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To Whom Do We Answer?

This pressure to react quickly is more often than not a

response to outdated command staff strategies or priorities rather than to the public as a whole. Lack of

knowledge of what the public actually wants is what

has gotten us into our present situation.

The police community has slowly come to realize that

the old tactics of preventive patrol and reactive investigation are incapable of preventing or solving most

crimes. New innovations may have helped police

manage their time better, but they have not helped to

reduce crime significantly. The major point is that

crime simply can no longer be the police’s sole concern. Nationwide pressures have forced police to consider a broader range of problems and solutions. Eck

and Spelman (1987) note that police can no longer

regard themselves as part of the criminal justice

system; they must become part of the larger human

services system. Likewise, police administrators recognize that the old “classical” model described by

Fesler and Kettl (1991) is obsolete. Police can no

longer reach their objectives through rigid, hierarchical management styles. In police work, this style not

only fosters standardization and specialization, it also

decreases the motivation, innovation, and creativity

needed to implement new solutions to old problems.

Many departments are experimenting with newer

alternatives and seeking help from the private sector

and the public as a whole.

Legitimacy

Let every person render obedience to

the governing authorities; for there is

no authority except from God, those in

authority are divinely constituted, so

that the rebel against the authority is

resisting God’s appointment. (Romans

13:1)

Fesler and Kettl (1991) write that a government having legitimacy has authority and that we as citizens

owe our obedience “. . . only insofar as the demands 

. . . comply with the relevant constitutional, judicial,

and executive limitations and instructions” (p. 42).

The costs of crime have reached such

a level that the police community must

take a cold, hard look at itself. The

criminal justice system is failing the

public. People want to be safe from

crime, and it is up to the police to be

the catalyst in making that desire a

reality. (Wadman and Olson, 1990,

p. 40)

One of the questions confronting modern criminal

justice theory is that of responsibility. Upon whom

does the burden of “crime” in the United States lie?

In addressing this matter, one must look not only at

enforcing laws but also at the broader, more encompassing concepts of “service” and “accountability.”

To whom does law enforcement actually answer, and

to whom are we responsible? The first, most logical

response is that our primary responsibility is to the

public we serve. This is a simple answer to a complex

question. We will attempt to explore our cultures and

the communities to whom we answer.

Modern, innovative law enforcement is rapidly

coming to the realization that the era of adding more

police, answering more calls in less time, and buying

new gadgetry is coming to an end. Many agencies

recognize that the police car, the radio, the air conditioner, and the decreased response times have actually

removed and isolated the police from the public they

are sworn to protect.

Modern police departments are 24-hour emergency

operations that are available to any citizen. Technology, in particular 911 and enhanced 911 (which automatically identifies the call location), has not been a

total solution to our problems. Although certainly a

boon, it has also created new problems. Skolnick and

Bayley (1986) note that many departments regard the

emergency response system they created as a monster

that consumes the operational guts of the department.

Citizens are so accustomed to dialing the emergency

number that police spend a large portion of their time

speeding from one call to another without solving the

underlying problem or benefiting anyone.

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Therein lies one of the major controversies of modern

policing. Justifying what police have to do has always

been difficult in democratic societies. This is especially true in the United States where ambivalence

about government authority is a constant force. The

police and others who implement the will of the governed—and are given the power to intervene in private

lives and the authority to use force to gain compliance—are always under close scrutiny in this country.

Pivotal to the character of American policing is its

source of authority or legitimacy (International City

Management Association [ICMA], 1991). Prior to the

1930s, U.S. police mandates came directly from local

politicians. Reform movements pushed police away

from political priorities and domination into a role of

being primarily enforcers of the law. By characterizing criminal law as the fundamental source of police

authority, reformers eliminated many social and regulatory functions from law enforcement duties. During

this time, the perception of rising crime was prevalent.

The notoriety surrounding such crime figures as John

Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Clyde Barker pushed

the public to demand police protection. The police

readily accepted and enhanced the portrayal of themselves as America’s last bastion of defense against

crime and held that picture for over half a century

(ICMA, 1991).

This sense of mission is also described by Mastrofski

(1988) as a recognizable source of authority and legitimacy. He portrays police acceptance of a crime

fighting mandate as comparable to other occupations

that seek resources and status by claiming professional domain or the capacity and responsibility for

certain outcomes—in this case, lower crime rates.

Regardless of the source, police power, autonomy,

and isolation have predominated for many years. To

succeed, that role must change. As early as 1829, Sir

Robert Peel emphasized that police should work in

cooperation with the people and police officers should

protect the rights, serve the needs, and earn the trust

of the population they police (Critchley, 1967).

Both police and researchers are coming to realize that

for decades law enforcement agencies have taken on

more responsibilities than they could ever handle.

Sociologist Amitai Etzioni uses the term “communitarianism” to describe the general concept of community involvement in problem solving. He states that

we have gone too far in extending rights to our citizens and not far enough in asking them to fulfill responsibilities to the government as a whole. It is the

duty of all of us to pay our civic rent with our time,

skills, and money, not just “lip service.” This brings

us back to the question: “To whom do we answer?”

