U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

Public Involvement:

Community Policing in Chicago

research report
U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

810 Seventh Street N.W.

Washington, DC 20531

Janet Reno

Attorney General

Daniel Marcus

Acting Associate Attorney General

Mary Lou Leary

Acting Assistant Attorney General

Julie E. Samuels

Acting Director, National Institute of Justice

Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice

World Wide Web Site World Wide Web Site 

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij

Cover photographs copyright © 1998 Digitalstock and © 1994 PhotoDisc, Inc.
Public Involvement:

Community Policing in Chicago 

Wesley G. Skogan, Susan M. Hartnett, Jill DuBois, 

Jennifer T. Comey, Karla Twedt-Ball, and J. Erik Gudell 

Institute for Policy Research

Northwestern University

September 2000

NCJ 179557
Julie E. Samuels

Acting Director

Lois Mock

Project Monitor

This program was supported under award numbers 94–IJ–CX–0046 and 

95–IJ–CX–0056 to Northwestern University by the National Institute of Justice,

with funds transferred from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services,

U.S. Department of Justice. Findings and conclusions of the research reported

here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position

or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice

Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of

Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention,

and the Office for Victims of Crime.

Support for this research was provided through a transfer

of funds to NIJ from the Office of Community Oriented

Policing Services.
III

Contents

Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Community meetings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Study components. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Public Awareness of Community Policing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Assessing awareness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Tracking sources of awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Program marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Beat Meeting Participation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Meeting publicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Role of attendance frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Activist characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Key attendance factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Beat meeting effectiveness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Attendance Trends. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Patterns of Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Attendance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Significance of findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Beat Meetings in Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

The ideal beat meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Beat meeting observations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Model-meeting index: What contributes 

to better meetings? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Community Policing in Chicago

iii
Public Involvement

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Conclusion: Community Factors and Personal 

Contacts Are Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Increasing utility through training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Stimulating involvement through networking

and organizational affiliations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Suggested Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Community Policing in Chicago

1

Summary 

An important feature of many community policing initiatives is

that they provide new avenues for citizen involvement in partnerships with police. Residents may be called upon to help identify and

prioritize neighborhood problems for action, to become involved in

problem-solving efforts, and to help shape police policies and operations. The commitment to responsiveness and information sharing

that many police agencies make as they adopt community policing

ideally must be matched on the civilian side with an enthusiastically

involved representative segment of a concerned public. However, 

as with police officers, the extent to which neighborhood residents

actively embrace community policing is highly variable. Assumptions

about their initial enthusiasm for community policing can be made

too casually. Police and residents may have a history of not cooperating, and in many poor neighborhoods the past is strewn with broken

promises and programs that eventually evaporated. 

Residents may also have difficulty sustaining participation. Community-based organizations are required to encourage involvement

over the long term, and police may have to involve themselves in

helping to build this supportive infrastructure. The public, like the

police, also may need to be educated. Community policing involves

new jargon as well as assumptions about the new responsibilities

that both police and citizens are expected to adopt. Therefore, training will be required before any of the participants can fully appreciate

their new roles. Moreover, all of these activities will have to involve a

significant amount of face-to-face time between police and residents

to develop trust and cooperation between the prospective partners.

This report summarizes recent research on citizen involvement in

Chicago’s community policing initiative, known as the Chicago

Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS). 

Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy 

One of the most significant CAPS features is the extensive new role

played by the public. The city’s model calls for neighborhood residents

to help identify problems, formulate solutions to them, and play an
Public Involvement

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active part in solving them. Several venues have been created to support this involvement. On the police side, officers are committed to

working with residents and to taking their concerns seriously when

setting policing priorities. 

While trying to make this work, CAPS has encountered all of the

obstacles outlined above and more, so the city’s successes and shortcomings may illuminate some of the difficulties other departments

will likely face as they adopt a community policing model. This report

examines key features of citizen involvement in the Chicago initiative, including citizen awareness and participation, and the extent

to which CAPS is meeting police department goals for forming

partnerships with the public. 

CAPS was launched in late 1994 after an experimental period, and

most aspects were operational in all of the city’s police districts by

May 1995. A problem-solving orientation anchors the model’s core.

Officers and their sergeants have received training in how to identify

the victim, offender, and locational features of problems. Administrative

systems have been developed to speed the delivery of city services to

support problem-solving projects, and a number of city agencies have

recently begun their own projects to support the initiative. Both city

and county attorneys have opened decentralized offices to assist police

in developing cases. A new departmental planning process will formally identify beat problems and culminate in the formulation of 

districtwide and citywide plans to combat them. In addition, an

advanced analysis and mapping system has been developed to help

identify crime patterns and hot spots, and a new computerized dispatching system has been inaugurated to manage police and fire calls. 

Some of the most important CAPS features have been designed to

help develop closer working relationships between police and the

residents in each beat. A large segment of the patrol division has been

reorganized into special teams and assigned to specific beats throughout the city, and a dispatching policy has been developed to ensure

that teams have enough free time to work with the community and

engage in proactive problem solving. Ideally, this configuration will

result in officers becoming more familiar with their beats and residents

growing more familiar with the police who serve there. 
Community Policing in Chicago

3

Citizen involvement in planning and strategizing has been vested in

district advisory committees that regularly meet with commanders

and their management teams to discuss local problems and priorities.

The advisory committees sponsor subcommittees that focus on specific

issues ranging from economic development to social events, and the

subcommittees do most of the work. Each advisory committee determines the number and foci of their subcommittees based on local

needs, although there are two mandated subcommittees: senior

citizens and court advocacy. 

Community meetings 

Community meetings held regularly in every beat enable many more

residents to become involved in CAPS and are the principal focus of

this report. These gatherings have been held in Chicago’s 279 police

beats nearly every month since 1995. Beat meetings are held in locations of all descriptions, including church basements, libraries, hospital cafeterias, and park district field houses. Attendees include police

officers who work in the area and neighborhood residents. Beat meetings are designed to be the locus for identifying local problems and

local resources for dealing with them, setting priorities, and deciding

what to do about the most important issues. They are also important

venues for the formation of partnerships between police and residents

around problem-solving projects. Along with the district advisory

committee, beat meetings are Chicago’s principal forum for the development of joint police-citizen action plans for tackling neighborhood

issues. 

