observations they could make as they patrolled the cities, and the conditions that citizens complained about when they had a chance to take to the police in community meeting to identify problems that irritated, frustrated and frightened citizens and could be ameliorated by interventions that did not rely primarily on arresting suspects. The theory was that since the professional model of policing had gained hegemonic influence over the 17,000 local police departments in the United States through the forces of institutional mimesis, it could be altered by getting control of the same forces: if we could re-define legitimacy in policing to be consistent with the community problem solving model of policing rather than the professional idea of policing, we might be able to make a value creating change. It is important to understand that we did not have, and could not quickly produce, any hard scientific evidence that the community problem solving model of policing would produce better or more just outcomes for communities than the professional model. What we did have was pretty strong evidence that the methods used by the professional model of policing were not particular effective in achieving their principal goals: random patrol did not reduce crime or fear; rapid response to calls for service did not reduce crime or fear or even influence citizen perceptions of the quality of service; retrospective investigations could solve crimes when individuals told them who committed the crime. We also had evidence that citizens called the police more often to deal with fear and non-crime incidents and conditions than with crimes. And, we knew that the existing strategies of policing were doing little to develop (and much to undermine!) their standing in communities – particularly minority communities. All this suggested there was room for improvement in the field. We also had some significant ferment in the professional field itself. As a result of significant increases in the overall educational standards for policing, and for police executives in particular; and as a result of significant social pressure to increase the diversity of police departments and those who led them; a significant number of police executives came to the job with more open minds than those who had come before, and with a better ability to sense the problems the field was facing, and to accept some individual responsibility for trying to do better. These “reform” chiefs were lying awake at night knowing that they could be doing a better job, and inventing some more or less incremental ways of improving. Their problem was that they were up against the power of an entrenched idea of what constituted good and just policing. They could not step out alone to challenge these ideas. What we decided to do, then, was to convene those chiefs, along with some of their influential but less curious and resourceful colleagues, in a series of meetings to invent and promulgate a different model of policing. This group acquired an influential voice in the field not through a “national report” but instead through a series of short papers distributed across thousands of police departments, and their increasingly frequent appearances on the stages of conferences focusing on policing. Cases were written and circulated that described what they were doing, and showed what was actually and concretely possible. The federal government created a large grant program to encourage police departments to experiment with different aspects of the emergent model, and to evaluate both the effectiveness of particular elements of the strategy in reducing crime and fear and building community relationships. Educational programs were developed for rising police executives across the country in which the cases were used for educational and inspirational purposes. The performance measurement systems for police departments were reviewed to reveal how closely they were aligned with the existing model of policing, and alternative created to capture the value that could be produced by the new models of policing. Eventually, both the examinations for police executives and the audit agencies that