more effective
handling of drug-related investigations?

o What measures have been taken to ensure officer
safety?

o What arrangements have been made with other local
or State law enforcement agencies to address needs
for equipment? Training? Patrol officers?
Undercover officers? Investigators?

o How does the police or sheriff's department work
with Federal law enforcement agencies?

o What happens to persons arrested for drug
violations? How do the courts handle adult and
juvenile drug cases for first offenders? Repeat
offenders?

o How are case outcomes tracked?

o What are the prosecutor's priorities and
guidelines?

o What impact have drug arrests had on the jail? On
the courts? On treatment services?

o What legal issues need to be addressed? What
police policies and procedures need to be committed
to writing or revised?

Possible information sources include:

o Police and sheriff's departments.

o Law enforcement training academies.

o Citizen surveys and public forums.

o Prosecutors.

o Probation and parole agencies.

o County attorneys.

o Federal law enforcement officials.

Community Surveys and Public Forums

Citizen surveys do not have to be lengthy or
complicated to provide the planning team with
useful information. A survey of all residents in a
very small community or a sample of residents in a
larger community can be done quickly and
inexpensively; so can surveys of special groups
such as businesses or students. Police officers
often have been used to conduct surveys--an
approach that also contributes to greater
police-citizen contact. Local colleges are
frequently willing to assist as well.

Topics that should be explored in citizen surveys
include:

o Crime victimization experiences.

o Observations of drug dealing, crime, and
disorder.

o Perceptions of neighborhood conditions and
quality of life.

o Fear of crime.

o Experiences with police.

o Attitudes toward police and other government
agencies.

o Priorities given to various community problems.

o Participation in various community activities.

o Demographic information.

Public forums are another means of obtaining
information about residents' perceptions of
problems, current services, and alternatives. Such
forums can be held on specific topics (e.g.,
teenage drug abuse) or can be focused more
generally on the entire range of NOP issues.
Similarly, forums can be targeted for specific
neighborhoods or can be communitywide. If
substantial numbers of residents participate, and
if the participants are representative of the
community, public forums can yield very valuable
information for the planning team to use in
assessing needs and designing new programs.

Resource Acquisition

During the planning phase, any resources needed to
carry out the work should be identified. During
this phase, steps should be taken to secure these
resources and to manage them, contributing to
effective implementation. These resources include:

o People.

o Materials.

o Time.

o Money.

o Facilities.

Implementation

Successful implementation requires following the
plan, implementing contingency plans as necessary
to respond to problems or barriers, and applying
the functions of management to ensure that the
program is proceeding on course and is
accomplishing its objectives.

In most crime and drug abuse prevention programs,
the implementation phase will require the highest
level of citizen involvement. The relationship
between planning and implementation is crucial to
involvement--if community residents can clearly see
how the activities they will engage in will lead to
desired goals, they will be more likely to
participate.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Monitoring and evaluation involve the critical
review and assessment of the work and, therefore,
provide the "feedback" mechanism essential for
continued effective planning.

Monitoring involves tracking on a regular basis the
progress of key activities. Monitoring allows small
problems to be corrected in a timely manner, before
they develop into crises that can interrupt the
progress of NOP.

Evaluation focuses on the results of activities,
making use of cumulative data (collected over a
period of time and analyzed at once to determine
the overall effect). Evaluation does not take place
only at the end of a program implementation period.
For most efforts, it is advantageous to evaluate at
the midpoint as well as at the end of a phase of
work, with monitoring occurring regularly in
between. In this way, concrete information can be
used to modify neighborhood actions, as necessary,
and to strengthen them.

Data collected through the needs assessment process
serve as baseline data for the evaluation. The same
types of information collected at various points
can be compared with the original information to
determine if desired changes are occurring.

The resources that were indicated as helpful in
designing and conducting the needs assessment will
also be useful in designing and conducting the
evaluation. One caution, however, in using outside
resources: Make sure that the evaluation is fully
integrated in the planning and implementation
cycle. Evaluation does little good if it yields
only a report that sits on someone's shelf. The
planning team should be able to document for
themselves and for the community:

o What was accomplished? Were goals achieved?

o Did these accomplishments make a difference?

o What do these accomplishments mean to the next
steps to reduce crime, violence, and drug abuse?

In order to conduct an evaluation, it is critical
that there be initial goals and objectives that are
reasonable, understandable, and achievable.
Otherwise it will be virtually impossible to assess
whether the program achieved what it set out to
achieve.

Chapter 4: Law Enforcement Responsibilities

Although the rural NOP requires police-citizen
collaboration and  greater community participation
in solving problems related to crime, fear, and
drugs, it does not follow that the traditional
responsibilities of police departments and
sheriffs' offices are somehow reduced. In fact, the
agency's personnel remain responsible for the
provision of emergency and routine services, while
taking on responsibility for engaging the community
in more substantive problem solving. Effectively
and efficiently fulfilling these responsibilities
is a major challenge.

This chapter identifies the most important elements
of a police agency's "infrastructure," that is, the
systems and processes that must be in good shape to
facilitate the implementation of NOP. These include
such matters as operational strategies, time
management, and leadership that affect both
the internal workings of the law enforcement
organization and its external relations with the
community. It is not possible here to explore fully
all of the important elements of police
administration; therefore, readers are
encouraged to consult recent police administration
textbooks for more detailed information on these
topics.1

Mission

A key to understanding newly developing police
strategies and to implementing NOP is the
realization that the police mission is broader than
"law enforcement." Of course, the police mission
includes controlling crime and enforcing the law--
these are the primary reasons for having police
agencies, and they are among the functions for
which police are uniquely empowered and trained.
Nothing in the transition to NOP discounts the
importance of such functions and, in fact, NOP
enhances them.

However, experience has shown that the police
mission is broader than law enforcement, as
evidenced in several ways (see also appendixes B
and C):

o Citizens request police assistance for a wide
variety of problems that do not easily fit within
narrow definitions of crime or law enforcement.

o Overreliance by police on tactics such as
motorized patrol and rapid response has been shown
to have limited effectiveness.

o Overemphasis by police on "enforcement" tends to
encourage police to shoulder the entire
responsibility for crime control, instead of
sharing responsibility with other institutions and
with the community.

No single statement of the police mission can be
expected to fit perfectly the differing needs,
priorities, and capabilities of America's 17,000
State and local law enforcement agencies. It is
important, though, for each agency to express its
purpose, philosophy, and values in such a way that
employees and citizens know, without a doubt, what
it stands for. As one example, the Police Bureau of
Portland, Oregon, revised its mission (see appendix
D for a fuller description) to the following:

The Mission of the Portland Police Bureau is to
work with all citizens to preserve life, maintain
human rights, protect property, and promote
individual responsibility and community commitment.

The purpose of this example is not to recommend its
adoption by other law enforcement agencies, but
rather to illustrate the kinds of mission
statements and values that are consistent with
implementing neighborhood-oriented policing. If
part of the implementation of NOP in any agency
involves changing the way that employees or
citizens think about the police mission, a new
mission statement may be in order.

Strategies

New missions require new strategies--broader
missions require multifaceted strategies. Until
recently, most law enforcement agencies in the
United States relied primarily on two interrelated
strategies: the professional model and strategic
crime control.2 The professional model emphasized,
among other things, strict personnel standards,
extensive training, modern technology, and the
three tactics of motorized patrol, rapid response,
and followup investigations. The strategic crime
control model built upon the professional model by
emphasizing more targeted tactics, such as directed
patrol and repeat offender programs, and by
expanding police attention beyond traditional Part
I crimes3 to target other offenses, such as drug
crimes and organized crime.

Over the last decade, more and more law enforcement
agencies have turned to the two emerging policing
strategies that contain elements reflected in the
rural NOP approach: community policing and
problem-oriented policing. Community policing
emphasizes4 that:

o In addition to the law, community norms and
values should guide police actions.

o Police need to become more responsive to
community needs and priorities.

o Police and citizens need to share the
responsibility for controlling crime, fear, and
drugs.

o Police should adopt tactics that facilitate more
positive police-citizen contact.

Problem-oriented policing recommends less emphasis
on the incident-handling mode of policing and less
reliance on law enforcement as the principal means
of policing.5 Instead, police are advised to
identify and analyze recurring problems and then to
search widely for innovative and collaborative
solutions that have more long-lasting effects than
merely writing a report, admonishing disputants, or
arresting a lawbreaker.

It is a mistake to think that one must choose to
adopt just one of these basic strategies. It is
also a mistake to think that NOP mandates
abandoning the professional model and strategic
crime control. Rather, NOP serves to broaden the
scope of options used to address crime and drug
problems. Neighborhood-oriented policing encourages
a focus on community engagement and problem
solving, because experience strongly indicates that
these strategies reduce crime and fear of crime,
increase citizen satisfaction with police services,
and have beneficial effects on a wide range of
crime- and drug-related community problems.

Internal Assessment

Providing good police services, regardless of
prevailing strategies, requires that attention be
paid to the infrastructure of the organization.
Similarly, changing the balance of strategies in a
law enforcement agency generally requires some
internal adjustments within the organization to
encourage, facilitate, guide, and reward desired
behaviors. Such internal changes are crucial to the
implementation of greater police-citizen
collaboration and more effective police problem
solving as part of NOP.

Just as it is important to assess the community's
needs, it is necessary to assess the law
enforcement agency's strengths, weaknesses, and
needs before trying to adopt new NOP strategies.
Internal assessment does not imply that wholesale
organizational changes will have to be made in
order to implement NOP. In one or more target
areas, however, the broader its implementation, the
more focus there should be in the organizational
capability to maintain it. Among the organization's
components that should be examined are staff
capabilities and training, staff utilization on a
beat or neighborhood level, information and
analysis that is neighborhood based, structure of
the organization, supervision and management, and
executive leadership. In each of these areas, the
relevant question is, "What are we doing now that
supports or inhibits community collaboration and
problem solving, and what should we do
differently?"

Staff Capabilities

Staff capabilities refers primarily to recruiting
practices, selection, promotion procedures, and
training. Long-term implementation and
institutionalization of NOP can best be ensured if
law enforcement agencies attract, select, retain,
and promote employees who really care about their
communities and who are both committed to and
inclined toward community engagement and problem
solving. These may or may not always be the same
people who are most intrigued by crime fighting and
enforcing the law.

Both community engagement and problem solving call
for behaviors somewhat different from the
activities for which police officers have
traditionally been trained. Consequently, officers
may require additional training in such things as
collaboration, negotiation, conflict resolution,
dealing with diverse cultures, problem
identification, analysis, and assessment, or some
skills like making presentations, holding meetings,
and developing workplans. Also, police training may
need to focus more than it has in the past on the
nature of substantive police problems (such as
street-level drug dealing and elder abuse), on the
range of alternatives available for dealing with
such problems, and on what has been learned about
the effects of these alternatives. In other words,
in the long run, police training needs to develop,
incorporate, and transmit to new and incumbent
officers the best available knowledge about "what
works" in solving various crime, fear, and
drug-related community problems. In fact, much of
this information will be available from their
peers--those who effectively engage in problem
solving and can demonstrate the results of the
strategies employed to solve the problems.

Staff Utilization

One of the law enforcement executive's principal
responsibilities is to ensure that the
organization's resources are being used as
efficiently and effectively as possible. Until at
least the mid-1970's, this responsibility was
minimized, because extensive motorized patrol,
rapid response to calls for service, and detective
followup investigations easily consumed all
available resources and were believed to be
effective tactics. Over the last decade, however,
three developments have driven staff utilization
issues to the forefront of police executive
decisionmaking:

o Resources became tighter, making it harder, if
not impossible, to continue providing previous
levels of service.

o Studies revealed that motorized patrol, rapid
response, and followup investigations were much
less effective than once believed.

o Service requirements increased, as indicated by
more calls for service and by additional
expectations, such as collaboration with citizens
and problem solving.

Today, there is no easy or completely satisfying
solution to the dilemma of dwindling resources and
increasing service demands. This means, among other
things, taking a hard look at traditional practices
and cutting back on less effective tactics and
lower priority demands. Specifically, many law
enforcement agencies are now:

o Trying to manage their time and their workloads
more skillfully through the use of such
alternatives as delayed response and telephone
reporting.

o Replacing routine preventive patrol with directed
patrol, citizen-contact patrol, and a concentrated
focus on recurring community problems.

o Using case screening to reduce detective
caseloads and redistribute investigative
responsibilities more evenly between patrol
officers and detectives.

Managing time and workload deserves additional
comment because, in a busy law enforcement agency,
freeing patrol officers from the overwhelming
burden of calls for service is often a prerequisite
to implementing collaborative problemsolving
efforts. Research and recent experience have shown
that police agencies can effectively handle a large
portion of their calls for service--at least half,
and probably more--by methods other than
immediately dispatching a sworn officer.6 One major
reason this is true is that 75 percent of reported
crimes are not "discovered" by citizens until after
the offender is gone.7 Moreover, even when victims
or witnesses are aware of crimes while they are in
progress, these citizens delay an average of 4 to 5
minutes before notifying the authorities.
Consequently, rapid police response rarely results
in response-related arrests.