Beat community meetings are public sessions open to everyone.

On average, 7 police officers and 26 residents attend. Police who

regularly attend include beat team officers on duty at the time, a

few team members from other shifts, and the sergeant who supervises

them. Others who are often present include officers serving in special

units, a representative of the district’s neighborhood relations unit,

and, sometimes, higher ranking members of the district’s management

team. Those who attend during their off-hours are paid overtime.

Occasionally, representatives of the city’s service departments, staff
Public Involvement

4

for local aldermen, and organizers from area community groups also

attend, and school principals and local business operators also may

participate. To promote shared responsibility for the meetings, the

department tries to involve a civilian “beat facilitator” in planning

and conducting them. 

Over time, the variety of meetings involving police and the public

has grown as the districts have found new purposes for public gatherings. In some districts, special meetings for business owners who live

out of the area focus on their unique problems; in others, separate

sessions are held with neighborhood activists to craft action plans and

prepare for beat meetings. A few large and diverse beats have chosen

to break into sub-beats that meet separately each month. In a few

areas plagued by low turnout, adjacent beats hold combined sessions

to boost the number attending. 

Police districts and individual beats sponsor other kinds of assemblies

as well, including marches, rallies and block parties involving a large

number of residents, and smaller meetings between police and neighborhood activists. Recently, the department has encouraged the

districts to send officers to block club and community organization

meetings, intending that the familiarity developed through such

interactions will encourage more residents to attend official beat

meetings. However, the data presented in this report apply only to

regularly scheduled, official beat meetings. 

Study components 

This report examines several aspects of citizen involvement in

Chicago’s community policing effort. First, it describes public awareness. The findings highlight the impact of an aggressive marketing

campaign that has significantly raised public awareness of community

policing. Knowledge of the CAPS initiative has grown among all

major groups and is highest among the city’s black residents. 

Second, this report details trends in beat meeting participation over time

and where participation is high or low. There is no evidence that the

novelty of the effort has worn off; in fact, involvement has grown
Community Policing in Chicago

5

each year since 1995. More significantly, attendance rates are highest

in poor, high-crime communities, where public safety is most at risk

and the perceived quality of police service is in question. 

Third, the study examines what happens at beat meetings—the principal

point at which partnerships are to be formed between police and

neighborhood residents. However, getting beat meetings to function

properly is a difficult implementation issue because they occur at hundreds of dispersed locations every month, out of sight of police headquarters and even midlevel managers. Although investigators found

that the skeletal framework for beat meetings is solidly in place (they

have agendas, materials are prepared in advance, and so forth), there

is little evidence that beat meetings have become a general vehicle for

the kind of systematic problem solving that the department envisions.

Rather, many continue to function as “911” sessions where individuals

express their complaints, or as “show and tell” meetings where police

lecture and display crime maps or statistics while residents sit mute. 

These findings are drawn from a continuing evaluation of Chicago’s

community policing initiative conducted by the Institute for Policy

Research, Northwestern University. The evaluation is supported

by the National Institute of Justice, the Illinois Criminal Justice

Information Authority, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur

Foundation. More details about CAPS and the evaluation findings

can be found in the citations and suggested readings listed at the end

of this report. Additional reports and methodological materials can be

found at the evaluation’s Web site: www.nwu.edu/IPR/publications/

policing.html. 

Public Awareness of Community Policing 

The first question is, How broad is public awareness of community

policing and how deep is the public’s understanding of its participatory nature? The CAPS evaluation conducts an annual survey

of Chicago residents to assess the visibility of the city’s program.

The most recent 4 years of data are considered in this report. In

1996, nearly 1,900 residents were interviewed; in 1997 and 1998,
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nearly 3,000 were interviewed; and in 1999, more than 2,800 were

interviewed. Interviews were conducted by telephone, in either

English or Spanish, using random-digit dialing that reached households with both listed and unlisted telephone numbers. In addition

to assessing levels of awareness, which have grown as a direct result

of aggressive program marketing efforts, the yearly surveys track

sources of awareness. 

Assessing awareness 

Two survey questions revealed that public awareness of community

policing has grown considerably. The first question asked whether

respondents had heard about “a new program announced by the

Chicago Police Department, a community policing program that calls

for more cooperation between police and residents of Chicago”; the

second question informed those who did not recognize the community

policing program description that it was often referred to as “CAPS”

and asked whether they had heard of CAPS. As table 1 indicates,

Table 1: Personal Background and Awareness of CAPS, 1996–99

1996 1997 1998 1999

Total % 53 68 79 80

Whites 52 73 78 80

Blacks 58 74 84 84

Latinos 51 62 73 73

Spanish 47 51 65 68

English 54 71 80 81

Age 18–29 46 66 76 76

Age 30–49 61 74 83 84

Age 50–64 53 74 80 82

Age 65+ 46 53 65 73

Note: All subgroup percentages are based on data weighted to standardize the racial composition 

of the samples across years.

1996 1997 1998 1999

No. of Cases 1,868 3,066 2,937 2,871

Renters 50 67 75 76

Homeowners 58 74 83 84

Low income 48 59 69 73

Moderate 59 76 84 84

income

Nongraduates 41 54 62 69

High school 56 73 82 82

graduates

Females 50 66 76 76

Males 59 75 87 84
Community Policing in Chicago

7

53 percent of Chicago residents knew about the program in 1996, 

79 percent knew by 1998, and 80 percent knew by 1999. The small

changes recorded between 1998 and 1999 may indicate that CAPS

awareness has peaked. 

Table 1 also presents the percentage of respondents who knew about

the program among major population subgroups. Between 1996 and

1998, recognition of CAPS increased substantially within every group

over time. It increased most among those younger than age 30. CAPS

awareness rose by 25 percentage points or more among many other

groups, including both males and females, blacks and whites, and

renters and homeowners. Substantial gains were registered by almost

all categories of respondents, including those from both low-income

and moderate-income households (a division made at an annual

income of $20,000). Significant gains in CAPS awareness were

reported by respondents who preferred to be interviewed in Spanish

(from 47 to 68 percent, a gain of 21 percentage points) and by those

older than age 65 (from 46 to 73 percent, a gain of 27 percentage

points). 