Do citizens feel they are valued customers when they

visit us or call on us for service, or are they treated as

distractions who keep us from doing what we perhaps

perceive as our “real” job? If this is true, then we have

probably excluded them from our processes for some

time, and we will have trouble identifying our

“clients” and defining our goals and mission.

Herman Goldstein has noted that bureaucracies risk

becoming so preoccupied with running their organizations that they lose sight of the primary purpose for

which they were created. The police seem unusually

susceptible to this. Organizations usually seek to

minimize the influence of the external environment

on internal operations. The external environment

poses uncertainty for the organization and can affect

government agencies dramatically. One major concern

has been departmental ideologies. Changes in public

beliefs threaten potential changes in government

agencies. Though all agencies resist change, it is

hard to think of one more resistant than the police.

Typically, we have always been paramilitary rigid

bureaucracies fiercely defensive of the status quo.

Skolnick and Bayley (1986) note that it was not

easy to transform “Blue Knights” into community

organizers. Police belong to a subculture marked by

an “us-them” mentality that mistrusts working with

outsiders. The authors reference the television program “Hill Street Blues,” which depicted veteran

Sergeant Yablonski saying, “Let’s do it to them before

they do it to us.” This dichotomy of trust only lends

itself to reinforce the split between two of the bases

of organization described by Fesler and Kettl (1991),

namely, purpose versus clientele. For years, police

agencies have isolated themselves by claiming the

right and professionalism to handle “operational

matters” about which the public knows little. Despite

the omnipresence of cops on the street, the American

public seems to get most of its information about police from television shows that grossly distort reality

and give rise to impossible expectations about what

police can and cannot do (Bouza, 1990). Police tend

to play up these beliefs and reinforce the public’s

ignorance by shrouding operations in secrecy.
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The public often does not understand, and perhaps

does not want to understand, the way police and their

organizations operate. Police generally encounter

people at their worst, not their best. They are called to

family fights, not family picnics. They see mostly the

dark side of human nature. Someone has to deal with

the blood, the hurt children, and the human anguish

that no one wants to face, and it is usually the police.

On the other hand, the public is often as guilty of

causing rifts by maintaining the attitude that police

work is dirty, tainted, or disgusting, forcing the police

to isolate themselves. This exacerbates the clash between purpose and clientele. The police are there to

“protect and serve.” Unfortunately, police officers

often see their purpose mainly as “to protect,” and

the public or clientele sees the purpose solely as “to

serve.” This isolation on both sides makes joint efforts

difficult, and, in the meantime, the criminal element

of society takes advantage of both sides.

One of the first steps is toward what Skolnick and

Bayley call “police-community reciprocity” (1988,

p. 211). The “us-them” attitude must give way to an

“all of us” perspective. The community and the police

have to be partners in crime prevention. All must

share. The first move is to involve the public in the

police mission.

Mission, values, policy, and

culture

The function of the police mission as defined by

Couper and Lobitz (1991) is to focus on the department’s purpose, call attention to what is important to

the department, and define its values. The culture of

a police department reflects what that department

believes in as an organization. Those beliefs are reflected in the policies of the department and the way

it conducts daily business.

All departments have a culture. The question is: Was

it carefully developed or just allowed to happen? As

an example, if a department views the use of force as

a typical occurrence and the normal way to handle

situations, its response to an excessive force complaint

will be radically different from a department that

views routine use of force as atypical. Its officers

come to view the use of force as an acceptable way to

resolve most conflicts. Ralph Waldo Emerson once

said, “An institution is the lengthened shadow of one

man.” The tone set by the leadership must be reflected

by the organization, and the organization must project

that tone to the public, who must respond in return.

In light of this, a department must establish a value

system and state its policy. It must list goals, guidelines for performance, and standards for evaluation.

Most important, and sometimes most difficult, is to

involve the community in the policymaking process.

Dunham and Alpert observe: “Power sharing is not a

central feature of . . . police agency programming”

(1989, p. 353). A department must be accessible to

the public, and that accessibility depends on whether

there is a plan to enhance citizen involvement in

police activity. Where the policymaking and decisionmaking relationship is one-sided, there is little hope

for long-term involvement. If the public has little

voice in how its problems are prioritized and addressed, there will be little desire for future participation. Likewise, if a department does not articulate its

values to the community, the community cannot begin

to understand how to help.

Sparrow, Moore, and Kennedy (1990) state, “Managing through values, and the values police executives

choose to manage by, will play a crucial role”

(p. 195). Ideologically and functionally, the police

traditionally have resisted community participation in

policy and goal formation. Unfortunately, police departments also have resisted the police officer’s role

in policymaking. Line officers often feel alienated

from the very organizations that employ them. Police

officers themselves have been disenfranchised and

frustrated by complex, impersonal, and degrading

organizational policies and practices (Dunham and

Alpert, 1989). In general, rigid, bureaucratic police

agencies often exclude not only the public they serve

but also the officers who serve that public.

In the late 1970s, in the face of this truth, the police

realized they needed help. As crime rates tripled between 1960 and the late 1980s (Bouza, 1990), both

the police and the public began to see the flaws of

the system, and changes began to be implemented.

To whom do we answer?

In an informal survey of several chiefs of police,

we asked, “To whom do you answer?” We received

responses such as, “the mayor,” “the elected officials

who appointed me,” “the community,” “God,” and
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“myself.” All of these are elements of the communities we serve. Their strengths and demands for attention may wax and wane, but they are always present

and are potential clients.