Even more surprising to law enforcement officials,
citizen satisfaction does not depend simply on how
quickly the police arrive. Satisfaction seems
to be tied to whether the quickness of police
response meets the citizen's expectation, rather
than to response time per se. Also, citizens are
generally most concerned with the quality of
service they receive once the officer arrives. A
number of communities across the country have
discovered and subsequently verified that even in
cases of serious reported crimes, citizens can
often be satisfied with a wide variety of delayed
and alternative responses as long as (1) the
rationale for the alternatives is explained and (2)
the service, once delivered, is competent and
caring.8

The implication is that to a considerable extent,
law enforcement agencies can proactively manage
their workloads instead of reactively letting their
workloads manage them. By limiting immediate sworn
response to those calls (50 percent or less) that
require the onscene presence of a police officer
and by implementing differential alternatives for
the rest, departments can give patrol officers more
control over their work days and make more time
available for the kinds of community-oriented and
problem-oriented activities that are at the heart
of NOP.

Not every one of these contemporary law enforcement
responses to the "do more with less" scenario will
make sense in every situation, nor is the intended
suggestion that any particular agency must adopt
them. Instead, as part of an internal needs
assessment, an agency may need to ask the tough
questions about whether it is presently making the
best possible use of its staff and other resources
and whether any alternative uses, such as those
described above, would be more effective.

Information and Analysis

To accomplish community engagement and problem
solving, police officers and the police agency need
information. Information is needed on workload to
make the best use of staffing resources and on
crime, traffic accidents, offenders, repeat-call
locations, and other items that may be possible
targets for problemsolving efforts. This
information could come from traditional internal
sources, such as crime reports and dispatch
records, and from external sources, such as parole
agencies, traffic engineering departments, and
school systems. Most important, mechanisms should
be established to ascertain what problems are of
greatest concern to individual citizens and the
community as a whole. This is part of the needs
assessment described previously.

Some law enforcement agencies, because they are
small and cohesive and already working closely with
citizens, may have easy access to such information
without having to resort to special efforts or
formal systems. Many agencies, though, even small
ones, find that information on crime, calls for
service, other types of problems, and citizen
concerns is lacking or unreliable. Whatever their
current situations, agencies attempting to
implement NOP should consider whether sufficient
information to support collaboration and problem
solving is available, or whether additional
information-gathering and analysis capabilities are
needed. The importance of neighborhood-based data
cannot be overemphasized.

Most law enforcement agencies, regardless of size,
engage in some form of crime analysis. It is
important that the type of crime analysis done by a
department be used by those individuals involved in
the efforts. Officers will need information about
current crime problems, including data on
locations, times, methods of operation, and
suspects. The members of the planning team may need
information necessary for the identification of
growing communitywide problems and for
understanding the needs of each neighborhood.

Because NOP is strongly inclined toward identifying
and solving neighborhood-level problems, it is
important for agencies to develop their
capabilities in location-oriented analysis of
crimes and other related problems. For very small
agencies, the development of reliable and valid
information about neighborhood-level problems may
not require computerized systems or even formal
crime analysis. Some small agencies and many larger
ones, though, will find that detailed
location-oriented information is not readily
available. These agencies may need to develop or
upgrade their crime analysis capabilities in order
to extract and analyze data on the neighborhood
level.

Structure

All organizations have structure, which includes
such elements as the distribution of authority, the
levels of hierarchy, the degree of specialization,
and the extent to which actions are governed by
formal written guidelines. The issue to be
considered for NOP is whether current structures
support community engagement and problem solving at
the neighborhood level and, if not, what changes
might be helpful.

This can be tricky--not all experts agree on the
best fit between police organizational structure
and the strategies upon which NOP is based.
However, most advocates of community and
problem-oriented policing seem to agree that
structures that are more decentralized, that have
fewer levels of hierarchy, that have less
specialization, and that avoid excessively
restrictive rules and procedures are more conducive
to the kind of creative policing upon which NOP is
based. One's objective should be to examine the
agency's structure and consider whether it supports
or inhibits police officer initiative, creativity,
and risk-taking in collaboration and problem
solving with citizens.

In order for officers to engage in serious
community engagement and problem solving, however,
their focus has to be more on people and
neighborhoods and their problems, and less on
handling a certain amount of calls for service.

Officers should be assigned on the basis of
geography or neighborhood boundaries. Assignment of
officers must be consistent if a relationship is to
develop between the officer and the community. This
relationship--a known officer and the community
working together to address mutually identified
problems--is the strength of NOP.

Supervision and Management

The issues pertinent to supervision and management
are similar to those related to structure. If
supervisors fail to guide and even coach police
officers, if their styles are overbearing or
punishment-oriented, if they pressure officers to
handle calls quickly in order to get back on
patrol, and if they continue to emphasize arrests
and tickets in the evaluation of their
subordinates, it would take a miracle for those
officers to persist in community engagement and
problem solving. Officers need flexibility and
support from management in order to implement NOP
effectively.

Individual styles of supervision and management may
well need to be adjusted, as may the overall
management system of the agency. A "coaching"
approach in dealing with subordinates is most
likely to be needed, especially while subordinates
learn their new roles of community engagement and
problem solving. Higher-level managers will need to
adopt a more strategic outlook to augment or
replace the traditional police "command and
control" mentality.9 Agency-level productivity
measures, individual performance appraisals,
internal communications practices, and other
management systems may also need careful attention
and adjustment.

Officers will need the support of their supervisors
to develop contacts in agencies with which they are
unfamiliar. Management may be called upon to
support officers' needs for flexibility in working
hours so that they can meet with the community and
with members of other agencies and organizations.
This, however, will be difficult in a small rural
agency, which may not have such flexibility due to
low staffing levels (for example, the number of
officers per shift). Officers will also need help
from their supervisors when collaboration does not
go smoothly.

Management must set an expectation that
collaboration is the norm for problem solving. They
should evaluate officers' efforts and follow up
with members of other agencies to determine how
well their subordinates collaborate. They should
provide appropriate guidance to officers who are
found to be avoiding collaboration or doing it
poorly.

Getting officers involved with the NOP planning
team can be an excellent device for encouraging and
enabling collaboration. Supervisors and managers
should allow officers to attend planning team
meetings or see that they are briefed separately
about the activities of the team. Officers should
have access to much of the same information being
used by the planning team to improve the chances
they will share perceptions of problems and
priorities. Officer interaction with planning team
members should be encouraged, particularly because
many team members will be representatives of social
service agencies and community organizations.

Executive Leadership

Beyond the relatively tangible issues of structure,
supervision, and management is the more subjective
element of leadership. The chief executive is
responsible for "charting the course" of the law
enforcement agency. If NOP represents a change in
course, the executive must both steer the vessel
and convince others to follow. This can involve
articulating the new direction, explaining why it
is important and likely to be beneficial, answering
questions and allaying fears, creating enthusiasm,
overcoming inertia, and leading by example. In
particular, the executive must convince police
officers that community engagement and problem
solving are real police work. He or she must help
officers develop a new vision of policing that
honors collaboration and problem solving as much as
it honors more traditional forms of patrol and
detective work. (See appendix E for some principles
of quality leadership as applied to police
management.)

External Considerations

Traditionally, law enforcement agency external
relationships have been thought of primarily in the
following terms:

o Protecting the agency from outside interference.

o Securing sufficient resources.

o Coordinating efforts with other law enforcement
and criminal justice agencies.

NOP requires an expanded view of external
relations, to include individual officer and
agency-level relationships with citizens, community
groups, the media, other government agencies, and
public- and private-sector organizations of various
kinds, such as social service agencies, individual
businesses, business associations, and nonprofit
organizations. These expanded relationships are
sought because they are valuable in their own right
(for breaking down any sense of police isolation),
and because of their contributions to the
identification, analysis, and solution of community
crime, fear, and drug-related problems.

Collaboration among law enforcement agencies, other
government agencies, private-sector service
providers, and the community is an essential part
of NOP (for a guide to collaboration, see appendix
F). One way that police managers can facilitate
collaboration on the part of officers is by
encouraging them to join various civic groups or by
arranging (or simply permitting) their appointment
to boards of community organizations and advisory
panels of local agencies. Newsletters and
interagency training can also be used to highlight
and enhance working relationships between officers
and representatives of external organizations.

Getting citizens and representatives of interested
agencies involved in the initial planning for NOP
was discussed in chapter 2. Citizen involvement was
also emphasized in conjunction with the community
needs assessment in chapter 3. The presentation on
problem solving in chapter 5 similarly encourages
collaborative efforts, as does the discussion of
program implementation in chapter 6. Suffice it to
say that close collaboration among law enforcement
agencies, other government agencies, community
organizations, private-sector interests, and
individual citizens is not an option--it is the
very essence of the NOP approach and an integral
element to solving crime- and drug-related
problems.

Chapter 5: Problem Solving

In every police and sheriff's department one hears
stories of officers or deputies who tried something
creative as a response to a continuing problem in
the community. Typically, that creativity was not
authorized by department policy, was not consistent
with standard operating procedures, and would
probably not have been approved by a supervisor had
permission been sought. Yet the problems
communities face in the 1990's are complex and
longstanding and demand creative solutions.

Many in law enforcement are beginning to question
traditional approaches to dealing with these
problems and are encouraging, rather than avoiding,
creativity in personnel. Reliance on arrest as the
sole solution to problems of drugs, prostitution,
domestic violence, larcenies, and other crime and
disorder problems has not produced the expected
results. Departments around the country are looking
for new ways to handle an increasingly difficult
and expanding workload.

Research results spanning two decades lead to the
need for delivering law enforcement services that
target persistent or recurring problems in the
community and look for long-term solutions to these
problems. Some call these services problem-oriented
policing.1 However, they are also one of the key
elements of neighborhood-oriented policing. Using
this approach, police and sheriff personnel go
beyond individual crimes and calls for service and
take on the underlying problems that create them.
Research indicates that, in many communities, more
than 50 percent of the calls for service emanate
from 10 percent of the locations in the
communities. Because a good portion of the police
workload consists of responding to the same places
over and over again, a problem-oriented approach--
addressing the underlying conditions prompting the
calls--makes sense as an approach to policing.2

Officers have used the problem-oriented approach to
handle homicides, robberies, domestic disputes,
larcenies, noise complaints, alarms, prostitution,
traffic accidents, and a host of quality of life
issues and other problems that communities
experience. This approach is being used in midsized
and larger cities such as San Diego, California;
Newport News, Virginia; Hayward, California; Gaston
County, North Carolina; Lewiston, Maine; St. Louis,
Missouri; Savannah, Georgia; Tempe, Arizona; Prince
George's County, Maryland; Jefferson County,
Kentucky; and Portland, Oregon; in small cities and
counties such as Lumberton, North Carolina; Mount
Pleasant, South Carolina; and St. Charles,
Illinois; and many other communities around the
Nation.

A problemsolving approach to policing differs from
traditional policing strategies in four significant
ways:

o Substantial evidence suggests that problem
solving enables police agencies to be more
effective.3

Currently, police agencies commit most of their
time to responding to calls for service.
Problem-oriented policing offers a more effective
strategy by addressing the underlying conditions
that prompt calls for service. Often, calls for
service are related and, if grouped together,
disclose a pattern of activity or behavior that
presents a more accurate picture of the condition
that prompted the calls in the first place. Problem
solving offers agencies a model for addressing the
underlying conditions that create crime and cause
other problems of concern to the community.

o A problem-oriented approach recognizes the
expertise of line officers and deputies and allows
them to use that expertise to study problems and
develop creative solutions to those problems.

Experience in departments around the country has
shown that line officers and deputies are capable
of contributing much more to the resolution of
crime and other community problems than is
presently asked of them. Officers and deputies
engaged in problem solving have expressed greater
job satisfaction and exhibited a keener interest in
their work.

o A problem-oriented approach entails greater
involvement of the public in police work.

Communities must be consulted to ensure that police
are addressing the real needs and concerns of
citizens. Community involvement and support are key
ingredients if law enforcement agencies hope to
find long-term solutions to recurrent problems.

o The problem-oriented approach recognizes that
much of the information needed to examine and
understand a problem is not contained in any
law enforcement agency's files. As a result,
problemsolving officers and deputies are encouraged
to draw on a wide range of sources of information
outside of their departments to analyze and address
problems.

How Problem Solving Works

Needless to say, police officers and deputies in
departments implementing NOP handle calls for
service and investigate crimes. In addition,
however, they are expected to identify problems in
their areas of assignment, gather information from
a variety of sources about the problems, look for
and apply tailor-made solutions to the problems,
and assess whether the solutions applied were
effective. Several examples of NOP approaches for
rural communities are detailed on the following
pages.

Drug Dealing in Mobile Home Parks

An officer noticed that the police were receiving a
disproportionate number of calls from mobile home
parks in a rural community. A group of officers
launched a door-to-door survey and talked to park
residents about their problems. Residents
complained of thefts, drug dealing, and domestic
disputes. In addition, residents complained of
inadequate sanitation and poor maintenance by park
owners.

Officers began their problemsolving efforts one
park at a time. In one, police found that the park
owner turned a blind eye to the drug dealing and
refused to cooperate with police. Speculation was
that he was receiving money in exchange for his
silence about the illegal activity. In the past,
officers would have focused only on the drug
dealers themselves. To increase their effectiveness
in this instance, they also focused on the owner
who permitted the activity to occur. Police
eventually filed a civil nuisance suit against the
owner. The owner's assets were seized, and his
personal and business checking accounts frozen.
Complaints of the illegal activity have subsided.
Officers are now working on the other problems they
identified in other mobile home parks.

Peninsula Skating Rink

In June 1985, the police began receiving multiple
complaints about noise and vandalism from village
residents. Their problem: large groups of rowdy
youth paraded through their usually quiet
neighborhood between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. every Friday
and Saturday night. Many of the complainants added
that they thought the youth were coming from a
roller skating rink on Main Street. The rink closed
at 1 a.m.; presumably, the youth were making their
noisy way home.