While program recognition generally increased over this time period,

existing gaps between groups were not erased. In 1999, large cleavages

were apparent between high school graduates and those with less

education, and between language groups; the subgroups in these

categories were separated by 13 percentage points. There were gaps

between low- and moderate-income people, and between senior citizens and those age 30 to 64. Differences in CAPS awareness among

racial groups were relatively small. Blacks were somewhat more aware

than whites, and Latinos were least likely to be aware of the program.

Program awareness increased the least among Latinos (but went up by

22 percentage points) between 1996 and 1998. 

Tracking sources of awareness 

To track sources of CAPS awareness, the yearly surveys also ask how

people hear about community policing. Figure 1 presents the percentage of Chicagoans who recalled learning about CAPS in various ways

and compares results from 1996 through 1999. Respondents were
Public Involvement

8

allowed to name up to five ways they recalled learning about CAPS

or community policing; thus, the percentages presented in figure 1

add up to more than 100 percent. The surveys indicate that many

information channels have become more effective in reaching people

over time. The most dramatic increase, from 16 to almost 45 percent,

was in the proportion of Chicagoans who learned about CAPS from

television, which is the most common source of CAPS awareness.

Word of mouth, including conversations with neighbors or friends,

was the second most frequently recalled way people heard about

CAPS. Between 1996 and 1999, talk about the program more than

doubled in frequency, from 10 to 22 percent. There were also noticeable increases in the extent to which people reported hearing about

CAPS from posters or signs and brochures, fliers, or newsletters. Radio

became a more common source of awareness between 1996 and 1997,

and again in 1999. 

0

10

20

30

40

50

Percent of all respondents

1996

1997

1998

1999

TelevisionWord of mouth

Brochures/fliers/

Posters/signs

RadioCitywide paperLocal paperPolice car logoSchoolBillboardChurch

Note: Less frequent sources of awareness not depicted.

newsletters

Figure 1: Sources of CAPS Awareness
Community Policing in Chicago

9

Program marketing 

This growth in awareness is the result of an aggressive, citycoordinated marketing effort featuring paid promotional spots on

radio and television, ads in local newspapers, posters at rapid transit

stops and high-traffic areas, and brightly colored CAPS advertisements displayed on buses and billboards. A city-sponsored half-hour

“Crime Watch” series appears on two cable channels and one broadcast channel. The city also posts schedules for beat community meetings on the Internet and its cable channel. Information materials are

distributed to community organizations, libraries, businesses, churches,

and schools. In selected areas, targeted mailings have been conducted

with local sponsors ranging from a bank to a residential property management company. City workers receive information describing CAPS

and how to participate, and they are reminded of area schedules for

beat community meetings. Finally, the city has sponsored a number of

very large citywide rallies and workshops promoting the program and

holds appreciation events for CAPS volunteers. 

Civilian CAPS organizers annually attend more than 100 of the festivals that flourish during the summer months in Chicago and set up

displays that explain CAPS and encourage participation in CAPS

activities. Staff members are also involved in local marches, rallies,

prayer vigils, and smoke outs (group barbecues held at gang or druginfested sites), and a National Night Out every August features events

in all 25 police districts. A catalog of free promotional materials,

including pens, pencils, rulers, sticky notes, T-shirts, and refrigerator

magnets, is also available. 

Why such a large investment in program marketing? All levels of government recognize the importance of educating the public in tandem

with legislating or acting on their behalf. For example, in the health

and safety arenas, the messages “smoking stinks” and “buckle up for

safety” have played a key role in increasing the effectiveness of taxation and regulation as public policy tools. Chicago’s community policing initiative depends to a great extent on active citizen involvement

in beat meetings, district advisory committees, court advocacy groups,

and other action projects. Therefore, it has been important to broaden
Public Involvement

10

public awareness of the new opportunities for participation that

CAPS has created and to encourage citizens to become involved. 

Because CAPS represents a departure from past practice, program

marketing also plays a vital educational function. Rather than simply

asking the public to be the “eyes and ears” of the police, CAPS calls

for residents’ active involvement in problem solving and in helping

to set police priorities. Beat meetings are supposed to serve as a locus

for finding solutions to problems and for involving participants in

problem-solving projects—not just as a place to register complaints.

Thus, residents need not only to attend meetings but also to understand their role in problem-solving policing. 

Finally, the public needs to understand how CAPS changes “business

as usual” in this important and very expensive public agency because

the public pays the bill. In fiscal year 2000, the Chicago Police

Department’s budget exceeded $1 billion. Police depend on the communities they serve for both financial and moral support, and, as taxpayers, the public needs to understand the new department strategy

they are being asked to pay for. 

Beat Meeting Participation 

The surveys quizzed respondents about their involvement in beat

meetings, which were launched citywide in 1995 after an experimental period in several test districts. The beat meeting is one of

Chicago’s most important mechanisms for building and sustaining

close relationships between police and the public. These meetings

provide a forum for exchanging information and a venue for identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing problems at the neighborhood level.

They also offer opportunities for police and residents to meet face to

face and to become acquainted, a feature supported by forming teams

of officers with relatively long-term commitments to working in the

beat. These meetings are the most important vehicle through which

police-community partnerships can develop. 
Community Policing in Chicago

11

Meeting publicity 

In recent years, about 60 percent of Chicagoans have been aware

that community anticrime meetings are held in their area. Among

those who know, about 28 percent (or 14 percent of all Chicago

adults) reported attending at least one CAPS beat meeting. Each

beat usually holds its monthly meetings at a fixed location on a

scheduled night (for example, the third Thursday). The meetings

are held in public and easily accessible park buildings, church basements, apartment building recreation rooms, and schools, and almost

all start at 6:30 or 7 p.m. In surveys distributed at beat meetings during 1998, participants were asked how they had heard about meeting

times and locations. Of those responding, 37 percent had learned

about the meeting through brochures and fliers announcing the meeting, 22 percent through personal conversations, and 13 percent

through a local newspaper. Only a few mentioned finding the information on the World Wide Web, where meeting schedules are also

posted. Many meeting participants (46 percent) heard about the

meeting or had received a flier from a neighbor; another 20 percent

had received information from the police. 