How individual officers and their departments are assessed is one of the specific issues that leads to many

misconceptions on the part of the police and members

of the community. The criteria used to evaluate a department must be consistent with the police mission

and culture of the department. Morgan (1986) refers

to culture as “the patterns of development reflected

in a society’s system of knowledge, ideology, values,

laws, and day-to-day ritual” (p. 112). As previously

noted, the culture of a department reflects what the

department believes as an organization. The beliefs

are reflected in the department’s recruitment, selection, training, and, ultimately, the actions of its officers as they interact with the public. The values of

the department should reflect its own community and

should be based on concepts such as service, commitment, professionalism, integrity, and community involvement. The police should demonstrate leadership

that is sensitive to community needs. Accountability

to other institutions conforms to the American notion

of a system of checks and balances. Our communities

will not, and should not, tolerate isolation and lack of

accountability.

Reviewing the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics—

adopted by the Executive Committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 1989 to

replace the 1957 Code of Ethics—we are freshly

reminded of the simplicity of the guidelines we must

follow. The Code offers direction on the primary responsibilities, performance of duties, discretion, use

of force, confidentiality, integrity, cooperation with

other officers and agencies, personal/professional capabilities, and private life of a police officer. Policing

is not an exact science, and dealing with people is

not always easy. We are not perfect as police officers,

administrators, or people, but our chosen career

means we are held to a higher standard. We are all

bound by this Code, which clearly defines our

obligations.

Except in the smallest, most homogeneous police

jurisdictions, various neighborhoods have different

needs and require different responses from their police departments. Tradition, as well as need, affects

these expectations and demands. Police departments

are civil service agencies and are responsible for

providing a service and answering to the public.

Whether a police agency defines its operational style

as traditional, community-oriented, or some mixture

of the two, it must recognize the various communities

it encompasses. Using this broad definition, everyone

is a member of at least one community. Past practices

have created a breach between the police and certain

communities as we have minimized external influences on policymaking and how services are rendered.

We are not an invading army, owing allegiance only

to a distant force that commissions us. We are civil

servants, and, although many of us work in positions

that are protected from termination without cause,

common sense and fairness dictate that we work to

serve the public. We may define the public as composed of the communities that make up our jurisdictions. Mayhall, Barker, and Hunter define community

as “a group of people sharing common boundaries,

such as common goals, needs, interests, and/or

geographical locations” (1995, p. 14). They divide the

population into three communities: internal, external,

and overlapping. We are responsible to each

community.

Internal communities

As policing has become more professional with a

code of ethics, required training, professional associations, and stringent Commission on Accreditation for

Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) standards,

police missions, training, and day-to-day activities

have to some degree become standardized throughout

the United States. Acceptable police behavior in the

Southeast is appropriate in the Northwest, and inappropriate behavior in New York City is not acceptable

in Los Angeles. National news has kept us abreast of

police misconduct and scandal across the country,

and we all recognize these behaviors as offensive,

unethical, and even criminal.

The age of technology has brought us, as professional

police officers, many welcome tools and advances.

But it has also brought police indiscretions and criminal actions from across the Nation into the living

rooms and lunchrooms of our communities. All

officers are looked at with a jaundiced eye when a

scandal-thirsty media paints us all with the same

brush. We are all part of the police community and

affected by the communities’ perceptions. The stereotypes given us by the national media, including
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television and movies, are not so negative that we

cannot overcome them. We need the support of all of

our employees.

Support personnel. Most calls for service begin with

a phone call to the communications center. Regardless

of the size of the operation, the person who answers

the telephone sets the tone for the entire police interaction. A professional, helpful, concerned calltaker

may never be recognized or praised, but an unprofessional, disinterested one will soon come to the

administration’s attention. All support personnel must

be trained and motivated to do their jobs with pride.

As members of our internal community, their importance cannot be overstressed, and communication

between them and the administration must be two

way. We answer to the support personnel.

Sworn personnel. We must encourage our officers

to use each citizen contact as an opportunity to demonstrate professionalism and commitment to service.

Police officers are not called to celebrate joyous occasions but to handle tragedy, disaster, crime, and, most

often, petty annoyances. The officers are affected by

the stressful nature of the job, and we owe them the

benefit of our experiences. They are our hands, eyes,

and ears, and we cannot accomplish our missions

without their willing assistance. Our employees are

our internal communities and are vital to the success

of our organizations. All members of our internal

community are what Lipsky (1980) calls “street-level

bureaucrats” as they make decisions and render justice based on their interpretation of departmental

policy. Lee P. Brown, during his tenure as the chief

of the Houston Police Department from 1982 to 1990,

gave his officers the charge of solving problems on

their beats. He encouraged their interaction with local

individuals and groups to get to the direct causes of

crime. He said, “Police can be most effective if they

help communities to help themselves.” We must use

selection and training to make our officers “the finest,” then we must charge them with the duty of managing their areas of responsibility. If they are treated

with respect and trust, they will respond in kind. We

answer to the police officers.

To better serve our internal communities, we must

realize the fabric of society is changing, and so are

the persons who seek employment as police officers.