Officer Summerfield drove to the rink early in the
evening to watch events develop. He found that
virtually none of the patrons walked to the rink;
some took a bus that had been chartered by the
rink, and many others were dropped off by parents
or friends. But many of the drivers wore bathrobes 
and nightgowns; they clearly had no intention of
coming back for their children at 1 a.m.

When he talked to the youth, Summerfield found that
their parents expected them to take the rink's bus
back home. But there was only one bus, and it could
not carry the several hundred youth who needed it
to get home without making several trips. The cause
of the problem became obvious: many of the youth
became impatient while waiting for the bus to
return, and started to walk.

Summerfield discussed the problem with the rink
owner. The owner agreed to lease more buses for the
return trip. By the next weekend, the problem had
disappeared.

Unloading a Problem

A loading dock for use by semitrailers was the site
of repeated complaints to police. During unloading,
the semitrailers extended onto the property of an
adjacent car park, occupying up to three parking
stalls at the Imperial Car Park. Countless repeat
calls for service were taken because the two
parties could not come to a mutual agreement.

The traditional response used by officers
dispatched to the scene was to calm down the
disputing parties (whose arguments were getting
more and more heated) and issue a summons for the
unloading infraction. One officer decided to try
something different, realizing that the repeated
issuance of summonses failed to resolve the problem
over the long term. The officer arranged a meeting
between the two managers of the respective
companies. With the officer acting as mediator, it
was agreed that the loading dock company would
lease the three car park stalls onto which its
trailers extended. Since that time, the police have
not had to return even once to that location.

Repeat Calls From a Bar

The Rock City Nightclub was the site of repeated
calls for service, many of them for assaults. An
officer analyzed the problem and discovered that
many of these repeat calls involved patrons who
were served drinks after they appeared inebriated.
In addition, the officer found that alcohol
consumed by a number of the impaired drivers
arrested in the area could be traced back to this
bar. He found that the management served more
liquor to patrons than the Liquor Board approved,
at a lower price than regulations permitted, and
exceeded the fire code occupancy capacity on
numerous occasions.

The officer at first targeted impaired drivers at
the location but realized that this tactic was too
reactive. He decided to address the problems
occurring in the bar itself. He arranged a meeting
with the bar owner, the bar manager, employees of
the bar, and the Liquor Control Board inspector.
The officer explained the law concerning
third-party liability, informing them that the bar
could be responsible for the actions of impaired
individuals even after they left the premises. The
employees were shown films on third-party liability
and heard a lecture on "The Use of Force, Citizens'
Powers of Arrest, and How To Handle Intoxicated
Persons." In addition, the officer met with the
fire department and presented statistics on
liquor-related crimes and occupancy code
violations. The fire department reviewed the
information and reduced the seating capacity for
the bar. As a result of the officer's efforts,
including his collaboration with other agencies,
the bar's management is serving liquor in a more
responsible fashion, and the number of
liquor-related complaints at the bar has declined
significantly.

How Problem Solving Is Done

The problemsolving process used by police officers
to identify and analyze problems on their beats is
similar to the process used by the planning team
for community needs assessment (see chapter 3). The
difference is largely one of level and specificity.
The community needs assessment focuses on
identifying the most serious drug- and
crime-related problems in the community. The
problem-oriented approach to policing focuses on
resolving these problems and improving
neighborhoods, by gathering additional information,
marshaling resources, and seeking to implement
carefully tailored actions designed to bring about
improvements.

In Newport News, Virginia, the first jurisdiction
to implement problem-oriented policing
departmentwide, officers asked for a model that
would guide them through their problemsolving
efforts.4 Aided by researchers, officers developed
a model called "SARA" for Scanning-Analysis-
Response-Assessment.

Scanning

Scanning in this context means problem
identification. As a first step, officers should
identify problems on their beats. A problem is
different from an isolated incident. An isolated
incident is something police are called to or
happen upon that is unrelated to other incidents in
the community. A problem, on the other hand,
consists of two or more incidents that are:

o Similar in one or more ways.

o Of concern to the community.

o Within the police's or sheriff's jurisdiction.

In essence, officers look for patterns or
persistent problems in the community. They should
go beyond the information that their departments
possess when identifying problems in the community.
Often the officer's perception of the problem
differs considerably from the community's--it is
information he or she needs to know and understand.
Reviewing calls for service, especially repeat
calls from particular locations, is only one way to
identify problems in the community. Other ways of
identifying problems are through citizen
complaints, census data, data from other government
agencies, newspaper and media coverage of community
issues, officer observations, police reports, and
community surveys.

Analysis

The purpose of analysis is to learn as much as
possible about a problem to identify what is
causing it (see appendix G). First, the officer
needs to understand the actions and interactions of
offenders, victims, and the environment. Generally
three elements are required to constitute a crime
in the community: an offender, a victim, and a
crime scene. Officers have found it useful in
understanding a problem to visualize the link
between these three elements by drawing a triangle.
If a victim is in a place where crimes occur, but
there are no offenders, no crime occurs. If an
offender is in a place where crimes occur, but
there is nothing or no one to be victimized, then
no crime occurs. If an offender, a victim, and
their possessions are not in the same place, there
is no crime.

As part of the analysis phase it is important to
find out as much as possible about victims (sitting
ducks), offenders (ravenous wolves), and crime
scenes (dens of iniquity) in order to understand
what is prompting the problem.5 One way to start is
by asking Who? What? Where? When? How? Why? and Why
Not? about each leg of the triangle.

After officers or deputies gather the needed
information, it is important to understand who has
control over any aspect of the triangle. Those who
have control are termed "guardians." What kind of
control do the guardians have and have they been
exercising it to deal with this current problem? At
this point, an example will best explain the
interaction among offenders, victims, environment,
and guardians.

Over the course of a month, police arrested two
different men for drug dealing in a local motel.
Information leading to the arrests came from an
anonymous tip. After the arrests, complaints about
the dealing were still coming in to the police. An
officer noticed traffic at odd hours at the hotel
and drug paraphernalia in the parking lot. The
pattern that emerged led the officer to believe
that drugs were continuing to be sold even after
arrests had been made. In response to this
situation, an officer might ask and find answers
to some of the following questions in order to
describe the relationship of the parties involved.

Ravenous Wolves: Wolves produce harm or
encourage it.

Who are the violators?
Sources of information:

o Police intelligence.

o Vehicle license plates.

o Motel employee information.

o Motel registrations.

o Interviews with arrestees.

Why do they deal here at this particular location?
Sources of information:

o Examination of geographic layout.

o Highway and interstate accessibility.

o Comparison of nightly cost of rooms to other
locations.

o Interviews with arrestees.

Why do dealers sell here and not at the other motel
in town?
Sources of information:

o Examination of cost differences between motels.

o Comparison of registration and visitor policies.

o Interviews with arrestees.

When are offenders dealing?
Sources of information:

o Complaints.

o Officer observations.

o Employee observations.

What is the offender's method of operation?
Sources of information:

o Surveillance.

o Examination of crime records and complaints.

o Neighbors.

o Employees.

Who are the customers? Are they local or nonlocal?
How do they get to the motel? How did they hear
of the motel as a source?
Sources of information:

o Motel registry.

o License plates.

o Neighbors.

o Officer observations.

o Local vs. nonlocal customers.

o Interviews with other motel patrons.

What types of drugs are offenders selling?
Sources of information:

o Motel employees, including motel cleaning staff.

o Evidence of paraphernalia.

o Past arrest data.

Where are the offenders getting their drug supply?
Sources of information:

o Police intelligence.

o Surveillance.

o Information from other jurisdictions.

Sitting Ducks: Ducks are those who are harmed.

Who, if any, of the motel staff are involved? What
do motel staff know about the problem?
Source of information:

o Police observations and interviews.
How are the legitimate customers patronizing the
motel harmed?
Source of information:

o Interviews with past customers.

How are the neighbors harmed by the problem, if at
all?
Source of information:

o Interviews with neighbors.

Who else might be harmed and how?
Sources of information:

o Crime statistics for hotel.

o Interviews with past out-of-town victims.

Dens of Iniquity: Dens are the social or physical
component.

Why at this motel and not the other motel in the
community?
Sources of information:

o Location survey.

o Registration policies.

What are the laws governing the operation of the
motel?
Sources of information:

o Municipal attorney's office.

o State Department of Consumer Affairs.

o Liquor Control Board.

o Zoning Board.

o Health and Safety.

o Fire department.

Which rooms are involved? Are the same rooms used?
Are the same people renting the same rooms or
renting repeatedly?
Sources of information:

o Motel registry information.

o Interviews with employees.

What are the motel rules, and how are they
enforced?
Source of information:

o Motel management.

What are the rules concerning employees?
Source of information:

o Motel management and staff.

What is the motel policy on room payment? How are
these particular rooms paid for?
Source of information:

o Motel owner/manager/records.

What vehicles are registered to what room?
Sources of information:

o Motel management.

o Officer observation.

What is the policy on visitors?
Source of information:

o Motel management and staff.

Once information is gathered, officers should set
goals for their problemsolving project. In this
case, reasonable goals would include:

o Making it more difficult for offenders to sell
drugs in this motel;

o Preventing the recurrence of this problem in the
future; and

o Working with the other local motels so that the
same problem will not arise there.

It is important to strike a balance in problem
analysis. On the one hand, analysis should be
careful and rigorous, so that it yields insights
about the nature and scope of the problem and, most
important, what causes it. However, it is a big
mistake to get so bogged down in gathering and
analyzing information that "paralysis of analysis"
strikes. The purpose of problem analysis is to aid
in solving the problem--the analysis should
therefore be as practical and action-oriented as
possible.

Response

In the third phase of the SARA model, officers look
for long-term, creative, tailor-made solutions to
the problem. If arrest is an effective solution to
a problem, then an officer should take that
approach. However, if arrest is not effective,
other responses must be applied. Arrest is often
part of the solution to a particular crime or
disorder problem, but in most cases arrest alone is
not sufficient to provide long-term resolution to
the problem.

For instance, in the example of drug dealing at the
motel, two offenders have already been arrested,
yet drug dealing continues. Clearly other solutions
must be applied in addition to arrest in this
scenario. One may be to eliminate one or more legs
of the triangle, thereby eliminating the link
between the wolves, the ducks, and the dens. In
addition, the ability of the guardians to handle
the problem can be strengthened or new guardians
can be created if there were none or too few
before.

In the drug-dealing scenario, because arrest did
not provide a total solution, an officer might want
to see what else can be done to remove the dealers
from the motel. Officers might decide to focus on
the dealer's customers (also part of the wolves'
leg of the triangle) by restricting motel visitors
and regulating or disallowing visitor parking. If
an officer thinks that working on the dens would be
most effective, he or she might work with the motel
owner to improve registration procedures or to post
signs concerning reporting of illegal activity.

In addition, officers and deputies should try to
strengthen the guardians because they watch over
the problem. Several approaches could be taken.
Officers could devote time to educating the motel
owner about owner liability for operating an
establishment where drugs are sold, or work with
the owner to develop procedures so employees assist
the owner in the effort.

If analysis shows that it is local residents
dealing at the location, then the officer might
pursue passage of a town ordinance that regulates
or prohibits room rentals to town residents. In
essence, this ordinance would strengthen the motel
owner's ability to keep local dealers out of the
motel. In general, if an officer wants to prevent
the crime from being perpetrated by others who will
take advantage of the opportunity, then the officer
will need to work on at least two legs of the
triangle and attempt to strengthen the guardians.

The search for alternative responses should be
wide-ranging. Officers should always attempt to
come up with several possible alternatives, even
though some may later be discarded as impractical,
too costly, or otherwise too risky. One view of the
range of potential problem-solutions can be found
in appendix H, drawn from Herman Goldstein's book
Problem-Oriented Policing. Appendix I shows another
scheme, borrowed from the book Situational Crime
Prevention by Ronald Clarke. Neither of these
classification systems is likely to be the last
word on possible solutions to crime, disorder, and
drug-related problems--they are offered to guide
but not restrict your imagination as you search for
customized solutions to the problems in your
community.

Can officers eliminate every problem they take on?
Probably not. Some problems are extremely complex,
and a diminution in the magnitude of the problem, a
reduction in its frequency, or a lessening of the
harm it creates may be the best success one can
achieve. Because many problems are complex, it
follows that multifaceted solutions are usually
recommended. If a community problem is substantial
enough to merit sustained attention, including
careful identification and analysis, then it will
generally also merit an attack from several
different angles. "Surrounding the problem" is a
good image to employ as officers consider which
alternative responses to adopt.

The most effective efforts frequently are those
that involve the guardians in the solution. Without
the input and buy-in from those affected by the
problem in developing or implementing the solution,
the results will not be as long-lasting as they
should be. Officers cannot solve the more complex
problems in our communities alone--they need to
collaborate with other government agencies,
community associations, and citizens affected by
the problem (see appendix F for a guide to
collaborative problem solving).

Assessment

Are the solutions the officer applied effective? It
is important, once an effort is complete, to assess
whether what the officer did was effective. If a
noise complaint problem came to an officer's
attention through a rash of calls for service, then
the officer might look to see if the number of
calls coming decreased, and by what amount, to
determine if the solution was effective. The
officer might also interview the complainants to
learn if the solution produced satisfactory results
from their perspective. Counting arrests or other
measures of effort may not prove whether or not a
problem was solved or reduced, so officers are
encouraged to look to other indicators for
measurement of results.

Assessment is an important step in the SARA model.
Unless one tries to determine whether what the
officers did was effective, they will never know
whether the solutions worked. A useful way to think
about assessment is to think of it as a way of
showing the before/after contrast. Even if the
solutions applied did not totally eliminate the
problem, a reduction still constitutes an
improvement and may be all that can be accomplished
in many situations.