Role of attendance frequency 

The frequency with which residents attended beat meetings played

an important role in driving overall attendance. In 1998, the average

Chicagoan who went to any meetings reported attending an average

of 3.3, but this figure conceals large differences between occasional

attenders and committed activists. More than half of all participants

(54 percent) attended just once or twice. Only a few went often, but

their appearances bolstered yearly attendance totals. For example,

only 11 percent attended more than half the year—seven or more

beat meetings—but they contributed 30 percent of all appearances

at the meetings. The commitment of “regulars” to meetings plays an

important role in the overall success of this aspect of CAPS. 
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Activist characteristics 

The activists were not just a cross-section of their communities.

Instead, they were more inclined than occasional participants or

nonattenders to be upbeat about their communities and the police

and to be involved in local affairs. Frequent attenders more often

reported that conditions in their neighborhoods were improving and

that they had worked together with their neighbors to watch each

other’s homes. They belonged to more local associations, and they

learned about CAPS at community rallies, at booths at neighborhood

festivals, and from their neighbors. Figure 2 illustrates the relationship

between involvement and assessments of the quality of neighborhood

police service. The respondents are divided by their activism (those

who did or did not know about CAPS), and by their attendance

(those who attended just a few beat meetings or more frequently).

The questions about police are represented by the percentage of

each group reporting they were doing a “very good job,” the highest

possible rating in the survey. 

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Percent of all respondents

Unaware of CAPS

Aware of CAPS

Light attender (1–3)

Heavy attender (4+)

Preventing crime

 Dealing with problems

of real concern

 Showing concern 

for residents

 Responding to

community concerns

 Working with 

residents

Figure 2: Involvement and Positive Assessments of Police
Community Policing in Chicago

13

Figure 2 reveals that simple awareness of the city’s community policing program was not related to what people thought about police.

In figure 2, the higher the bar, the more positive respondents were

on each dimension. Those who attended a few meetings were somewhat more positive, and committed participants were much more

so. What is the linkage between the two? Participation may lead

to more positive assessments of police; as indicated in this report,

those who attend think very highly of what goes on at the meetings.

Alternatively, those with a more positive outlook may be more likely

to turn out, while already alienated residents stay away. A fraction of

those who attend may not have a particularly positive experience and

subsequently drop out. All of these possibilities are consistent with the

data, and probably all are at work at the same time.

Key attendance factors 

What led Chicagoans to attend beat meetings? The surveys revealed

two factors that seem to sustain involvement in the meetings and are

also relevant to the efforts of community activists and city agencies.

First, how people learned about CAPS counted because this was

linked to whether they turned out. The second factor affecting attendance was civic engagement. The more involved Chicagoans were in

community affairs, the more likely they were to know about CAPS,

to be aware of beat meetings, and to actually attend the meetings. 

Source of awareness. Although television was central to expanding

awareness of CAPS, it appears to play a limited role in encouraging

Chicagoans to attend beat meetings. The 1998 survey revealed that

29 percent of respondents who knew about CAPS and recalled learning about it from television actually attended a meeting. The comparable figure for those who did not mention television at all was 36

percent. Talking about CAPS with someone else had just the opposite

relationship to attendance; 41 percent of respondents in this category

attended a meeting versus 28 percent of those who did not hear about

CAPS by word of mouth. 

Obviously, not all of these differences can be attributed to exposure

to the program. Different kinds of people learned about CAPS in
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14

different ways, and these differences almost certainly affected their

involvement as well. For example, respondents who recalled learning

about CAPS via newspapers also were significantly less fearful of

crime and more positive in their views of police than everyone else

who knew about CAPS, and both of these factors were also related

to actually getting involved. However, in a statistical analysis of meeting attendance, the positive effects of personal conversation and the

negative effects of television exposure persisted even after controlling

for 12 individual factors (ranging from age and race to language and

home ownership) and 2 measures of residents’ personal experiences

with the police during the previous year. Although stronger evidence

of an experimental nature would be required to confirm this finding,

the survey suggests that television marketing promotes program awareness but not participation, while personal contact and locally initiated

fliers and newsletters promote both. 

The limited impact of television, the largest and most rapidly growing

source of CAPS awareness, may help explain why beat meeting attendance has not grown dramatically over the 1996–99 period. Based

on yearly surveys, the percentage of Chicagoans attending beat meetings has remained at about 12 to 14 percent of the adult population.

During this period, awareness has grown a great deal, but involvement

has not grown as much. 

Civic engagement. Another factor affecting involvement is the linkages that individuals have to their community. Figure 3 illustrates the

strong relationship between civic engagement and CAPS involvement. Based on 1998 data, the measure of civic engagement is based

on responses to four survey questions about whether respondents or

any other individuals in their households were involved in a neighborhood watch group or citizen patrol, the local PTA or local school

council, a church or synagogue, or a block club or community organization. As the percentages arrayed across the bottom axis of figure 3

indicate, 37 percent of respondents indicated that their household was

not involved in any of those activities, and another 37 percent were

involved in just one. At the upper end, 2 percent of those who were

interviewed were involved in all four of these kinds of organizations.

The average household was involved in one type of group. 
Community Policing in Chicago

15

One of the strongest social correlates of civic engagement was race.

Blacks were much more likely to be involved in local groups, both

when church membership was included (as it is in figure 3) and when

only secular organizations were counted. Latinos were dramatically

less likely than others to report being involved, and whites lay

between the two. 

The positive link between home ownership/length of residence and

civic engagement was about as strong as race, while Spanish-speakers

were less likely than others to report being connected to their

community through local organizations. 

These differences have consequences. Figure 3 documents the linkage

between civic engagement and levels of CAPS awareness, meeting

awareness, and actual beat meeting attendance. The differences

are striking. Awareness of CAPS stood above 90 percent for those

involved in three or four kinds of organizations, and awareness of

neighborhood anticrime meetings was almost as high. Beat meeting

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Percent of all respondents

0

(37%)

1

(37%)

2

(17%)

3

(7%)

4

(2%)

Aware of CAPS

Aware of anticrime meetings

Attend beat meetings

Note: The percentage in parentheses under “number of organizations” indicates 

respondent involvement in zero to four organizations.