Historically, work was viewed as performing one of

four roles. First, work was considered to have intrinsic

value, and people worked because they enjoyed it.

Second, it had moral, spiritual, or ethical value, and

people received purpose, challenge, and responsibility

from hard work, thrift, and frugality. Third, work was

a necessary evil to be performed to get enough money

to have pleasure while not depriving the worker of too

much leisure. Finally, although work was a source of

material existence, Eli Ginzberg, in Contemporary

Readings in Organizational Behavior (Luthans,

1972), states “it also satisfied man’s spiritual, social,

and psychological needs, for research has shown that

work regulates the life of individuals and binds them

to reality” (p. 148). Although people find their productive role important in relating themselves to the

social system and maintaining their sense of wellbeing in the economic order, many workers today

seem to have difficulty in perceiving their jobs as

being important except as they improve their standard

of living.

Among other factors, this growing sense of low status

and the inability to achieve a position of prestige in

one’s job minimizes employee individuality and creativity, resulting in boredom, lack of interest, a sense

of inferiority and unrest, and a search for other means

of obtaining status, especially in the personal struggle

for professional identification. Loss of employment

and subsequent embarrassment simply do not carry

the same social risks for younger people as they do

for older employees who would suffer greater loss.

Some younger people fail to exhibit loyalty to their

employer or express pride in workmanship. They

seem to view shirking their duties as merely “ripping

off the establishment” and feel no responsibility to

perform. Employers can expand their relationships

with employees to include concern and involvement

with them as individuals who have needs, potential,

and responsibilities that extend beyond the workplace.

Stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, and other maladies are emerging, reflecting the new realities and

conditions of work.

As Tofoya (l990) noted, the Metropolitan Police Act

of l829 marked the beginning of the “first wave” of

law enforcement reform. Sir Robert Peel structured

the London police on a military model but emphasized the “mutual reliance” between officers and

citizens. In the l930s, August Vollmer (chief of the

Berkeley, California, Police Department) and O.W.

Wilson’s (chief of the Chicago Police Department)

efforts brought on the “second wave” through “
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professionalization.” Although the need for this reform was clear, it heralded the period of police isolation as they traveled rapidly in radio cars and wanted

“just the facts, ma’am,” because these “professional”

officers had all the modern technology and did not

need the citizens. We stood alone and answered to

ourselves. The civil and social unrest of the l960s and

l970s provided the impetus for the “third wave” of

reform. Police researchers and practitioners such as

Patrick V. Murphy began to question the value of the

bureaucratic and military models of professional

policing.

Top-heavy organizational structures are no longer

tolerated in private industry. Stepping forward, we

must leave the inflexible organizational structures

and adopt more flattened, progressive structures that

push authority and decisionmaking to lower levels.

We must recognize this as a positive change and begin

developing managerial partnerships with supervisory

and line officers. Through empowerment and job enrichment, we must share the decisionmaking with our

personnel, thereby improving our relationships with

our internal communities and our services to our

external communities.

External communities

There is a long list of external communities with

which we interact. These groups include people who

share strong bonds and histories and others whose

associations are accidental. These may be public, private, or civic organizations. All of these communities

have individual needs and demands, but we must

consider the greater good when allocating resources.

We have all heard demands for greater enforcement

that have been contradicted by complaints when the

increased enforcement struck the “good” citizens who

had complained in the first place. As individuals, we

have different personalities, and our departments often reflect this diversity. Our employees are aware of

our treatment of them and “ordinary” citizens and

often use this as a guide for their behaviors.

Our approach is no longer just crime reduction driven

but citizen driven. When continuous, this approach

creates the need for sound information about the community. The only place to obtain reliable information

about the key shifts in the needs and expectations of

the community is from the citizens and patrol officers

who work most directly with them. Police administrators must understand that respect for citizens and a

sincere enthusiasm and desire to serve are true necessities. The only way we can develop a close relationship with our citizens is to accept them as intelligent,

aware, and capable.

We know we cannot resolve the problems associated

with crime without community support. The theory of

community-oriented policing is based on establishing

a partnership between the police and law-abiding

citizens. We experience varying levels of success.

It frequently seems we are “preaching to the choir”

because the same concerned citizens are always involved. Some of them pledge involvement but never

quite make the commitment and follow through.

Others honestly admit they feel they pay the police

for a service and do not want personal involvement

with law enforcement. Just as police officers exercise

discretion, so do citizens. They may choose not to

report, witness, or testify. However, good policecommunity relations increases the number of involved

citizens.

Media. Our interactions with the media are far reaching and vast. Although they are sometimes difficult,

we must take care not to develop an adversarial relationship. Negative experiences felt by both the media

and the police have caused feelings of distrust and

anger. The media have a responsibility to provide

information to the public, and the people have great

interest in police activities. In their endeavors to earn

the highest ratings in a competitive market, members

of print and electronic media make constant demands

on law enforcement agencies and may exploit citizens’ fear of crime. The fourth estate is very powerful,

and we were all taught as rookies that the pen is

mightier than the sword. We must respect the media’s

power as they must respect our authority and need to

maintain investigative integrity. Media activity is

protected by the First Amendment, and it is our job to

defend their rights and see that they are treated justly.