The need to assess the effectiveness of the effort
emphasizes the importance of documentation and
baseline measurement. Many officers fail to
document the work that they have done on a project
(the effort expended), and therefore have trouble
claiming after the fact that any impact should be
attributed to their effort as officers. Similarly,
failure to measure the magnitude of the problem
before initiating the response makes it difficult
to prove conclusively that conditions got better
after the response was implemented.

Chapter 6: Implementation

Neighborhood-oriented policing requires that law
enforcement agencies make some fundamental changes
in the way they go about their work and relate to
the communities they serve. Traditional policing
emphasizes patrol, rapid response, and followup
investigations as the primary responses to crime
and drug problems. Solutions to crime problems are
generally sought within the framework of the
criminal justice system. In the traditional law
enforcement model, members of the community serve
primarily as the victims, witnesses, and financiers
of the enterprise.

NOP requires the police agency and all its
personnel to expand the way it thinks about and
responds to drug, crime, and service problems and
to consider the role members of the community play
in dealing with them. Making the transition from
traditional policing to NOP requires the department
to think through what changes need to be made and
how they will be made. The most helpful way to
think through these changes is to develop an
implementation plan.

This chapter focuses on implementation planning and
some of the challenges a law enforcement agency
faces in moving away from traditional policing to a
more proactive style that involves the community in
the identification and resolution of problems. A
well-thought-out plan will help the department
anticipate problems and minimize costly mistakes in
the implementation of changes. At a minimum, the
plan should specify the general direction the
department is heading in a clear statement of goals
and objectives. It should identify who has
responsibility for ensuring that specific
objectives are met. It should also specify
realistic timeframes for achieving the objectives
and indicate how success will be measured. The plan
should provide overall guidance for management of
the department's activities.

The topics discussed earlier in this document are
important to the development of an implementation
plan, and it is assumed that they will have been
completed prior to implementation. Refer to the
chapters on Getting Started, Community Needs
Assessment, and Law Enforcement Responsibilities to
ensure that all aspects of planning have been
considered.

The Implementation Plan

Goals, Objectives, Strategies, and Tasks

The first step in developing an implementation plan
is to establish goals and objectives. The goals and
objectives provide department members and the
community with a general sense of what NOP expects
to achieve and how. A goal is a broad statement of
the end toward which the effort is directed. An
objective is related to a particular goal but is
more specific. It details what will be done to
achieve the goal and who will do it. Goals and
objectives may be refined as the work progresses
and specific needs of the jurisdiction are
addressed. A sample goal and objectives appear
below.

o Goal: To develop an environment in which patrol
officers or deputies work with community members in
solving problems that contribute to illegal drug
abuse.

o Objective: The training director will develop and
implement a program for officers or deputies that
will train them to work with the community to
identify, analyze, and solve problems.

o Activity: Conduct 1-day training session for
patrol officers on conduct of meetings and making
effective presentations.

o Objective: A patrol and communications task force
will be established to develop a calls-for-service
management policy designed to allow
officers or deputies the necessary blocks of time
to work on problems.

o Objective: Officers will be assigned or will
volunteer to work in specified geographic areas on
a continuous basis.

Additional objectives related to this goal could be
developed to facilitate its achievement. Goals, 
objectives, and strategies should be developed for
the most significant NOP activities.

Tasks are those specific activities that need to be
carried out in order to accomplish the goals,
objectives, and strategies. Tasks should be
explicitly identified for each objective. For
example, the following tasks might be required by
the call-for-service management objective noted
above:

o Form the task force.

o Elect or appoint a chair and reporter.

o Carefully document the agency's current policies
and procedures pertaining to call-for-service
management (even if not already written).

o Gather workload and time utilization data to
document the current need for call management.

o Gather information from the literature on call
management.

o Identify comparable agencies that have already
developed call management systems and solicit their
policies and procedures.

o If possible, visit agencies that have implemented
call management systems that are considered to be
working well.

o Use the information gathered to identify the
principal alternative call-for-service management
features that could be adopted.

o Select those call-for-service management features
that seem best suited to the agency and its
particular problems.

o Write a draft of the new call-for-service
management policy.

o Distribute the draft to the task force for
comment and reaction. If it is likely to be
controversial or misunderstood, consider holding
open meetings to explain the proposed new policy
and its rationale.

o Present the new policy to the chief, sheriff, or
other appropriate top executive for approval.

o Once approved, print and distribute the new
policy.

o If the new policy requires changes in behavior on
the part of telephone operators, dispatchers, or
patrol officers, consider the need for training.

o Check to see whether this new policy requires
changes in other policies, in performance
evaluations, or in any other related organizational
systems.

Timeframes

After the goals, objectives, and tasks have been
identified, the department will be in a position to
establish timeframes for completing the tasks
associated with program implementation. Setting
realistic timeframes for completing program-related
tasks will facilitate implementation by allowing
personnel and community members to schedule program
activities around their normal responsibilities.
They also provide an important monitoring tool for
the chief or sheriff.

It's necessary to emphasize the need to set
realistic timeframes for achieving objectives. In
the training objective, for example, several
strategies and activities need to take place before
it can be achieved. At a minimum, the training
director would have to take these steps:

o Develop a curriculum.

o Identify and possibly train the trainers.

o Acquire training materials (books, handouts,
etc.).

o Develop a training schedule and make arrangements
for officers to attend.

o Conduct the training.

The time required for each of these tasks can be
estimated and will provide an idea of how long the
objective should take. By following the same
process for each of the objectives, the task force
achieves a realistic timeline for developing the
implementation phase.

Communication

The implementation plan should specify the process
by which everyone will be informed about the work
to be done and the changes necessary to get it
done. The initial steps, such as conducting a needs
assessment and establishing a planning team, will
serve as useful communication mechanisms. However,
not everyone can be involved in the planning, so it
is important to the overall success of the effort
to develop an approach for communicating key
aspects of NOP to the community, the department,
and other elements of local government that will be
involved in addressing problems in collaboration
with the police.

The implementation plan itself will serve as a
source of information about NOP, as will other
documents that are developed to support the effort.
None of these activities can substitute, though,
for a specific and aggressive effort aimed at
informing the public and others of the changes
planned.

The police chief or sheriff must play a key role in
the communication process. The nature and extent of
the changes required make it critical that everyone
realize that the chief law enforcement executive is
committed to the success of NOP. The police chief
or sheriff must take the time to make personal
appearances at community, department, and local
government meetings to talk about the new way of
doing business and what it means to each.

Every opportunity should be taken to publicize NOP
activities in the local news media. An initial
press release and press conference would be
appropriate.  Any events or results of NOP-related
activities that might be newsworthy provide an
opportunity for coverage. The plan should identify
all of the vehicles that could be used to inform
people inside and outside the department. Some of
these include:

o Daily/weekly newspapers.

o Radio stations.

o Newsletters (government, neighborhood, religious
institution, etc.).

o Service club meetings.

o Neighborhood meetings.

o Cable television.

o Television news.

o Department roll calls.

o Neighborhood/community papers.

o Ethnic-oriented papers where appropriate.

o Inservice training.

o Special events (county fairs, holiday
gatherings).

o School events (PTA, athletic contests).

In some instances it may not be enough simply to
inform planning team members, police officers, or
other service providers about new activities that
should be performed, or about old activities that
should henceforth be done differently. Proposed
changes in attitudes and philosophy may be so
significant that individuals must be convinced, if
not converted. Also, the preferred changes in
behavior may be substantial enough that individuals
need to be trained in the new ways of thinking
about and doing their work. In other words,
successful implementation may involve efforts to
win over the hearts, minds, and bodies of important
participants.

Police officers are likely to require the greatest
amount of convincing that community collaboration
and problem solving are worthwhile approaches to
reducing drug violence and other crime-related
problems. Law enforcement executives must carefully
explain to officers why these new approaches are
being tried, and show them evidence from around the
country in support of NOP. Executives should also
make their own clear commitment to giving NOP a
fair and full test. Whenever possible, they should
lead by personal example. In addition, consistency
demands that when asking officers aggressively to
seek citizen input in controlling community
problems, executives should similarly seek officer
input in running the department. Treating officers
with respect and dignity is a prerequisite to
asking officers to treat citizens as equal partners
(see appendix E for a fuller presentation of
principles of quality leadership).1

A key hurdle is the belief by officers that
community collaboration and problem solving are not
"real police work." One suggestion for both the
planning team and law enforcement executives is to
avoid equating NOP and its components with either
social work or with any kind of "softer" approach
to drug and crime problems. Assurances should be
given that NOP includes enforcement of the law, and
consistent emphasis should be given to the goals of
NOP--reducing drug and crime related problems. NOP
is promising not because it is a nicer or kinder
approach, but because it marshals greater
resources, implements more tailored specific
solutions, and addresses real and perceived
problems.

Ultimately, officers will be most convinced once
they have had the opportunity to participate in
community collaboration and problem solving. Law
enforcement executives should first concentrate on
explaining the rationale for NOP, then on getting
as many officers as possible actually involved in
the program. (More on the difficult task of
managing change is presented later in this
chapter.)

Training

Beyond the need to convince officers and others of
NOP's desirability, several aspects may have
training implications.

o The planning team may need training in the
planning process, to learn how to set goals,
objectives, and strategies, or to learn techniques
for resolving conflicts and reaching consensus.
(Appendix A gives a fast course in planning.)

o The planning team, local politicians, law
enforcement officers, city agencies,
community-based organizations, and residents may
need general training in NOP.

o Law enforcement officers, other service
providers, and citizens may need training in
specific techniques of community collaboration and
problem solving.

o Law enforcement managers may need training in
such matters as supervision, leadership, quality
management, or program planning or evaluation.

o Specific NOP activities may create training
requirements--training for officers in civil code
enforcement, training for school teachers in
recognizing signs of drug abuse, or training for
landlords to prevent drug or other criminal
activity on their property, for example.

The best kind of training will vary depending on a
number of factors. If a large number of individuals
need training on a particular topic, it may be most
efficient to bring in one or two trainers to
provide it. If only one or a few individuals need
training, it may be more economical to send them
away to a formal training course or to visit a
jurisdiction where they can observe similar
activities.

For general topics such as the planning process or
quality management, qualified and effective
trainers may be available locally. For somewhat
more specialized topics, assistance may be
available from local or regional universities, from
State law enforcement training facilities, or from
other not-too-distant jurisdictions. For
specialized topics, such as landlord training or
training in problem-oriented policing, training may
be available from national law enforcement
organizations or through the Federal Government.

When seeking to satisfy NOP-related training needs,
the best advice is to look before leaping. Because
training is important to successful NOP operations,
training needs should be carefully assessed. Once
training needs are identified, the selection of
individuals to provide training should be given
equal care. One can contact other jurisdictions,
other law enforcement agencies, local universities,
the State training commission, and the appropriate
resource agencies identified in appendix J in order
to determine how the training might be obtained and
which training programs are most highly
recommended. It is also important to check with
previous customers to make certain that they were
satisfied with the product. Information should be
sought about possible funding sources, including
Federal and State grants and private support
(corporations, foundations, other philanthropies,
and civic organizations in the home community
should not be overlooked).

Before spending a lot of money on any kind of
training, one should make sure that the
achievements sought for are well in mind and should
be able to communicate the specific needs to
others.

Monitoring

The implementation plan should also address how
program activities will be monitored. Although this
may require special reporting procedures, the
monitoring function should be built into the
routine activities of the department to the
greatest extent possible. If the department has
regularly scheduled staff meetings, NOP's progress
should be included on the agenda. If the department
requires division or unit heads to prepare activity
reports, program-related information should be part
of the report.

The individuals or units with responsibility for a
particular objective should be required to provide
scheduled feedback about the progress being made
toward its achievement. The main purpose of
monitoring progress is to let key program personnel
know if things are going as planned. If not, the
monitoring process will provide ample lead time to
make the necessary adjustments.

The crucial role of monitoring was vividly
demonstrated during the initial stages of the
Citizen-Oriented Police Enforcement (COPE) project
in Baltimore County, Maryland, in the early
1980's.2 When they first began implementing COPE,
officers were understandably cautious and relied
primarily on such traditional tactics as preventive
and saturation patrol. Careful monitoring revealed
this behavior, and the officers were encouraged to
increase their citizen contacts. When the COPE
officers then adopted such standard crime
prevention tactics as home security surveys and
Neighborhood Watch, monitoring again kept program
managers informed about actual program activity.

Ultimately, the COPE officers adopted problem
solving as their method of operation--choosing
saturation patrol, crime prevention, or other
tactics only after carefully identifying specific
problems and after considering a variety of
possible solutions. This evolution of COPE from
saturation patrol to crime prevention to problem
solving would never have occurred without
systematic program monitoring.

Quarterly progress reports are an important vehicle
for documenting and communicating the status of NOP
actions. Besides conveying routine activity-related
information, these reports should identify
successes, failures, challenges, hurdles, and
opportunities. If written well, progress reports
can provide considerable insight about the program-
-insight that can be beneficial to other members of
the agency, members of the planning team, and
individuals implementing NOP in other
jurisdictions.

Major Challenges

The implementation of any effort at change will
bring with it various challenges that must be
addressed either before or during implementation.
Although you cannot anticipate all of the
challenges a department might encounter, several
are worth discussing because they have been
encountered in most communities that have attempted
to implement a new approach to policing.