Number of organizations

Figure 3: Organizational Involvement and CAPS Awareness
Public Involvement

16

attendance rose steadily with levels of civic engagement, rising to

more than 40 percent among those involved in at least three kinds of

local organizations. Each kind of organization was important and contributed to the rising levels of CAPS involvement shown in figure 3.

Although church involvement may seem relatively unrelated to community policing, during 1998 about one-third of all beat meetings

were held in Chicago’s churches, especially in predominately black

communities where both CAPS and church involvement are

particularly strong. 

Only families with children living at home reported being involved

in school affairs, but some of these families heard about CAPS from

materials their children brought home from the city’s public and

parochial schools. Among those belonging to a block club, 92 percent

had heard of CAPS, and 86 percent had heard about anticrime

meetings in their neighborhoods. 

Not surprisingly, people who were involved in a wide range of community activities were also more likely to report that they had learned

about CAPS via word of mouth, a factor described above as related to

actual involvement. Other indicators of civic engagement point to

similar conclusions. For example, among respondents who recently

had asked a neighbor to watch their home while they were gone, 

72 percent knew about neighborhood meetings and 23 percent had

attended a meeting. Both figures are well above the average. Finally,

although not shown in figure 3, those who were heavily involved in

local organizations were likely to attend more meetings in a year than

those who were not. Respondents who were involved in just one

group attended an average of three beat meetings, and those involved

in all four kinds of groups reported attending an average of almost five

meetings.

Civic engagement was linked to CAPS involvement in part through

its role in spreading awareness of the effort. For example, among those

who were not involved in any of the organizations examined in figure

3, only 19 percent had heard about CAPS via personal conversations.

Among those with three or four affiliations, that figure rose to 35 percent. Civic engagement was also linked to CAPS awareness through

fliers and newsletters as well as marches and rallies. On the other
Community Policing in Chicago

17

hand, the more involved people were with civic organizations, the

less likely they were to have heard about CAPS on television. 

The important role civic engagement plays in supporting CAPS

involvement has been observed at other points as well. During 1995

and 1996, the city and a local community organization conducted

problem-solving training for thousands of residents. A followup study

conducted 4 months later to examine which participants actually used

their new skills revealed that the most important factor distinguishing

those who became involved in problem solving was their prior level of

involvement in community-based organizations like those examined

here. The more involved participants were, the more they did. Among

those who were affiliated with four or more organizations, more than

80 percent had participated actively in identifying and solving a local

problem. Like respondents in the current study, trainees who were

more involved in the organizational life of their community were also

more likely to attend beat meetings and to have become involved in

other CAPS-related activities.1

Beat meeting effectiveness 

Residents who attended beat meetings were encouraged by what they

saw. There was a strong consensus that the meetings were useful and

productive. In 1998, 87 percent of those who attended at least one

beat community meeting reported they had learned something there,

and 92 percent reported that the meetings were “very” or “somewhat”

useful for finding solutions to neighborhood problems. A majority of

attendees (72 percent) reported that actions were taken as a result of

the meetings or that they noticed a change in their neighborhood

resulting from decisions made at the meetings. 

People with more education were more likely to think that beat

meetings were having an effect; the percentages who agreed with

this proposition ranged from 56 percent among those without a high

school diploma to 78 percent among college graduates. Higher income

respondents were more optimistic, but there were no differences

between renters and homeowners in this regard, and few differences

among whites, Latinos, and blacks. In addition to serving as a useful
Public Involvement

18

vehicle for problem solving, 91 percent credited the meetings as being

“very” or “somewhat” useful in improving police-community relations. 

Attendance Trends 

Trends in citizen beat meeting attendance were monitored using

data drawn from brief forms completed by the officers who attended.

These forms detailed where and when meetings were held and who

was there. The reliability of police records regarding these basic meeting features was cross-checked by comparing them with reports compiled by observers for the sample of beat meetings they attended each

year; agreement between the two was found to be high. 

Figure 4 charts trends in beat meeting participation between January

1995 and June 1999. The left axis reports monthly attendance figures,

and the right axis presents the cumulative total of attendees since the

0

50,000

100,000

150,000

200,000

250,000

300,000

0

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

5,000

6,000

7,000

8,000

Monthly attendance

Cumulative attendance

6,300 6,400

7,300 7,500

2,580

Monthly attendance

Cumulative attendance

1/954/957/95

10/95

1/964/967/96

10/96

1/974/977/97

10/97

1/98

4/98

7/98

10/98

1/994/996/99

Figure 4: Trends in Beat Meeting Attendance, 1995–99
Community Policing in Chicago

19

starting date. It is apparent that attendance is seasonal, reflecting

Chicago’s weather. Based on these data, Chicagoans attended beat

meetings about 59,200 times during 1995 and nearly 62,120 times

during 1996. The total for 1997 was 65,300, and it was 69,700 for

1998. As the right axis on figure 4 indicates, during this 54-month

period Chicagoans attended beat meetings on nearly 300,000 occasions. These totals are silent on issues such as how many new participants attended each month and how many participants were regular

attenders. However, as reported above, the counts are importantly

affected by the frequency with which residents attended and the

percentage of residents who turned out. (The growth in attendance

between 1996 and 1999 is within the bounds of sampling error and

year-to-year fluctuations in the survey findings presented in this

report.) 

Patterns of Participation 

Investigators combined meeting reports for each of the city’s beats

during 1998 to calculate the average monthly attendance rate for each

area. Data from other sources (including census, crime, and school

and health indicators) were combined to compare to these rates and

to describe the social and economic correlates of attendance. To compare attendance across beats, it was necessary to take into account the

varying size of the beats. The boundaries of the city’s police beats were

drawn to equalize workloads (measured by calls for service) among

them, rather than population. 