We must keep our relationships with the media honest

and as open as investigations permit. Negative experiences in both sectors have caused distrust, fear, and

anger. The reporters do their jobs, just as we do ours.

We must not misuse and abuse but, rather, make use

of their services to educate the public on crime trends,

provide safety tips, and seek assistance in obtaining

information to solve crimes. The media can be very

effective in presenting our proper image to the public,

or it can be damning to an extent that public confidence and internal morale are harmed severely.
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Therefore, our relationship with the media must be

cultivated, but not to the point of “back scratching.”

We answer to the media.

Elected officials. A simple answer to the question

“To whom do we answer?” is, “the elected officials.”

Police may answer to a mayor, city manager, council,

commission, or an elected or appointed body. With

civil service status and court rulings, the “political

boss” atmosphere has thinned. We owe loyalty and

service to the elected officials, just as the agency personnel owe us. These elected officials have received a

mandate from the voting public as to the level and

direction of law enforcement required by the community, and they must pass this information on to us. We

rely on these officials for our budgetary needs, and we

enforce the statutes they enact. We answer to the

elected officials.

Victims and other law-abiding citizens. Lawabiding citizens outnumber criminals in all neighborhoods, but sometimes they are not as obvious. These

people are the foundation of society, paying taxes and

leading lives that require little government intervention. They are our supporters and our employers.

Although many view us as the “thin blue line” and

give us almost unconditional support, others judge us

based on their limited police contacts, those of their

friends and neighbors, and the image of police they

receive from news reports, television, and movies.

The degree of trust between citizens and police is a

major factor in determining how much confidence is

placed in the police response to their concerns. Modern society is better organized, more vocal, and less

intimidated by government agents, and police managers must be prepared to address the concerns of the

public in an honest and direct manner.

Birmingham, Alabama, has a strong neighborhood

association, made up of 99 neighborhoods, that elects

officers and meets monthly to discuss local matters.

Beat officers and supervisors attend these meetings

and address concerns pertinent to the department.

The citizens of each neighborhood review all zoning

changes, liquor permits, and other requests for licenses of businesses they feel will impact the quality

of life in their communities, then make recommendations to the city council. Their decisions greatly

influence whether these requests will be granted.

Citizens working with police officers at neighborhood

association meetings and in other community activities help the residents to better understand the officers, just as the officers feel firsthand the climates of

the neighborhoods. This interaction increases the sensitivity of both groups and is beneficial in increasing

the officers’ empathy with the citizens they serve.

This knowledge is particularly important in dealing

with victims. People experiencing the worst events of

their lives rightfully become offended when responding officers seem not to care and to make light of

their problems. We are judged by our reputations, and

reputations are fragile. We answer to all law-abiding

citizens.

Offenders. Offenders and suspects have certain inalienable rights, and we are sworn to uphold those

rights. As police officers, we interact with the criminal element on different levels. We cannot discount

recent technological advances, but it is our knowledge

of criminal behavior and individual offenders that

serves as our greatest weapon and allows us to succeed in our fight. We recognize that even those who

engage in unlawful activities can be victims of crime

and are also our clients. We answer to the offenders.

Corporate citizens. Businesspeople are often the

most demanding of our constituents. The forceful

personalities that have contributed to their success in

the business world often make them difficult to serve.

Businesses typically pay a large share of the tax base

and demand commensurate services. They require

a safe environment to operate. Although there are

almost twice as many people employed in private security as public police, we are often the sole providers

of corporate safety. We owe the same level of service

to all “communities.” We have not developed a model

for measuring the social, psychological, and economic impact of crimes committed against business

entities to those committed against citizens in their

homes. We understand the economic repercussions of

losing businesses to other “safer” jurisdictions, but we

also sympathize with the suffering of all our constituents without regard to their status. We must provide

adequate protection to our corporate citizens and their

employees and customers, but there are not enough

personnel to place an officer on every corner as some

demand. We know this is an unnecessary level of

police involvement, yet we hear constant requests for

this service, and we must be able to explain our personnel allocation. We answer to the corporate

community.
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Other government agencies, including the courts,

corrections, service agencies, and law enforcement

agencies. Police departments do not answer directly

to these other agencies, but they must work cooperatively with them. The effectiveness, efficiency, and

services rendered by each depends, to some degree,

on the other. The concept of community-oriented

policing has shown the need for a greater degree of

cooperation between the police and these agencies.

Programs such as Weed and Seed have been used to

foster this working relationship. However, the relationship works because of mutual respect for each

other.

The relationship between the police and courts is not

only different, it is complex and sometimes difficult.

The police have been and are affected by judicial decisions from the courts. The Miranda and Terry cases

are two cases that affect or dictate how police do their

jobs. The court will issue orders directing the police

to pick up certain person(s) and may hold the police

in contempt if they fail to comply. There was a case

where, as a young officer, Chief Johnson was ordered

by the court to go to a hospital and arrest an older,

feeble gentleman in a wheelchair and deliver him to

jail. Had he been free to exercise discretion, Johnson

would have chosen to leave the man in the hospital.

We answer to other government agencies, especially

the courts.

Overlapping communities

Many people are part of overlapping internal and external communities interacting with law enforcement.