Officer/Deputy Versus Special Unit

One of the critical initial decisions a department
will encounter is whether NOP activities will be
the primary responsibility of one officer or a
special unit, or structured so that all officers
have some responsibility for activities. Some
departments have elected to create community
policing or problemsolving units (or specially
designated officers) that perform this work full
time and are free from the responsibility of
answering radio calls (such as in Baltimore
County3). Other departments have decided to
implement the approach throughout the department,
with each officer responsible for engaging in
problemsolving activities with the community in his
or her area of assignment in addition to normal
patrol responsibilities (such as in Newport News,
Virginia, and Aurora, Colorado4). Some have made
the decision to take the department-wide approach,
but they have started with a small area of their
community and expanded it from there with
additional areas phased in over a specified period
of time (as in Madison, Wisconsin5). Still other
departments have started with a special unit as a
way of introducing the concept and gradually
expanded to officers in patrol and other parts of
the department (this is what happened in Baltimore
County).

Obviously, the approach a department takes will be
dictated by local circumstances and resources. This
issue should be carefully considered because
initial decisions will have long-term effects on
the program and the department. If, for example,
a department elects to assign NOP responsibilities
to one officer or a special unit, a number of
questions will have to be addressed:

o Who will provide supervision?

o How will positive working relationships be
maintained with officers on patrol who must
shoulder the call-for-service workload?

o How will these officers be evaluated?

o How will information be exchanged between
officers and units?

For each approach a department might take, there
will be questions that will need to be taken into
consideration in the planning process.

Managing Change

One of the most significant challenges facing the
introduction of a new way of doing things is the
process of managing change. One can safely assume
that people inside and outside the department will
offer some resistance to the changes proposed in
conjunction with NOP. The planning process and
implementation plan must take this expected
resistance into account and specify steps to
minimize any negative effects on the program.
Obviously, a well-thought-out approach to informing
citizens and officers is a key part of the process
of managing change.

Employees (at all levels) may resist changes
expected in neighborhood-oriented policing.
Understanding why is crucial. The reasons will vary
from one organization to another, but the
department may want to anticipate some common,
general reasons for resistance. It is important to
look at the situation from the employee's point of
view. Among the issues might be these:

o Is there a chance employees might see a personal
loss of some type in the program? Freedom? Pride?
Satisfaction? Status? Some may think that working
with the community to identify and solve problems
is not real police work.

o Do they have a negative attitude toward the
organization? If so, the reasons need to be
addressed, or at least separated from the project.

o Could they see the change as personal criticism
of what they have been doing for years? Some
officers have considerable personal investment in
the current approaches to policing--a new approach
has to be presented as an enhancement and in a
manner designed to be sensitive to this issue.

o Do they view the approach as requiring more
effort without seeing tangible results? Employees
need to see value in their work and have a sense
that what they do makes a difference to the
organization and community.

o Have they had any input into project planning? It
is not unusual for a promising initiative to fail
because the employees expected to do the work have
not had any involvement in the planning process.

These issues, and others, often serve as
significant barriers to change. Although it may not
be possible to resolve all of them, understanding
that they exist and considering them in the
implementation process can mean the difference
between success and failure of a new initiative
such as NOP.

A law enforcement agency should also prepare for
external resistance to change. One way of doing
this is to examine program elements to determine
which areas might be viewed in a negative light by
members of the community. One example might be
call-for-service management systems. Some
departments have been reluctant to implement
differential police responses, such as delayed
response or telephone reporting, for fear of
negative community reaction. Actually, most
agencies implementing call-for-service management
systems have not encountered significant resistance
to these approaches, but it is an area that needs
to be fully explained to the community.

External resistance also may be anticipated from
the city or county council. In most cases, they
will quickly embrace the NOP concept. They may,
however, see the change as simply a new program in
addition to activities the agency has always done
instead of the first step to a change in how
policing is done. They must be educated about
neighborhood-oriented policing: why it is needed,
what it involves, and what impact, both positive
and negative, there might be at various stages. To
the extent possible, the police or sheriff's
department needs to include in its planning and
implementation strategy careful consideration of
how best to educate the political leaders of the
community about the approach.

Dealing with change is a complex process that
requires thoughtful leadership and planning. Police
chiefs and sheriffs must recognize that they work
in a number of arenas that are important to the
success of any new effort, including NOP, and
within which they must exercise leadership. These
include:

o Community.

o Political.

o Organizational.

o Intra-organizational.

o Media arenas.6

Each of these contexts is important. They are
interrelated and each requires consideration by the
chief police executive in advancing any new ideas
or programs. The community must be convinced that
the new approach has a greater chance of success
than traditional methods. Politicians must be
convinced that the resources they will invest are
going to be well spent and that the majority of the
community will go along with what is being
proposed. Employees in the organization must have a
sense that the new strategies will succeed where
others have not. Other organizations with which the
police interact have to understand what effects the
proposed changes in the delivery of police services
will have on their operations.

The police executive also must find a way to
effectively communicate a new program, a new idea,
or a change in policies and procedures to
interested parties in all of the arenas. The news
media are usually among the most effective ways of
doing this.

Police executives who are effective in managing
change are able to provide leadership in all of
these settings. That is, they influence, they
guide, and they create a vision of how things ought
to be that is acceptable to the majority of the
people involved and affected.

Making NOP Work

The implementation planning process is critical to
the success of rural NOP. The department needs to
think through carefully what it wants to achieve,
how it will be done, who will do it, who might be
affected, and whether or not the objectives are in
fact being achieved. The discussion in this and
other chapters of the monograph provide useful
guidance to the development of a sound plan. A
cautionary note is in order, however.

The planning process and the development of a plan
are important, but it is even more important to do
the work. It is not unusual for police agencies to
invest heavily in developing a plan, then never get
around to doing the work. That has contributed to
the frustration that one often finds in police
agencies. Employees have seen projects, programs,
and plans come and go while things look pretty much
the same to them. The plan is not an end in itself-
-it is simply a means to an end, in this case a
means to implement greater police-citizen
collaboration and problem solving in order to
reduce the harm caused by crime, drugs, fear, and
related problems in rural communities.

Chapter 7: Evaluating the Progress of NOP

A critical step in implementing NOP is assessing
its effects, both in  terms of (1) achieving
necessary change within the organization itself and
(2) accomplishing external goals such as
establishing working relationships with the
community and reducing levels of crime, fear, and
disorder. An ongoing assessment meets a number of
fundamental needs.

Every government and public agency, including the
police, should be able to explain to policymakers
and taxpayers exactly what it is doing and how.
Ongoing assessment of policy and performance should
thus be a primary function. It becomes even more
vital in an organization undergoing the changes
involved in a shift to NOP.

Managers need constant assessment of where the
organization is in the change process in order to
determine what steps are needed to keep
implementation on track. They also need to know
which strategies are most effective so they can
make informed choices about where to allocate
limited resources.

The feedback provided by ongoing assessment helps
give the organization implementing NOP a clear
sense of direction and allows management to steer
efforts toward the most productive and efficient
channels. Assessment is indispensable in
determining which elements of NOP should be
maintained, altered, or eliminated. It also offers
key decisionmakers in the jurisdiction a gauge of
NOP's impact and cost-effectiveness.

Assessing the progress of NOP informs management
whether necessary changes in the spirit or
"culture" of the organization are indeed taking
place and if appropriate efforts are being made to
accomplish the goals set out. Assessment also can
help tell employees what is expected of them. The
aspects of performance that are measured come to be
considered important by those who do the job as
well as by those who assess how well the job
is done.

Giving community members a measure of the progress
of NOP efforts from the police point of view is
critical to maintaining strong ties, ensuring their
continued participation, and documenting that joint
efforts to improve the safety and quality of
neighborhoods are making headway. On the other
hand, obtaining an assessment from government and
community leaders on how NOP is working from their
point of view also has a strong effect on how
cooperative efforts are put together in the future.
Thorough assessment helps make police more
responsive to the community's needs, which should
help deepen the trust and partnership on which NOP
is based.

As noted earlier, before a sound assessment program
can be developed, a strategic plan that outlines
the goals, objectives, and timetable for internal
and external changes is needed. This strategic plan
should address, in specific terms, (1) what needs
to be accomplished; (2) how it should be
accomplished; (3) by whom it should be
accomplished; and (4) when it should be
accomplished. These goals and responsibilities form
the basis of concrete methods of assessment.
Assessing performance in terms of well-defined
goals allows police leadership to detect failures
and roadblocks, as well as chart progress and
document accomplishments.

Assessing Internal Changes

Astute police leaders recognize that large gaps can
exist between what policy dictates and what
personnel do. Management must take nothing for
granted in the implementation of NOP policies and
procedures. In one form or another, the chief
executive must constantly ask, "How are we doing?
Are we on track? What problems are occurring? What
help is necessary?"

In smaller and moderate-size organizations, this
critical assessment can be accomplished through the
chief's "management by walking around," stopping by
at offices of key managers and groups to get
on-the-spot reports on implementation efforts. The
chief also can talk with patrol officers to get
their views of how implementation is proceeding. In
any size organization, the chief executive can hold
useful regular meetings with those responsible for
overseeing implementation of NOP and ask for their
reports in a setting that reinforces accountability
and allows for immediate discussion of ways to deal
with problems. Management also can require regular
reports on progress toward specific NOP objectives
and timetables.

Periodic personnel surveys can help identify what
modifications have occurred in management style,
obstacles that stand in the way of change, and what
agency leadership can do to facilitate necessary
adjustments in the roles of managers, supervisors,
and patrol officers.

Three Criteria for Assessment

Evaluating the impact of NOP is critical for
several reasons. Key decisionmakers in the
jurisdiction need a gauge of the strategy's impact
and cost-effectiveness. The police organization
implementing NOP needs a measure of its success or
failure to determine which elements of the strategy
should be maintained, altered, or eliminated.

Assessment measures may vary depending on the size
of the organization and the scope of its NOP
actions. Close and continuous monitoring is
necessary in every organization moving to NOP.
Assessing its results will expedite the
implementation process, help attract support,
circumvent problems, and reveal new opportunities
for productive partnerships with the community.
Much can be learned from both successes and
failures. Ongoing assessment measures also will
help fix accountability for implementing the
changes imposed by the strategy.

In the past, police efforts were evaluated solely
on a traditional and narrow set of criteria:
statistics on whether serious crime is increasing
or decreasing, the number of 911 calls, the
rapidity of police response to calls for service,
number of arrests and citations, and so forth.
These measurements often were taken only at times
of serious crime increases, which were highly
influenced by factors outside police control, such
as rising unemployment rates or the advent of the
drug culture.

Although many of the traditional methods of
assessment remain valid, they measure only the
effectiveness of crime-fighting tactics, not
crime-prevention efforts. The changes in the scope
of policing and in personnel responsibility that
mark NOP necessitate a revised system for
evaluating performance of the strategy, the
organization, managers, and neighborhood patrol
officers. NOP expands the focus of police activity
to include a proactive role in deterring crime in
partnership with the community. This expanded role
calls for a broader set of assessment criteria, one
that augments traditional measures of
crime-fighting activities with those that encompass
community partnership and problemsolving
activities.

Activities such as arrests and responses to calls
for service become only one barometer by which the
NOP effort and individual officers are assessed. A
revised system for evaluating performance must take
into account both the outcome and how the outcome
was achieved. Many indications of the success of
NOP are intangible--absence of fear, quality of
interaction with community members, and so forth.
Assessing a NOP strategy is, therefore, a
qualitative process in addition to a quantitative
one.

The culture and values of the department will be
invaluable in revamping the assessment process.
They will form the basis of sound qualitative
measures of effectiveness. Assessment must take
into account and reward organizational and
individual behavior that makes a real difference in
deterring crime and solving other neighborhood
problems. Creativity, initiative, and ingenuity
should carry substantial weight in the evaluation
of individual officers.

Three major and broad criteria can be used to
appraise the success of NOP. These criteria--
effectiveness, efficiency, and equity--offer a
sound foundation for developing quantitative and
qualitative measures of progress.

Effectiveness

An effective NOP strategy has a positive impact on
reducing neighborhood crime, allays citizens' fear
of crime, and enhances the quality of life in the
community. It accomplishes these goals by combining
the efforts and resources of the police, the local
government, and the community.

From the police perspective, an important goal of
the strategy is to provide higher quality service
to neighborhoods; therefore, assessing customer
satisfaction becomes a significant measure of the
strategy's effectiveness. Periodic surveys of
community opinion can function as benchmarks of
NOP's progress and act as a guide for weighing the
various elements that make up the assessment
process. The perception of progress among community
members and ongoing feedback from all elements of
the community are inherent parts of the assessment
process. Randomly and routinely conducted surveys
keep the agency in touch with how the public views
police performance, measure the level of popular
fears and concerns, and let the organization know
how successful it has been in its efforts to make
community members feel a part of bringing order to
neighborhoods.

A core component of NOP is establishing community
partnerships. Accordingly, an early measure of the
strategy's effectiveness is the number, depth, and
productivity of community partnerships formed. Also
central to NOP is identifying and solving problems
within a neighborhood to deter crime and reduce
fear of crime. The cooperation and participation of
community members is necessary to accomplish this
goal. Assessing the effectiveness of NOP includes
determining whether problems have indeed been
solved and judging how well the managers
(sergeants, lieutenants, and captains) and patrol
officers involved have used the community-partnership
and problemsolving components of NOP described
in chapters 3 through 5.

Assessment should focus not only on whether
problems have been effectively eradicated or
reduced but also on the way this goal was
accomplished. For example, the number of arrests is
only one possible measure of effective problem
solving. In many cases, arrests do not ensure that
a problem will disappear entirely, and the
solutions to many problems do not involve arrest.