In general, only adults come to beat meetings, so the denominator for

each beat’s attendance rate was the number of residents aged 18 and

older. These population figures were based on projections for 1998,

calculated from post-1990 updates to the census assembled by Claritas

Corporation. The estimated 1998 population of beats ranged from

2,130 to almost 25,000, and the number of adults ranged from 1,200

to 21,000. A few other beats were excluded entirely because their

residential populations were even smaller (they were located in 

either industrial areas or the downtown business district). All of the
Public Involvement

20

measures examined here except beat racial composition were logged

to correct skewed distributions.

Attendance 

Where was beat meeting attendance high, and where was it low?

Attendance rates were highest in predominately black areas of the

city, and they were lowest in largely white beats. Rates were low

among beats where the Latino population averaged 20 to 60 percent

but were somewhat higher in beats with larger concentrations of

Latino residents. This parallels the finding presented in other reports

on this evaluation, that beat meeting participation among Latinos is

highest where “critical masses” of Latinos reside. This does not represent a large number of beats, however. Based on 1998 population

estimates, just 34 of the city’s 279 beats were more than 60 percent

Latino. More Latinos lived in areas where participation rates were

somewhat lower. 

Figure 5 shows the relationship between beat meeting attendance and

measures of crime and affluence. One panel at the bottom of figure 5

documents that attendance was highest in low-income areas—rates

tended to be higher in areas where more people reported making less

than $15,000 per year. Attendance rates were lowest in beats that are

home to a large proportion of college graduates, as illustrated by the

other panel at the bottom of figure 5. The link (not shown) between

home ownership and area rates of participation—which is often quite

high for volunteer-based neighborhood programs—was very weak. All

of these relationships persisted when other factors were controlled for

statistically. In multivariate analyses, violent crime was the strongest

factor explaining participation rates. As the two panels at the top of

figure 5 indicate, high attendance rates were associated with a high

personal crime rate and also with vandalism. The link between highvolume property crimes and participation was weaker and stood at

about zero for burglary and auto theft, which are highest in better-off

areas of the city. 

Other factors were linked to levels of attendance as well. Rates were

higher in communities where other societal institutions have failed.
Community Policing in Chicago

21

For example, attendance was relatively high in areas where test scores

for the city’s public school students are low, truancy rates are high,

and graduation rates are poor. Attendance was also higher in areas

where residents have significant health problems, including high

rates of gonorrhea and tuberculosis, and high infant mortality. 

Significance of findings 

These patterns are significant for at least two reasons. First, they run

counter to many of the pressures that historically have shaped policecommunity relations in poor and disenfranchised communities, where

residents too often have had troubled relationships with the police

who serve them. These residents are more likely to think they do not

receive good service and that police are abusive toward their neighbors. Organizations that represent them also may not have a track

Figure 5: Patterns of Beat Meeting Attendance, 1998

Beat personal crime rate (log) Beat vandalism rate (log)

Beat percentage of college graduates (log) Beat percentage of incomes less than $15,000 (log)

r = correlation between the two variables; each dot represents a police beat.

Beat meeting turnout rate (log)

Beat meeting turnout rate (log)

Beat meeting turnout rate (log)

Beat meeting turnout rate (log)

r = +.46

r = -.41 r = +.32

r = +.49
Public Involvement

22

record of cooperating with police, since their constituents too often

fear them. 

Second, these findings run counter to the usual pattern of participation in voluntary community-based programs, which typically overrepresent the interests of better-off, home-owning, and well-established

areas. This pattern is so common that it is the norm to expect a

“middle-class bias” in volunteer-based social programs. Around the

country, it has proven to be difficult to sustain the involvement of

the residents of communities that need community policing the most.

In Chicago, however, turnout rates for the city’s community policing

program are positively related to many measures of need. They are

especially high in predominately black beats, in high-crime areas, and

in areas where other agencies are not effectively meeting residents’

needs. 

Beat Meetings in Practice 

What goes on when people do attend beat meetings? To examine the

dynamics of beat meetings more closely, observers attended 459 meetings during 1998. They completed forms recording specific details

about each session, including where the meeting was located, who

attended, and the basics of what went on. They were also trained to

make judgments about matters such as how effectively police and

civilian leaders conducted the meetings. This analysis uses the data

captured through these forms to characterize the 256 beats for which

observations were completed. 

From the outset, CAPS planners had a clear vision of how beat

community meetings were to be conducted and what was supposed

to happen there. The beat meeting was to provide a place to share

information, identify problems, and develop action plans. Both police

and citizens were expected to take responsibility for problem-solving

projects, and the beat meeting was to offer a venue for everyone to

review their progress and assess how well they were doing. Early evaluation reports documented that many of the beat meetings did not go

according to plan—beat officers often did not assume their intended
Community Policing in Chicago

23

leadership role, too many meetings floundered without a clear agenda,

and not much crime information was shared. Later attempts were

made to remedy this, and during March and April 1998—just before

the observations began—the department conducted training for civilian beat activists, beat officers, and sergeants that included sessions on

how to conduct more productive beat meetings. 

The ideal beat meeting 

One goal of the new observation study was to examine how closely

activities in the field reflected the plans made downtown. To do this,

observers gathered information on the elements of a “model meeting”

and compiled a checklist of activities that included the factors constituting the program’s standards. Later, their observations were summed

to rate the extent to which each meeting resembled an ideal gathering. The rating scale was based on 10 meeting components (table 2).

Another goal of the new observation study was to determine whether

any progress had been made in the way meetings were conducted. To

examine this, the 1998 observations were matched to observations

from a study conducted in 1995, when some but not all elements of a

model meeting were also assessed. 

Table 2: Components of a Model Meeting

Agenda Was there a printed or 

verbal meeting agenda?

Information Were crime maps or

crime reports handed out?

Facilitator Was there a civilian 

facilitator for the meeting?

Volunteers Were volunteers called for,

or were signup sheets

passed around? 

Action Did residents leave the 

Component meeting with a commitment

to future action?

Resident Did residents report back 

Feedback on previous problemsolving efforts?

Officer Did police officers report 

Feedback back on previous problemsolving efforts?

Identification Were problems or issues 

identified at the meeting?

Solutions Were solutions proposed 

for problems that were 

identified?

Meeting Was the meeting run with

Effectiveness overall effectiveness?
Public Involvement

24

Beat meeting observations 

Observers assessed beat meeting “mechanics,” the extent to which

Chicago’s problem-solving model was implemented, and efforts to

sustain citizen participation. 