These overlapping affiliations are based on social

class, gender, ethnic status, sexual preference, and

membership in civic and political groups. None of

these are our “bosses,” but they all have an impact on

the way we do our jobs.

Depending on our backgrounds and the traditions

and cultures in which we work, some groups will have

more influence than others. Religious institutions and

leaders hold more sway with the Southern and African-American cultures. Ethnic communities influence

their local governments and have more of an impact

on local police departments as hiring practices continue to reflect more closely the diverse communities

served. (This is the personal opinion of the authors

based on the church’s role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.) Police departments have traditionally been against homosexuals, but this position has

softened. Civic groups serve a multitude of purposes,

but most are supportive of law enforcement. Citizens

involved in civic groups are generally involved in

other aspects of the local community, and, recognizing this, police officers are responsive to their needs.

Even in times of political reform, human nature

dictates that those in powerful positions—whether

because of their economic status, education, or political position—have a greater influence on law enforcement than we would like to admit. We surely answer

to all of these overlapping communities.

Summary

Most important, we answer to ourselves. We must

answer to the “man in the mirror.” How we answer is

framed by all of our past experiences, knowledge, and

beliefs. Former Chicago Police Chief O.W. Wilson

said that each police administrator must be prepared

to resign rather than compromise on a serious ethical

issue. It is incumbent on us to be good stewards and

serve those who serve us. We can never be all things

to all people, but we have achieved positions of authority and responsibility, and we have a duty to act

with courage and honor. As we have seen, police

executives recognize that their departments must be

more accessible to the communities. We are trying to

establish our legitimacy and manage our accountability by fostering closer relationships and tearing down

the barriers that have isolated us from our internal and

external communities. We must lift the veil of the

police mystique and open our departments to public

and internal scrutiny. We must step out in Faith.

References

Bouza, Anthony V. The Police Mystique. New York:

Plenum Press, 1990.

Couper, David C., and Sabine Lobitz. Quality Policing: The Madison Experience. Washington, DC:

Police Executive Research Forum, 1991.

Critchley, T.A. A History of Police in England and

Wales, 1990–1996. London, England: Constable,

1967.

Dunham, Roger G., and Geoffrey Alpert. Critical

Issues in Policing. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland

Press, Inc., 1989.
149

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 Johnnie Johnson, Robert Berry, Juanita Eaton, Robert Ford, and Dennis E. Nowicki

Eck, John E., and William Spelman. Problem Solving:

Problem Oriented Policing in Newport News. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, 1987.

Etzioni, Amitai. The Spirit of Community: Rights,

Responsibilities, and the Communitarian Agenda.

New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1993.

Fesler, James W., and Donald F. Kettl. The Politics of

the Administrative Process. Chatham, New Jersey:

Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1991.

Goldstein, Herman. Problem-Oriented Policing.

New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990.

International City Management Association. Local

Government Police Management. Washington, DC:

International City Management Association, 1991.

Lipsky, Michael. Street Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas

of the Individual in Public Services. New York:

Russell Sage Foundation, 1980.

Luthans, Fred. Contemporary Readings in Organizational Behavior. St. Louis: McGraw-Hill Book

Company, 1972.

Mastrofski, Stephen D. “Community Policing as

Reform: A Cautionary Tale.” In Community Policing:

Rhetoric or Reality?, ed. Jack R. Green and Stephen

D. Mastrofski. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1988.

Mayhall, Pamela D., Thomas Barker, and Ronald D.

Hunter. Police-Community Relations and the Administration of Justice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice

Hall, 1995.

Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organization. Newbury

Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1986.

Murphy, Patrick V., and Thomas Plate. Commissioner:

A View From the Top of American Law Enforcement.

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977.

Skolnick, Jerome H., and David H. Bayley. Community Policing: Issues and Practices Around the World.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice,

National Institute of Justice, 1988.

Skolnick, Jerome H., and David H. Bayley. The New

Blue Line. New York: The Free Press, 1986.

Sparrow, Malcolm K., Mark Moore, and David M.

Kennedy. Beyond 911. Scranton, PA: Harper-Collins,

1990.

Tofoya, William L. “The Future of Policing.” FBI Law

Enforcement Bulletin (January 1990).

Wadman, Robert C., and Robert K. Olson. Community

Wellness: A New Theory of Policing. Washington, DC:

Police Executive Research Forum, 1990.
151

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The Police as an Agency of Municipal

Government: Implications for

Measuring Police Effectiveness

This view of policing is also perfectly reflected in

the measures conventionally used to evaluate police

performance:

● The focus on levels of reported crime reflects the

view that the most important result the police seek

is reduced criminal victimization.

● The focus on numbers of arrests reflects the view

that the most important thing the police can do to

accomplish the goal of reducing crime is to arrest

offenders to produce deterrence, incapacitation,

and whatever opportunity for rehabilitation exists.

● The focus on response times, clearance rates, and

numbers of sworn officers reflects (more or less

precisely) our understanding about the ways in

which the police can produce arrests (e.g., through

rapid response, retrospective investigation, and—

less perfectly—police presence).

What citizens expect is what police departments measure; what gets measured, in turn, profoundly shapes

what the police do.