Furthermore, not all problems will involve criminal
activity. Many will not even be considered a
priority by the police agency. It is the concerns
and fears of community members that order
priorities where serious crime is not involved.
Police must take their lead from them. The number
and type of problems solved and the creativity and
scope of the solutions will provide a yardstick of
NOP's effectiveness.

In NOP, solving problems is not the sole
responsibility of the police. Sometimes officers
may act as facilitators, mobilizing community
support. In other instances, they may function as
mediators in disputes between individuals or
organizations, or they may refer a problem to an
appropriate social or governmental agency.
Effective use of these governmental and community
agencies is another indication that NOP policies
are working. Thus, mobilization and intelligent use
of community resources in solving problems and
sensitive handling of dissension become important
considerations in assessing the performance of
officers as well as the success of the program.

Another important measure of the success of NOP is
increased levels of community participation in
crime reduction and prevention efforts. Community
members do not act if they are afraid or
suspicious. One indication that bonds of trust are
being built is that community members become more
willing to work with the police in a variety of
ways, ranging from converting abandoned buildings
to community assets to involving police actively in
community meetings. In addition, with trust, they
may be more forthcoming in providing information on
criminal activity in the area.

In fact, calls to report crime might increase
considerably during the early phases of NOP
implementation, as community confidence in police
capability rises and trust increases. However,
experience with NOP has shown that the number of
911 calls decreases over time, then providing a
quantitative measure of the strategy's efficacy.
Emergency calls in the pioneering Flint, Michigan,
foot patrol district, for instance, dropped 43
percent over the course of that department's
experiment.1

A concrete indication of NOP's success is an
increased level of community resources devoted to
enhancing crime reduction efforts. Active
consultative and financial participation by public
and private agencies, schools, and the business
community will signal that community-partnership
efforts are yielding desired results. Another
manifestation of effectiveness emerges when
communities begin to initiate, conduct, and sustain
projects with minimal guidance from the police.

Renewed activity within the community also
demonstrates the effectiveness of NOP efforts,
particularly in areas where citizens have been
afraid to leave their homes because they felt they
risked physical harm. Reduction in fear also can
result in the perception among residents that crime
is on the wane, whether or not statistics bear this
out. Willingness of citizens to walk within their
neighborhoods, use parks, patronize stores, and
attend a meeting at a school or church that is not
a regular choice signals that the NOP strategy is
working to reduce citizen fear. In turn, the very
fact that community members are reclaiming their
streets will help deter criminal activity.

NOP also goes a step farther. It makes citizens
stronger and helps create more vigorous
neighborhoods.

Improved quality of life is difficult to measure,
but it is an important goal of NOP and will be
reflected in comments from community members.
Removing signs of disorder--such as ridding a
town's streets of gangs, drunks, panhandlers, or
prostitutes, perhaps with the help of public and
private social agencies--also enhances quality of
life. The absence of previous signs of neglect
(seen in abandoned cars, derelict buildings, and
areas littered with garbage and debris) offers a
tangible indication that NOP efforts are working to
bring about increased order in neighborhoods.

The police function broadens in NOP to embrace the
provision of services that in the recent past have
often been regarded as being outside a police
organization's purview. These services include
helping accident and crime victims, arbitrating
neighborhood and domestic disputes, and providing
emergency medical and social services. An analysis
of the nature of calls for police service (for
example, a lower percentage of calls reporting
criminal activity in proportion to calls requesting
social assistance) will provide a measure of how
well the strategy is working, from the viewpoints
of both the police and the community.

Efficiency

Efficiency for NOP means what it does for any
enterprise--getting the most impact with available
resources. Measuring the efficiency of NOP
involves, first of all, defining the available
resources, including those of the police agency,
local government, and private agencies, citizen
groups, the business community, and the
neighborhood itself. Assessment measures must then
determine whether these resources are being used to
their fullest to solve any given problem. In
addition, the extent to which an agency
successfully realigns its resources and enhances
them with community partnerships will have a major
impact on the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of
NOP.

In law enforcement agencies with several layers of
hierarchy, two major shifts must occur if NOP is to
work efficiently. The first shift involves
establishing staunch partnerships and collaborative
efforts with the community. The second shift
involves moving from a central to a decentralized
command structure in which problemsolving,
decisionmaking, and accountability are spread
downward to all levels of the organization.
According to Moore and Stephens,2 such
decentralization challenges personnel to be more
creative and results in more effective operational
decisions because they are more timely and are made
with firsthand knowledge of the facts. It also
allows higher level managers to spend more time
formulating strategies that will improve the
organization's ability to perform in the future.

In a decentralized policing organization,
initiative, decisions, and responsibilities are
pushed downward. Neighborhood patrol officers take
care of the bulk of the daily policing needs of the
community, with guidance and backing from
supervisors. Long-term shifts and neighborhood
patrol assignments are a prerequisite if personnel
and the NOP strategy are to function efficiently
and successfully.

This greater discretion in handling police
functions allows a bond of common ownership to
develop between the officer and the community. This
"pride of ownership" offers a strong mutual
motivation to solve the problems that affect the
security and harmony of the neighborhood. Job
satisfaction among patrol officers is apt to
increase with the higher levels of responsibility
and accountability. Officers are often able to
resolve issues within a short time, allowing them
to see relatively swift results of their efforts.

Employee morale and job satisfaction take on new
significance in NOP. Patrol officers function more
efficiently and effectively as catalysts and
mobilizers of community support if they are highly
motivated, given the necessary support, and
appropriately rewarded for their efforts. Job
satisfaction will both affect and result from the
success of the NOP program.

Depending on the scope of implementation of NOP
within the organization and community, roles and
responsibilities of all police personnel
potentially are altered. The leadership and
ingenuity displayed by personnel become important
factors in determining the efficiency of the NOP
program. Therefore, assessment and reward
procedures must be revised accordingly.

Efficiency is enhanced by the availability of help
from the community, which also removes some of the
strain from tight police budgets. Strong community
ties can bring fresh resources to bear on problems,
even those considered "police-only" business under
traditional policing methods. According to one
sheriff, "There is virtually no limitation on how
much more effective and efficient a sheriff's
office can become, working collectively as a
partner with community members while, at the same
time, saving resources, dollars, and frustration on
the part of constituents."3

The move to decentralized decisionmaking and
partnership with the community gives rise to key
organizational and resource issues that must be
addressed for the entire system to operate smoothly
and efficiently. For example, budgets must reflect
the goals of NOP. This means that money and
resources should be allocated in proportion to
desired results. Decentralized management entails
more input in budgetary decisions from police
officers who have the greatest responsibility for
the day-to-day policing operations. This could lead
to more efficient allocation of resources. Along
with more budgetary input and greater
decisionmaking powers comes greater accountability
for the way the money is being spent, the actions
taken, and the results achieved.

Training is paramount in an efficient shift to NOP.
Changed and augmented responsibilities require
expanded and thorough training. Initially, training
could be costly in terms of both dollars and time.
However, intensive training eventually produces its
own efficiencies as well-trained and experienced
personnel share their practical knowledge with
their colleagues.

Redefined job functions at all levels of management
may have distinct consequences on efficiency in
larger agencies. One large jurisdiction
implementing NOP called for sergeants to coordinate
officer decisionmaking across beats as necessary
and confer with their lieutenants on decisions that
involved a large or long-term commitment of
resources. The role of lieutenants was to apprise
their respective captains about happenings on beats
across their districts.

With these amended roles for mid-level managers,
some speculate that the organization may require
fewer levels of supervision to run efficiently.
While an important role of supervisors is to help
maximize the time neighborhood officers can spend
in communities, supervisors also coordinate
problem-solving activities within and across
communities, help secure resources, evaluate
activities and decisions, and provide guidance and
support to neighborhood officers.

Controlling calls for service is also central to
achieving efficiency in time and dollars.
Sophisticated technology advances can help
prioritize calls and facilitate communication
between and among the NOP partners. Alternative
response strategies for nonemergency calls include
a delayed officer response and officer response by
appointment. Low-priority situations can be handled
by telephone, walk-in, and mail-in reporting. "All
indications are that these systems save an enormous
amount of time, reduce officer frustrations, and
are equally satisfactory to the callers."4

Effectiveness and efficiency are important
yardsticks by which to measure NOP's achievements.
But it is equity, the third major criterion for
judging progress, that has the most comprehensive
impact on its success.

Equity

Equity is grounded firmly in the Constitution of
the United States, which all police officers are
sworn to uphold. NOP promises equity in the
foremost tenet of democracy: that all citizens
should have a say in how they are governed. The
close cooperation that characterizes NOP and the
concomitant recognition that police are an integral
part of the community may help officers better
relate to citizens as individuals and make policing
a force for enhancing the democratic principles on
which the United States was founded.

NOP should be treated as an opportunity to
reemphasize the need for uncompromising integrity,
unyielding standards of fairness, and unwavering
equality at all levels of policing. These ideals
are especially important because officers work
closely with the community and may be increasingly
confronted with moral and ethical dilemmas.

Equity has three separate and distinct dimensions
in NOP. The first involves equal access to police
services by all citizens. The second dimension
pertains to the equal treatment of all individuals
according to the Constitution. The third dimension
involves equal distribution of police services and
resources among communities.

Equal access to police services. The paramount
commitment of NOP should be respect for all
citizens and sensitivity to their problems and
needs. Equal access to police services is the
foundation of a full and productive partnership
with a community.

All citizens have an equal right to police
services, regardless of race, religion, personal
characteristics, or group affiliation. Neighborhood
officers must treat community members in a
nondiscriminatory and equal manner. Supervisors
should help ensure that police services are readily
available throughout the community.

In addition, lines of communication must be kept
open with all partners in the NOP effort. Any hint
of favoritism for one group will severely hamper
future cooperative efforts. More vocal groups
cannot be permitted to use NOP to serve their own
purposes to the exclusion of others in the
community. Police must prevent such behavior before
it adversely affects the bonds of cooperation that
have been established within and among communities.

Equal treatment under the Constitution.  A basic
obligation of policing is to ensure that the police
treat all individuals in accordance with the
constitutional rights that police are sworn to
protect and enforce. Careful attention to these
rights in dealing and working with citizens,
victims, or perpetrators must guide the actions of
the patrol officer, thereby helping to engender
bonds of trust between the police and community.
Equal treatment means dealing with all persons with
respect and impartiality, rejecting stereotypes,
and using reason and persuasion rather than
coercion where possible.

Equal distribution of police services and resources
among communities. Because NOP customizes policing
services to the unique needs of each community, it
theoretically should result in an equitable
distribution of services among poor and minority
communities. Care must be taken to ensure that this
is indeed the case.

Equitable distribution of resources among
communities depends heavily on the extent to which
the community articulates its needs, the extent to
which the neighborhood officer listens to the
community, and the willingness and motivation of
the officer to work with the community to meet
those needs. Another factor influencing the
distribution of resources is the community's
ability and willingness to work with the police to
ensure its equal share of police services.

Some neighborhoods may appear unwilling or unable
to help the police in their efforts to improve life
in the community. Officers must realize that
sometimes "the community seems so helpless because
it feels abandoned and would discover new strengths
if only the police could make an effective alliance
with important community elements . . . .
Departments that have taken early steps [into NOP]
are full of stories of apparently lost
neighborhoods that flowered under new police
attention."5

No community must be given preference over another.
All communities must have equal access to police
services. However, equity does not always mean
equal distribution of police service and resources.
Wealthier communities are often able to contribute
more resources to the problemsolving process than
poorer communities can. Crime rates may also be
higher in some communities, necessitating a greater
level of police intervention and consuming a larger
proportion of police resources to bring about a
decrease in crime and to turn neighborhoods that 
people fear to live in or travel through into
assets for the city or county.

Refining the Assessment Process

Assessing NOP should be an ongoing process and
should include assessing even the assessment
measures themselves. As a police agency gains
experience with NOP, it will become more adept at
developing measures that accurately chart success
and point to ways in which success can be
multiplied.

Notes:

Chapter 1

1. Robert Sheehan and Gary W. Cordner, Introduction
to Police Administration, second edition,
Cincinnati: Anderson, 1989: pp. 365-76.

2. David C. Couper and Sabine H. Lobitz, Quality
Policing: The Madison Experience, Washington, D.C.:
Police Executive Research Forum, 1991.

3. Beyond Command and Control: The Strategic
Management of Police Departments, Washington, D.C.:
Police Executive Research Forum, 1991: pp. 112-113.

4. "Quality of life" concerns police, and police
can positively affect it, to the extent to which
that quality reflects a neighborhood's stability
and pleasantness--and the lack of graffiti and
other signs of decay and disorder that James Q.
Wilson and George L. Kelling pointed out (1982) in
their now-famous article "Police and Neighborhood
Safety: Broken Windows" (Atlantic Monthly, March,
pp. 29-38).  More recent discussions are found in
Communities and Crime, ed. Albert J. Reiss, Jr.,
and Michael Tonry, vol. 8 (1986) of Crime and
Justice: A Review of Research, Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, especially in Robert J. Bursik,
Jr., "Ecological Stability and the Decline of
Delinquency," pp. 35-66; Wesley Skogan, "Fear of
Crime and Neighborhood Change," pp. 201-229; and
Ralph B. Taylor and Stephen Gottfredson,
"Environmental Design, Crime, and Prevention: An
Examination of Community Dynamics," pp. 387-416. 

5. Community Policing Consortium, Understanding
Community Policing: A Framework for Action,
Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Assistance,
1994.