Beat meeting mechanics. Some of the meeting components summarized in table 2 represent beat meeting mechanics. Observers reported

there was a clear agenda, either printed or clearly announced, for 65

percent of the meetings. Under the department’s guidelines, each beat

is supposed to have a civilian “facilitator” to help organize and conduct public events, and a facilitator actually was present at two-thirds

of the meetings. Observers also judged the overall effectiveness with

which the meetings were run and concluded that about one-fourth

were poorly conducted. Almost 60 percent were managed fairly effectively, and 15 percent were judged to have been run very effectively.

Officers who played leadership roles received somewhat higher marks

than civilians. However, meetings led by civilians or jointly between

police and residents were judged to be better run overall. There was

also a fair degree of information sharing by police. Department guidelines call for crime information to be distributed at beat meetings, and

this usually occurred. The department’s crime analysis system can produce a variety of reader-friendly maps, crime lists, and reports, and

observers reported that either crime maps or printed crime reports

were distributed at 70 percent of the meetings. 

The 1998 figures on the mechanics of meetings represented a significant improvement over past observations. Among the matched beats,

a clear agenda was provided for 64 percent of the meetings in 1998

but for only 41 percent of the meetings in 1995. No crime reports at

all were distributed at 40 percent of the 1995 meetings, but by 1998

that figure had dropped to 24 percent. The availability of crime maps

nearly doubled. These improvements may reflect the training that

beat officers, sergeants, and civilian beat facilitators have received

since 1995 on how to conduct beat meetings. 

Problem-solving model. A great deal of variation was observed

in the extent to which different elements of Chicago’s problemsolving model were enacted at beat meetings. All of the officers in
Community Policing in Chicago

25

the department’s patrol division have been trained to employ a 

five-step process that includes identifying and analyzing problems,

developing and implementing solutions to them, and assessing the

effectiveness of what they have accomplished. These problem-solving

steps were also woven into the curriculum of the massive training program for neighborhood residents conducted in 1995 and 1996. The

observers found that the most frequently met standard on the list presented in table 2 was the discussion of beat issues—all but one of the

meetings involved identifying problems. Most problems were identified by the residents who were present, and police dominated the

discussion of problems at only 14 percent of the meetings. Attendees

also usually discussed how to solve problems. Observers noted that

solutions were proposed for most of the problems discussed at 77 percent of the meetings. As in past observations, most solutions (45 percent) were proposed by police; residents proposed solutions 14 percent

of the time and did so jointly with police at another 16 percent of

the meetings. When solutions were actually discussed rather than

just nominated, police were more likely to be involved than were

residents. 

Observations of the matched subset of beats indicated little change

over time in the rate at which problems were identified at meetings or

who identified them. Residents raised most of the problems discussed

at 67 percent of the 1995 meetings and at 71 percent of the 1998

meetings. On the other hand, the observers noted less discussion of

solutions to problems in 1998 than in 1995. The role played by residents remained about the same each time (they took the lead in 

about 15 percent of the matched meetings), but the contribution

made by police declined. Overall, the percentage of meetings at 

which solutions to problems were discussed declined from 96 percent

to 80 percent. 

The evaluation reports have also stressed the importance of presenting

followup reports at beat meetings concerning participants’ problemsolving efforts. These followup reports serve several functions. They

help clarify to participants that attending “pays off”—that they should

attend because something actually happens as a result of the meetings.

Reports on residents’ problem-solving efforts help sustain participants’
Public Involvement

26

enthusiasm for the process by recognizing their contributions and may

encourage others to join in. Beat meetings also provide a forum for

residents to hold beat officers accountable. Calling for reports on their

efforts since the last meeting helps savvy residents ensure that police

and city service agencies actually follow up on problems discussed at

these sessions. The observers found that police contributed reports of

their efforts fairly often; they reported on their problem-solving activities at 61 percent of the meetings. However, only 35 percent of the

meetings featured residents discussing their own efforts. 

Citizen participation. Because sustaining effective citizen participation in problem solving has proven to be difficult in many areas of

Chicago, observers also noted the role of beat meetings in mobilizing

participants. One factor they watched for was whether volunteers

were requested, or whether signup sheets were distributed at the meetings to engage participants in particular activities. They found that

this occurred at 39 percent of the meetings. Among the matched

meetings, calls for volunteers declined by 4 percentage points between

1995 and 1998. Observers also made a critical summary judgment at

the end of each session—that is, did residents leave the meeting with

a commitment to future action? When participants leave knowing

what needs to be done and their role in those efforts, beat meetings

may have a greater impact than when there is no commitment to any

clear action. Observers were to assess each meeting on the basis of

calls for volunteers, announcements of other meetings or activities,

and the action plans discussed. Based on these criteria, they judged

that only 34 percent of the meetings met the standard of having an

“action component.” 

Model-meeting index: What contributes to better meetings? 

To summarize all of these factors, a model-meeting index was created

by summing indicators of each of the 10 components listed in table 2.

The index set a high standard by counting only the meetings judged

to be “very effective”; otherwise, index components were either present or absent in each case. When the meeting elements were combined, the average meeting score was 5.6, and the median was 6.

In short, the typical meeting met slightly more than half the criteria.
Community Policing in Chicago

27

Across the beats, none of the meetings received a score of zero, and 

4 percent received just 1 or 2 points. At the other end of the scale, 

2 of the meetings received a perfect score, and 19 percent received a

score of 8, 9, or 10. 

Civilian leadership and high meeting attendance were found to

contribute to better meetings. 

Civilian leadership. One factor identified in past reports, civilian

leadership, remains important in this research. Meetings chaired by

civilians, or jointly with a police officer, more closely matched the

model. Some police representatives did a good job. Among the components of the model-meeting index, civilian-led or jointly led meetings were more likely to have clear agendas, but so were the meetings

run by sergeants (who have had the most training on the police side).