The problem is that this conception of what the police

should do differs from what they actually do and what

they could do to enrich the quality of urban life.4

 By

viewing the police as the first step in criminal justice

processing, we miss the important role that private

institutions—such as families, community organizations, churches, and businesses—play in preventing,

identifying, and responding to criminal conduct and

the role that the police might play in supporting these

efforts. Similarly, by focusing exclusively on reducing

serious crime, we miss the important role that the

police play in managing disorder in public spaces,

reducing fear, controlling traffic and crowds, and

providing various emergency services. By focusing

The changing paradigm of

policing: from “first step in

the criminal justice system”

to “agency of municipal

government”

Since the publication of The Challenge of Crime in

a Free Society: Report of the President’s Crime

Commission, citizens, practitioners, and scholars have

viewed police, prosecutors, courts, and correctional

agencies as constituent parts of a criminal justice

system.1

 What joins these separately administered

agencies in a “system” is that their operations are

linked in a specific process: the handling of criminal

cases. The process begins with the allegation of a

criminal offense, proceeds through an investigation to

the arrest of suspects, progresses to the formal charging and prosecution of those arrested, and ultimately

concludes with the adjudication and disposition of

the cases. Viewed from this vantage point, the police

play an obvious and important role: They begin the

process of criminal justice adjudication by initiating

cases with an arrest and a charge.2

This view of the police as the crucial first step in

criminal justice system processing meshes seamlessly

with a particular view of the overall role of the police

in society: the “professional law enforcement model”

of policing.3

 In this conception, the fundamental

goal of the police is to reduce crime by enforcing

the criminal law. They do so largely by arresting (or

threatening to arrest) criminal offenders. To create the

threat of arrest and actually produce arrests, they rely

on three key operations: (1) patrolling public spaces,

(2) responding to calls from citizens, and (3) investigating crimes.

Mark H. Moore and Margaret Poethig
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attention on arrests, clearance rates, and the speed

of response to calls for service, we ignore the important contribution that other kinds of police problemsolving efforts can make to prevent crime, reduce fear,

and improve the quality of community life. Thus, our

limited expectations of the police, and our limited

methods of measuring their performance, result in our

failure to recognize the important contributions that

police make to the quality of urban life beyond these

boundaries and to manage police departments to

achieve these valuable results.5

The purposes of this paper are essentially four:

● To establish a justification for viewing the police

differently, as an “agency of municipal government” rather than as the “first step in the criminal

justice system.”

● To imagine (from this different vantage point) the

varied contributions the police could and do make

to the overall performance of municipal government and the quality of urban life beyond reduction

of crime and enforcement of the criminal law.

● To develop ideas about how these contributions

outside the boundaries of crime control, law enforcement, and criminal justice processing could

be “recognized” (in an accounting sense) through

measurement systems that could accurately

capture the full public value contributed by police

departments to the quality of life in their cities.

● To look at an example of a police organization

that appears to be doing in practice what we

recommend in theory.

The police as an agency of

municipal government

Consider first why it might be appropriate to view the

police as an agency of municipal government rather

than only an element of the criminal justice system.

The most obvious and important reason is that municipal government supplies the resources the police

need to do their work. The resources are of two

kinds.6

 One resource is the money the police receive

to pay salaries, provide for future pensions, and purchase the guns and computers they need to do their

work. That money is raised through local tax levies

and appropriated to the police through the processes

of local government.7

The other resource that police rely on is less tangible:

the legal authority to oblige citizens to behave in ways

that allow them to live together with some degree of

security and order. As the Philadelphia Police Study

Task Force explained:

The police are entrusted with important

public resources. The most obvious is

money. . . . Far more important, the

public grants the police another

resource—the use of force and authority. These are deployed when a citizen

is arrested or handcuffed, when an officer fires his weapon at a citizen, and

when an officer claims exclusive use of

the streets with his siren.8

The police need authority not only to arrest people for

serious crimes such as robbery, rape, and murder but

also to require citizens to refrain from driving while

drinking, to park in places that do not interfere with

traffic flow, and to desist from carrying guns in public

spaces without a license. They also can require citizens demonstrating against government not to inflict

too many costs on other citizens who want to use

public spaces for their own purposes.

Much of the authority the police need to do their job

comes from sources other than local government.

The criminal laws they are charged with enforcing are

passed, for example, at the State level or have been

developed from the common law. Many of the powers

they are granted to enforce the laws (such as the

power to stop and search) are granted and conditioned

by the U.S. Constitution. But some of the laws they

enforce, and some of the powers they are granted to

achieve this objective, are created at local levels.

Thus, local police are charged with enforcing many

municipal ordinances against such acts as spitting,

disorderly conduct, or taverns being too loud and open

too late.9

 Many policies regulating police behavior in

such areas as use of deadly force or high-speed chases

also are established locally.10

These observations seem important for this simple

reason: If local government provides the money and

(at least some of) the authority for the police to do

their work, then it seems reasonable to conclude that

local government “owns” the police. If local government owns the police, it seems reasonable to imagine

that local government could direct the police toward

whatever valuable purposes it has in mind.
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Mark H. Moore and Margaret Poethig

A second reason for viewing the police as an agency

of municipal government is closely related to (and

partially qualifies) the first: If local government provides the resources to municipal police departments,

then it seems plausible to assume that the police are

accountable, in the first instance, to local government.