6. Brian A. Reeves, "State and Local Police
Departments, 1990," Washington, D.C.: Bureau of
Justice Statistics Bulletin, 1992, and "Sheriffs'
Departments, 1990," Washington, D.C.: Bureau of
Justice Statistics Bulletin, 1992.

7. National Institute of Justice, "Policing in
Rural Areas," in Research and Evaluation Plan 1992.
Washington, D.C.: NIJ, 1992: pp. 56-60.

Chapter 4

1. See, for example, William A. Geller, ed., Local
Government Police Management, 3d edition,
Washington, D.C.: International City Management
Association, 1991; Larry K. Gaines, Mittie D.
Southerland, and John E. Angell, Police
Administration, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991; and
Robert Sheehan and Gary W. Cordner, Introduction to
Police Administration, 2d edition, Cincinnati:
Anderson, 1989. But especially see also Community
Policing  Consortium, Understanding Community
Policing: A Framework for Action, Washington, D.C.:
Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1994.

2. See Mark H. Moore and Robert C. Trojanowicz,
"Policing and the Fear of Crime," Perspectives on
Policing 3, Washington, D.C.: National Institute of
Justice and Harvard University, 1988.

3. The crimes listed in Uniform Crime Reports as
"major offenses" and thus a measure of the extent
of criminality at any given time: murder, negligent
homicide, voluntary homicide, forcible rape,
robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny
theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.

4. Robert Trojanowicz and Bonnie Bucqueroux,
Community Policing: A Contemporary Perspective,
Cincinnati: Anderson, 1990.

5. Herman Goldstein, Problem-Oriented Policing, New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1990.

6. J. Thomas McEwen, Edward F. Connors III, and
Marcia I. Cohen, Evaluation of the Differential
Police Response Field Test, Washington, D.C.:
National Institute of Justice, 1986.

7. William Spelman and Dale K. Brown, Calling the
Police: Citizen Reporting of Serious Crime,
Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum,
1981.

8. McEwen, Connors, and Cohen, note 6 above.

9. Mark H. Moore and Darrel W. Stephens, Beyond
Command and Control: The Strategic Management of
Police Departments, Washington, D.C.: Police
Executive Research Forum, 1991.

Chapter 5

1. Herman Goldstein, Problem-Oriented Policing, New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1990.

2. Some of the ideas presented in this chapter have
their origins in routine activity theory and
situational crime prevention, which seem to go hand
in hand with problem-oriented policing. Interested
readers are referred to: 

Ronald V. Clarke on situational crime prevention--
see appendix I.

Marcus Felson on routine activity theory--"Routine
Activities and Crime Prevention in the Developing
Metropolis," Criminology 25(4), February 1987, pp.
911-947; "Linking Criminal Choices, Routine
Activities, Informal Control, and Criminal
Outcomes" in The Reasoning Criminal: Rational
Choice Perspectives on Offending, ed. Derek B.
Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke, pp. 117-128, New
York: Springer-Verlag, 1986.

Lawrence W. Sherman on repeat complaint policing--
Sherman et al., Repeat Calls to Police in
Minneapolis, Washington, D.C.: Crime Control
Institute for National Institute of Justice, 1987.

3. John E. Eck and William Spelman, Problem
Solving: Problem-Oriented Policing in Newport News,
Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum,
1987.

4. John E. Eck and William Spelman, Problem
Solving: Problem-Oriented Policing in Newport News,
Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum,
1987.

5. William Spelman and John E. Eck, "Sitting Ducks,
Ravenous Wolves, and Helping Hands: New Approaches
to Urban Policing," Public Affairs Comment (1989),
Austin, Texas: School of Public Affairs, University
of Texas.

Chapter 6

1. See also David C. Couper and Sabine H. Lobitz,
Quality Policing: The Madison Experience,
Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum,
1991.

2. Gary W. Cordner, "A Problem-Oriented Approach to
Community-Oriented Policing," in Community
Policing: Rhetoric or Reality, ed. Jack R. Greene
and Stephen D. Mastrofski, New York: Praeger, 1988:
pp. 135-152.

3. Philip B. Taft, Jr., Fighting Fear: The
Baltimore County COPE Project, Washington, D.C.:
Police Executive Research Forum, 1986.

4. John E. Eck and William Spelman, Problem
Solving: Problem-Oriented Policing in Newport News,
Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum,
1987. Jerry Williams and Ron Sloan, Turning Concept
Into Practice: The Aurora, Colorado Story, East
Lansing, Michigan: National Center for Community
Policing, Michigan State University, 1990.

5. Couper and Lobitz, note 1 above.

6. Donald C. Witham, The American Law Enforcement
Chief Executive: A Management Profile, Washington,
D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum, 1985, and
Robert Coates and Susie Mowry, Community-Oriented
Problem Solving, Washington, D.C.: National Crime
Prevention Council and the Police Executive
Research Forum, 1993.

Chapter 7

1.Robert C. Trojanowicz, "An Evaluation of a
Neighborhood Foot Patrol Program," Journal of
Police Science and Administration 11 (1983).

2.Mark H. Moore and Darrel W. Stephens, Beyond
Command and Control: The Strategic Management of
Police Departments, Washington, D.C.: Police
Executive Research Forum, 1991: pp. 76.

3.Robert J. Prinslow, "Community Policing in Marion
County, Oregon" Roll Call. Alexandria, Virginia:
National Sheriffs' Association. Special edition,
June 1993, p. 9.

4.Herman Goldstein, Problem-Oriented Policing, New
York: McGraw Hill, 1990.

5.Malcolm Sparrow, Mark H. Moore, and David M.
Kennedy. Beyond 911: A New Era for Policing, New
York: Basic Books, 1990: p. 180.
-------------------------
Appendix A

25 Reasons To Plan

1. Focus effort where action is needed and
productive.

2. Avoid the "business as usual" trap.

3. Maximize use of existing resources.

4. Uncover new resources.

5. Reflect and incorporate changes in the real
world.

6. Create a road map to reach goals.

7. Increase ability to check progress and results.

8. Bring problems into manageable focus.

9. Help make goals clearer, more solid, more
achievable.

10. Aid in establishing priorities.

11. Help identify milestones and progress to 
celebrate.

12. Establish evaluation criteria and baseline.

13. Galvanize action.

14. Develop clear choices and alternatives.

15. Help minimize confusion and frustration.

16. Improve communication and reduce conflict.

17. Sustain commitment.

18. Spotlight basic assumptions for reexamination.

19. Help control events instead of letting events
control.

20. Check perceptions of problems against
realities.

21. Act and prevent more, react and control damage
less.

22. Focus on results rather than process.

23. Develop shared agenda for the future.

24. Solve problems and improve conditions.

25. Deal more effectively with contingencies and
emergencies.

Source: National Crime Prevention Council,
Washington, D.C., 1992.
-------------------------

Appendix B

Traditional Versus Community Policing

Questions and Answers:

Who are the police?

  Traditional Policing: A government agency principally responsible

                        for law enforcement.

  Community Policing:   Police are the public and the public are  
                        the police; police officers are those who 
                        are paid to give full-time attention to the

                        duties of every citizen.

What is the relationship of the police to other
public service departments?

  Traditional Policing: Priorities often conflict.

  Community Policing:   The police are one department among many  
                        responsible for improving the quality of  
                        life.     




What is the role of the police?

  Traditional Policing: Focusing on solving crimes.

  Community Policing:   A broader problem-solving approach.


How is police efficiency measured?

  Traditional Policing: By detection and arrest rates.

  Community Policing:   By the absence of crime and disorder.

What are the highest priorities?

  Traditional Policing: Crimes that are high value (e.g., bank    
                        robberies) and those involving violence.

  Community Policing:   Whatever problems disturb the community   
                        most.

What specifically do police deal with?

  Traditional Policing: Incidents.

  Community Policing:   Citizens' problems and concerns.

What determines the effectiveness of police?

  Traditional Policing: Response times.

  Community Policing:   Public cooperation.

What view do police take of service calls?

  Traditional Policing: Deal with them only if there is no real   
                        police work to do.

  Community Policing:   Vital function and great opportunity.

What is police professionalism?

  Traditional Policing: Swift/effective response to serious crime.

  Community Policing:   Keeping close to the community.

What kind of intelligence is most important?

  Traditional Policing: Crime intelligence (study of particular   
                        crimes or series of crimes).

  Community Policing:   Criminal intelligence (information about  
                        activities of individuals or groups).

What is the essential nature of police
accountability?

  Traditional Policing: Highly centralized; governed by rules,    
                        regulations, and policy directives;       
                        accountable to the law.


  Community Policing:   Emphasis on local accountability to       
                        community needs.

What is the role of headquarters?

  Traditional Policing: To provide the necessary rules and policy
                        directives.

  Community Policing:   To preach organizational values.

What is the role of the press liaison department?

  Traditional Policing: To keep the "heat" off operational officers

                        so they can get on with the job.

  Community Policing:   To coordinate an essential channel of     
                        communication with the community.

How do the police regard prosecutions?

  Traditional Policing: As an important goal.

  Community Policing:   As one tool among many.


Adapted from Malcolm K. Sparrow, Implementing
Community Policing, Perspectives on Policing 9,
Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice and
Harvard University, 1988: pp. 8-9.
-------------------------

Appendix C

Community Policing: Key Operational Steps

Step 1 Uniformed police officers must be assigned
full-time, wherever population density, crime, and
community needs permit, to beats manageable by
foot.

Step 2 Community police officers should establish
networks of contacts with people representing all
walks of life throughout their neighborhoods.


Step 3 Police should create precinct and
neighborhood committees, to consult with about
local problems and priorities, wherever such
committees do not already exist.

Step 4 Community police officers must be given time
to carry out their varied responsibilities for
consultation, problem solving, and mobilization.

Step 5 Community police officers must be allowed to
set their own hours, rather than conform
mechanically to a mandated shift schedule.

Step 6 Community police officers should make
themselves available for nonemergency meetings with
citizens on a daily basis.

Step 7 Police should coordinate police operations
so that officers unfamiliar with a neighborhood
undertake enforcement action there rarely and
selectively, or, if necessary, under the guidance
of local community police officers.

Step 8 Local commanders should be allowed, indeed
required, to adapt the use of their resources,
especially personnel, to fit the needs of their
particular areas, based on suggestions made by
community police officers.

Step 9 Front-line supervisors must be trained to
understand that they are responsible for
facilitating, as well as supervising, the
activities of community police officers.

Adapted from David H. Bayley, "The Best Defense,"
Fresh Perspectives, Washington, D.C.: Police
Executive Research Forum, 1992:7-8.
-------------------------

Appendix D

Statement of Purpose

The Portland Police Bureau will transition to a
community-based philosophy of policing that
encourages more citizen participation in crime
reduction and allows greater coordination with
other City bureaus and social agencies to address
crime-related problems. Police officers will be
catalysts who bring the necessary resources to bear
on specific community safety problems throughout
Portland.


Community Policing is a strengthening of the
partnership among citizens, police, and public and
private agencies. All are joint stakeholders in the
vitality and livability of Portland's neighborhoods
and business districts. Community Policing expects
a reduction in the fear of, and occurrence of,
crime through cooperative resolution of immediate
community safety problems and identification of
root causes and remedies for crime and disorder.


Citizens and police officers will mutually
participate in, and be responsible for, strategy
design and problem solving that emphasizes
comprehensive responses to criminal incidents. The
key to problem solving is joint empowerment of
police officers and citizens to allocate public and
private resources as dictated by the uniqueness of
the problem and its most effective and efficient
resolution. Essential to this process are flexible
police officers with good interpersonal
communication skills who take a vested interest in,
and are sensitive to, the cultural and ethnic
diversity of the areas they serve.

The Police Bureau is committed to fostering a
proactive organizational climate that rewards its
employees for initiative, innovation, citizen
involvement, and consensus building in problem
resolution. The Bureau encourages decentralization
of Bureau resources and delegation of
decisionmaking to those persons or units most
impacted by the identified community safety
problem.

The Police Bureau has designed this 5-year
incremental plan to gradually transition into
Community Policing. This is a process of
organizational development which will examine,
evaluate, and restructure, as necessary, Bureau
resources, policies, and practices. This transition
plan is a guide to facilitate an orderly transition
and to ensure the continuation of Community
Policing as the basic mission and operational
philosophy of the Bureau.

Mission Statement

Old

The Bureau of Police is responsible for the
preservation of the public peace, protection of the
rights of persons and property, the prevention of
crime, and the enforcement of all Federal laws,
Oregon State statutes, and city ordinances within
the boundaries
of the City of Portland.

New

The mission of the Portland Police Bureau is to
work with all citizens to preserve life, maintain
human rights, protect property, and promote
individual responsibility and community commitment.

Goals

1. Partnership--Develop a partnership with the
community, City Council, other Bureaus, service
agencies, and the criminal justice system.

2. Empowerment--Develop an organizational structure
and environment that reflects community values and
facilitates joint citizen and employee empowerment.

3. Problem Solving--Enhance community livability
through use of proactive, problem-solving
approaches for reduction of incidence and fear of
crime.

4. Accountability--Foster mutual accountability for
Public Safety resources and strategies among Bureau
management and employees, the community, and the
City Council.

5. Service Orientation--Develop a customer
orientation in our service to citizens and our
Bureau members.

6. Project Management and Direction--Develop a
process for overall management and direction of the
Community Policing transition.

A Call to Action

Community Policing requires the best efforts of
everyone. Whether it is citizens improving the
safety of their local communities, officers
directing resources to the root problems in their
districts, or agency heads and Council members
pursuing more effective solutions, each individual
must feel as if the problem was his or her own, and
they must push themselves, and work with others, to
solve them.