Civilian-led meetings were more likely to include calls for volunteers,

but so were those run by neighborhood relations officers (who are 

specialists in dealing with the community). Civilian-led or jointly led

meetings were more likely to feature followup reports from civilians

about their problem-solving activities, and they also were better at

eliciting these reports from the police officers who were present

(although sergeants were also good at that). However, only civilianled meetings were consistently top rated. Generally, meetings run by

ordinary beat officers were conducted the least effectively on all of

these measures. 

Meeting attendance. In addition, meetings attended by more people

and meetings held in beats where the regular yearly pattern of attendance is high were also more likely to fit the model. Beats with low

scores (ranging from 1 to 4) on the model-meeting index averaged

20 participants; those with high scores (7 to 10) averaged 30 participants. The total yearly attendance at the top-ranked beats (measured

by official department records) averaged 77 percent higher than the

bottom-ranked group. Meetings that included representatives of civic

organizations, staff for local aldermen, community organizers, and 

city agency representatives also tended to “go by the book.” Meetings

were also more likely to match the department’s standard in low-crime

areas. Beats in the low-rated category (with scores of 1 to 4) had a 
Public Involvement

28

40-percent higher personal crime rate and a 46-percent higher property crime rate than those in the high-rated category. There appeared to

be no differences associated with race; there was virtually no correlation between the racial composition of beats and their model-meeting

index score. 

It was also possible, using the onsite observations, to compare the

races of the residents attending with those of the officers who were

there. Observers noted no apparent effect of either a disparity

between the two groups or racial homogeneity between police and 

residents on how beat meetings were conducted. However, meetings

resembled the model more closely in residential areas, and beats with

a heavy concentration of businesses or industry tended to score lower. 

Conclusion: Community Factors and

Personal Contacts Are Key 

Chicago’s community policing initiative features a number of avenues

for citizen participation, and, since its inception, citizen participation

has been one of its most significant successes. A large proportion of

the population is aware of CAPS, and that awareness grew among

all major subgroups between 1996 and 1998. Expanding participation

has proved to be more difficult than extending citizen awareness.

Participation levels have grown slowly, averaging about 6,000 attendees per month, and the percentage of Chicagoans who report attending has remained at about 12 to 14 percent of adults. However, unlike

many other programs across the Nation, turnout for CAPS has been

sustained in many of the places needing it most. Attendance is relatively high in some of the city’s poorest and most crime-ridden communities. Meeting attendance also did not decline when the novelty

of CAPS wore off, as some feared it might. CAPS managers realize

that awareness has probably peaked at about its current level and have

shifted their focus to increasing the effectiveness of beat meetings and

local problem-solving projects. 
Community Policing in Chicago

29

The surveys suggest that although television has been the principal

force driving the increasing levels of program awareness, it does not

appear to affect beat meeting attendance. Community factors and personal contacts play the largest role in stimulating actual participation;

beat meeting attendance is strongly linked to involvement with

groups that spread the word about CAPS, as are word-of-mouth

discussions about the program and the fliers and newsletters that

circulate easily in well-organized neighborhoods. 

When they attend, residents like what they see—most thought

beat meetings were productive and led to constructive action.

Observers’ conclusions were somewhat more pessimistic, based on

a systematic checklist of standards pursued by the department. The

average gathering was assessed to be good in meeting mechanics and

in airing the issues but weak in finding solutions to problems, especially by residents, and in encouraging feedback about successes. The beat

meetings are not yet providing a forum for holding either police or

residents accountable for their efforts. 

Increasing utility through training 

Chicago has instituted several new projects intended to increase the

utility of beat meetings. Since the field work for this evaluation was

completed, the police department has conducted new rounds of training for beat sergeants, civilian facilitators, and some patrol officers.

New CAPS training has also been offered to lieutenants and watch

commanders, key midlevel managers in the organization. A small

team of civilian and sworn trainers is on hand to assist districts that

need help in developing a problem-solving orientation and in conducting effective beat meetings. Since early 1998, the civilian side of

the program has expanded significantly. A number of civilian organizers who have been hired and assigned to some of the city’s most troubled beats have the mission of increasing meeting attendance and

facilitating the development of local problem-solving projects.2
Public Involvement

30

Stimulating involvement through networking and

organizational affiliations 

This research suggests two other avenues for stimulating involvement

and problem solving. The findings show that beat meeting participants who are networked with each other are more likely to attend frequently and to become involved in problem solving. When people

recognize each other on the street, know each other’s names, talk on

the telephone, and socialize in other venues, they are more likely to

become CAPS activists. This highlights the importance of developing

“phone trees” and other participant directories, setting up meeting

spaces so that participants can interact, and allowing time on the

agenda for coffee or social hours so that residents can meet informally.

This social networking, along with calling for volunteers or sending

around signup sheets, is likely to increase the action potential of beat

meetings. 

More important is evidence of the effect of local organizations in

advancing community policing. Residents linked to their neighbors

by a web of organizational affiliations are more likely to hear about

and turn out for beat meetings, to attend more often, and to become

involved in problem solving. The concern of many that communities

lacking an infrastructure of supportive organizations will fall behind

in developing effective partnerships with police appears to be correct.

The “civilian side” of community policing is indeed as problematic

as the police side, calling for similar investments in developing

organizational support for this new style of policing. 
Community Policing in Chicago

31

Suggested Reading 

Skogan, Wesley G. “Community Policing in Chicago,” in Community

Policing, ed. Geoffrey Alpert and Alex Piquero. Prospect Heights, IL:

Waveland Press, 1997: 159–174. 

Skogan, Wesley G., and Susan M. Hartnett. Community Policing,

Chicago Style. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1997. 

Notes 

1. Skogan, Wesley G., Susan M. Hartnett, Jill DuBois, Jennifer T.

Comey, Marianne Kaiser, and Justine H. Lovig, On the Beat: Police and

Community Problem Solving, Boulder, CO: Westview Publishing Co.,

1999. 

2. Skogan, Wesley G., Susan M. Hartnett, Jill DuBois, Jennifer T.

Comey, Karla Twedt-Ball, J. Erik Gudell, Justine H. Lovig, Joel

Knutson, Jinha Kim, Richard Block, Gail Musial, William Troutman,

and Emily Keebler, Community Policing in Chicago, Years Five–Six: An

Interim Report, Chicago: Illinois Criminal Justice Information

Authority, 1999.
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