Community Policing will work to the degree that we,
as a community, can assume individual
responsibility for making our City work, and to the
degree that we, as a community, fulfill our role in
helping to make that happen.

The task ahead is a large one and changes are
required. Community Policing will require new
resources and new attitudes--one without the other
will make little difference. The combination will
be powerful.

No one of us should wait for Community Policing to
come to our doorstep, or find its way onto our
desk. Rather, we must go out and get started.
The men and women of the Portland Police Bureau: We
ask that you be open minded, yet impatient. Success
will require your openness to new approaches and
your willingness to give those approaches the very
best chance to work. But it will also require that
you not wait for innovations, but instead pursue
them. Look for new ways, large and small, that can
help address crime and its root causes in the City.
Search for ways to build a more effective
partnership with the citizens we serve. And when
you find solutions, share them.

Those who are in a position to influence policy and
allocate resources: We ask that you maintain the
courage of your commitment to a fully implemented
Community Policing--providing resources equal to
the job and support for a more active, empowered
citizenry. We ask you to challenge us--to use our
resources wisely so we can realize Community
Policing's full potential and restore Portland as
one of America's premier cities.

The citizens of Portland: If you haven't already,
get involved! Whether it is through the Police
Bureau, the Office of Neighborhood Associations,
some other agency, or on your own, learn what you
can do to strengthen the safety of your own block,
your own community. Once you have begun that, look
around to see if you can help someone with their
problem. Think of our City as our family. As
neighborhood organizers have pointed out, "living
in a decent neighborhood is both a right and a
responsibility." Without your help, we can't
succeed. The success of Community Policing depends
on the willingness of each of us to get involved.

Much has been done. Much remains to be done. Make
it happen today.

Adapted from Portland Police Bureau, Community
Policing Transition Plan, Portland, Oregon, 1990:6-
19, 41.

Appendix E

Police Management: Principles of Quality Leadership

1. Believe in, foster, and support teamwork.

2. Be committed to the problem-solving process: use
it, and let data, not emotions, drive decisions.

3. Seek employees' input before you make key
decisions.

4. Believe that the best way to improve the quality
of work or service is to ask and listen to
employees who are doing the work.

5. Strive to develop mutual respect and trust among
employees.

6. Have a customer orientation and focus toward
employees and citizens.

7. Manage on the behavior of 95 percent of
employees, and not on the 5 percent who cause
problems. Deal with the 5 percent promptly and
fairly.

8. Improve systems and examine processes before
placing blame on people.

9. Avoid "top-down," power-oriented decisionmaking
whenever possible.

10. Encourage creativity through risk taking, and be
tolerant of honest mistakes.

11. Be a facilitator and coach. Develop an open
atmosphere that encourages providing and
accepting feedback.

12. With teamwork, develop agreed-upon goals with
employees and a plan to achieve them.


Adapted from David C. Couper and Sabine H. Lobitz,
Quality Policing: The Madison Experience,
Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum,
1991:48.
-----------------------





Appendix F

Problem Solving: Guide to Collaboration


General Background

1. Develop personal networks with members of other
agencies who can give you information and help you
with problems you may be working on.

2. Become familiar with the workings of your local
government, private businesses, citizen
organizations, and other groups and institutions
that you may need to call upon for help in the
future.

3. Develop skills as a negotiator.

Getting Other Agencies To Help

1. Identify agencies that have a role (or could have
a role) in addressing the problem early in the
problem-solving process.

2. Determine whether these other agencies perceive
that there is a problem.

a. Which agency members perceive the problem and
which do not?
b. Why is it (or isn't it) a problem for them?
c. How are police perceptions of the problem similar
to and different from the perceptions of
members of other agencies?

3. Determine if there is a legal or political
mandate for collaboration.

a. To which agencies does this legal mandate apply?
b. What are the requirements needed to demonstrate
collaboration?
c. Who is checking to determine if collaboration is
taking place?

4. Look for difficulties that these other agencies
face that can be redressed through collaboration
on this problem.

a. Are there internal difficulties that provide an
incentive to collaborate?
b. Are there external crises affecting agencies that
collaboration may help redress?


5. Determine how much these other agencies use
police services.

6. Assess the resource capabilities of these
agencies to help.

a. Do they have the money?
b. Do they have the staff expertise?
c. Do they have the enthusiasm?

7. Assess the legal authority of these other
agencies.

a. Do they have special enforcement powers?
b. Do they control critical resources?

8. Determine the administrative capacity of these
agencies to collaborate.

a. Do they have the legal authority to intervene in
the problem?
b. What are the internal procedures and policies of
the stakeholders that help or hinder collaboration?

Working With Other Agencies

1. Include representatives from all affected
agencies possible in the problem-solving process.

2. Look for responses to the problem that maximize
the gains to all agencies and distribute costs
equitably.

3. Reinforce awareness of the interdependence of all
agencies.

4. Be prepared to mediate among agencies that have a
history of conflict.

5. Develop problem information-sharing mechanisms
and promote discussion over the meaning and
interpretation of this information.

6. Share problem-solving decisions among
stakeholders and do not surprise others with
already made decisions.

7. Develop a clear explanation as to why
collaboration is needed.

8. Foster external support for collaborative efforts
but do not rely on mandates to further
collaboration.

9. Be prepared to negotiate with all involved
agencies as to their roles, responsibilities, and
resource commitments.

10. When collaborating with agencies located far
away, plan to spend much more time in developing a
working relationship.

11. Try to create support in the larger community
for collaborative problem solving.


When Collaboration Does Not Work

1. Always be prepared for collaboration to fail.

2. Have alternative plans.

3. Assess the costs and benefits of unilateral
action.

4. Be very patient.


Adapted from John E. Eck, "Implementing a
Problem-Oriented Approach: A Management Guide,"
Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum,
draft 1990:69-70.
-------------------------

Appendix G

Problem Solving: Problem Analysis Guide (Topic
Headings)

I. Actors

A. Victims
1. life-style
2. security measures taken
3. victimization history

B. Offenders
1. identity and physical description
2. lifestyle, education, employment history
3. criminal history

C. Third parties
1. personal data
2. connection to victimization




II. Incidents

A. Sequence of events
1. events preceding act
2. event itself
3. events following criminal act

B. Physical context
1. time
2. location
3. access control and surveillance

C. Social context
1. likelihood and probable actions of
witnesses
2. apparent attitude of residents toward
neighborhood

D. Immediate results of incidents
1. harm done to victim
2. gain to offender
3. legal issues

III. Responses

A. Community
1. neighborhood affected by problem
2. city as a whole
3. people outside the city

B. Institutional
1. criminal justice system
2. other public agencies
3. mass media
4. business sector

C. Seriousness
1. public perceptions
2. perception of others

Adapted from John E. Eck and William Spelman,
Problem Solving:Problem-Oriented Policing in Neport
News, Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research
Forum, 1987.
-------------------------

Appendix H

Problem Solving: The Range of Possible Alternatives

A. Concentrating Attention on Those Individuals Who
Account for a Disproportionate Share of a Problem


A relatively small number of individuals usually
account for a disproportionate share of practically
any problem the police handle (by causing it,
facilitating it, or suffering from it).

B. Connecting With Other Government and Private
Services

Indepth exploration of the problems that police
commonly confront frequently leads to a recognition
of the need for (1) more effective referrals to
existing government and private services; (2)
improved coordination with agencies that exert
control over some of the problems or individuals
for which the police are held responsible; and (3)
police initiative in pressing for correction of
inadequacies in municipal services and for
development of new services.

C. Using Mediation and Negotiation Skills

Police are expected to handle many types of
conflicts, and often find the mediation/negotiation
approach most effective.

D. Conveying Information

Conveying sound, accurate information is currently
one of the least used, but potentially most
effective, means the police have for responding to
a wide range of problems.  Conveying information
can help to (1) reduce anxiety and fear; (2) enable
citizens to solve their own problems; (3) elicit
conformity with laws and regulations that are not
known or understood; (4) warn potential victims
about their vulnerability and advise them of ways
to protect themselves; (5) demonstrate to
individuals how they unwittingly contribute to
problems; (6) develop support for addressing a
problem; and (7) acquaint the community with the
limitations on the police and to define
realistically what can be expected of the police.

E. Mobilizing the Community

Mobilizing a specific segment of the community to
help implement a specific response to a specific
problem for as long as it takes to deal with the
problem.

F. Making Use of Existing Forms of Social Control in
Addition to the Community


Solving problems by mobilizing specific forms of
social control inherent in existing relationships--
e.g., the influence of a parent over a child, a
teacher over a student, or an employer over an
employee.

G. Altering the Physical Environment To Reduce
Opportunities for Problems To Recur

Adapting the principles of Crime Prevention Through
Environmental Design (CPTED) and Situational Crime
Prevention to the complete range of police
problems.

H. Increased Regulation, Through Statutes or
Ordinances, of Conditions That Contribute to
Problems

Studies of a specific problem will often draw
attention to factors contributing to the problem
that can be controlled by regulation through
statutes or ordinances.

I. Developing New Forms of Limited Authority To
Intervene and Detain

Analysis of specific problems often leads to the
conclusion that satisfactory resolution requires
some limited authority (e.g., to order a person to
leave) but does not require labeling the conduct
criminal so that it can be dealt with through a
citation or a physical arrest followed by a
criminal prosecution.

J. More Discriminate Use of the Criminal Justice
System

Use of the criminal justice system should be much
more discrete than in the past, reserved for those
problems for which the system seems especially
appropriate, and employed with much greater
precision.  This could include (1) straightforward
investigation, arrest, and prosecution; (2)
selective enforcement with articulated criteria;
(3) enforcing criminal laws that, by tradition, are
enforced by another agency; (4) defining with
greater specificity that behavior which should be
subject to criminal prosecution or control through
local ordinances; (5) intervention without making
an arrest; (6) use of arrest without the intention
to prosecute; and (7) attaching new conditions to
probation or parole.


K. Using Civil Law To Control Public Nuisances,
Offensive Behavior, and Conditions
Contributing to Crime

Because most of what the police do in the use of
the law involves arrest and prosecution, we tend to
forget that the police and local government can
initiate a number of other legal proceedings,
including those related to (1) licensing, (2)
zoning, (3) property confiscation, (4) nuisance
abatement, and (5) injunctive relief.


Adapted from Herman Goldstein, Problem-Oriented
Policing, New York: McGraw-Hill, 104-141.
------------------------

Appendix I

Problem Solving: Situational Crime Prevention
Techniques

A. Increasing the Effort

1. Target Hardening--Obstructing the vandal or thief
by physical barriers such as locks and safes.

2. Access Control--Denying access to offenders
through such methods as gates and reception desks.

3. Deflecting Offenders--Channeling offensive
behavior in more acceptable directions, such as by
providing litter bins or moving bus stops.

4. Controlling Facilitators--Controlling such crime
facilitators as spray-paint cans and digital
(push-button) public telephones.

B. Increasing the Risks

5. Entry/Exit Screening--Increasing the risk of
detection for those not in conformity with entry or
exit requirements (e.g., border searches and
merchandise tags).

6. Formal Surveillance--Deterrence through official
inperson (e.g., police) and technological
(e.g., cameras) surveillance.

7. Surveillance by Employees--Using employees to
increase deterrence (e.g., hotel doormen and
groundskeepers).


8. Natural Surveillance--Capitalizing on natural
surveillance provided by people going about their
everyday business (e.g., by pruning hedges or by
organizing Neighborhood Watch groups).

C. Reducing the Rewards

9. Target Removal--Removing the targets of crime by
such means as cash reduction measures to
reduce robbery and hotel safes for guests'
valuables.

10. Identifying Property--Marking property to
improve chances of recovery, such as automobile
VIN's and Operation Identification.

11. Removing Inducements--Removing inducements to
crime, such as by publishing gender-neutral phone
lists and by immediately cleaning graffiti.

12. Rule Setting--Regulating employee and
customer/clientele behavior through rule setting
that removes any ambiguity between acceptable and
unacceptable conduct and that encourages conformity
with rules.


Adapted from Ronald V. Clarke, ed., "Introduction"
to Situational Crime Prevention: Successful Case
Studies, New York: Harrow and Heston, 1992:12-21.
________________________

Appendix J

For more information on the Rural INOP Program,
contact:

Bureau of Justice Assistance
633 Indiana Avenue NW.
Washington, DC 20531
202-514-5947

Bureau of Justice Assistance Clearinghouse
Box 6000
Rockville, MD 20850
800-688-4252

For more information on neighborhood-oriented
policing, contact:

The Community Policing Consortium
515 North Washington Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-836-6767

Institute for Law and Justice
1018 Duke Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-684-5300

International Association of Chiefs of Police
515 North Washington Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-836-6767

National Center for Community Policing
560 Baker Hall, Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
800-892-9051

National Crime Prevention Council
1700 K Street NW., Second Floor
Washington, DC 20006
202-466-NCPC

National Institute of Justice
633 Indiana Avenue NW.
Washington, DC 20531
202-307-2942

National Institute of Justice/NCJRS
Box 6000
Rockville, MD 20850
800-851-3420

National Organization of Black Law Enforcement
Executives
908 Pennsylvania Avenue SE.
Washington, DC 20003
202-546-8811

National Sheriffs' Association
1450 Duke Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-836-7827

For more information on documents referenced in
this monograph,
contact:

Police Executive Research Forum
2300 M Street NW., Suite 910
Washington, DC 20037
202-466-7820

Police Foundation
1001 22d Street NW., Suite 200
Washington, DC 20037
202-833-1460

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