Of course, the police also are accountable to “the rule

of law.” Indeed, that commitment is so strong that it

would morally and legally oblige the police to resist

or challenge local political requests to take “illegal”

or “unfair” action against citizens. If they did not

resist these demands, the police might well become

vulnerable to prosecution for political corruption or

civil rights violations. Moreover, due to their functional dependency on their fellow agencies in the

criminal justice system, the police are at least powerfully influenced by the expectations of prosecutors,

courts, and other State and Federal enforcement agencies, if not directly accountable to them. Thus, the

elected officials of municipal government are not the

only ones who can hold the police accountable or

expect to influence them. Nevertheless, since local

government supports the police with local tax levies

and local ordinances grant them (conditional) powers,

then arguably local government should be able to use

the police for whatever (lawful) purposes it chooses.

A third reason is that the police both can and do take

actions that affect many aspects of community life

beyond controlling serious crime.11 For example,

police reduce signs of disorder that undermine a

sense of security, regulate festering disputes that if

left unattended might escalate into crimes, and protect

the rights of individuals who might easily become

the targets of racial prejudice. In doing so, the police

enhance security and liberty and enrich the overall

quality of life. Moreover, they accomplish both crime

control and other valuable purposes through means

other than making arrests.12 In short, the police have

capabilities that go beyond their ability to threaten

and make arrests; further, these capabilities turn out

to be valuable for more purposes than simply reducing crimes. If we conceive of the police as nothing

more than “the first step in the criminal justice system,” then we might easily miss the contributions

that they make “outside the box” of crime control, law

enforcement, and arresting people. On the other hand,

if we conceive of the police as an agency of municipal

government that shares with other agencies the broad

responsibility for strengthening the quality of urban

life, then we are in a better position to notice that the

police contribute much more to those goals than is

captured by the simple idea of reducing crime. We

also notice that the police have capabilities that go

far beyond their ability to make arrests and that these

capabilities are valuable to the enterprise of city

government. In short, the police are a more valuable

asset when viewed from the vantage point of trying to

strengthen urban life than they are when viewed from

the narrower perspective of reducing crime through

making arrests.

The reason that this last point is both important and

difficult to grasp has to do with the way that we

think about organizations in the public sector.13 In the

public sector, an organization typically is viewed as

an efficient machine for achieving a set of narrowly

defined purposes set out in the organization’s authorizing legislation. In essence, in the public sector,

management begins with a specific set of objectives

and then builds an organization designed to achieve

them as efficiently and effectively as possible. In that

way, society as a whole maintains effective control

over public-sector organizations. If an organization

spends money or exerts authority outside the boundaries of its authorization or for purposes that were

not included in its initial mission, it is guilty of either

“fraud, waste, or abuse” (in the case of misuse of

funds) or “abuse of authority” and “malfeasance”

(in the case of improper use of authority).

Three difficulties arise from this way of thinking,

however. One is that, in building an organization to

meet a specific set of objectives, we sometimes build

a set of capabilities that are valuable not only for the

specified purpose but for other purposes as well.

Thus, for example, a library can be useful in providing afterschool programs to latchkey children as well

as in providing library services to adults;14 a registry

of motor vehicles can be valuable in collecting unpaid

parking tickets for local government as well as in

distributing licenses and registrations;15 and the U.S.

military can contribute to reducing the supply of illicit

drugs reaching U.S. cities as well as providing for

the defense of the Nation.16 The question facing the

public and the managers of these organizations, then,

is whether the organizations ought to be used for

these other purposes as well as for the purposes for

which they were originally established. If they have

the capabilities, why not use them for valuable

purposes?
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A second difficulty is that, because organizational

leaders in the public sector are supposed to think

of themselves as operating machines that have been

designed to achieve specific purposes in the most

efficient way, they often think that the specific things

they now do represent the best way to accomplish

their mission. After all, if their specific, current activities were not the most efficient means for accomplishing their mission, they would be guilty of fraud,

waste, and abuse and undermining their own claims of

professional competence. Since that is too horrible to

contemplate, it must be true both that the current mission is the right one and that the specific means they

have developed to achieve the mission are the only

ways to achieve it.

A third problem is that, while the world often changes

around public organizations, the changes are not

always incorporated into a redefinition of their mandates. Sometimes the piece of the world that changes

is the “task environment.” Certainly that happened to

the police when the crack epidemic hit America’s

cities. When street drug markets, violent youths, and

child abuse and neglect all challenged police departments’ enforcement methods, the police were forced

to shift the balance of their efforts and develop new

methods to meet the challenges. At other times, the

world around public organizations changes through

the development of new operational procedures that

are considered more effective than the old or the

development of new technologies. For example, the

police have changed their approaches to domestic

violence17 and begun to explore “problem solving” as

an alternative to “rapid response.”18 Still other times,

citizens’ aspirations for the police, and how they

would like to use the police, change. For example,

many citizens want the police to shift to a strategy of

“community policing,” in which the police are more

responsive to the needs of particular neighborhoods

and deploy themselves in ways that make them more

accessible to and familiar with local communities.

At some level of abstraction, of course, the overall

mission of the police never changes.19 It continues to

be “to serve and to protect,” “to ensure law and order,”

and “to enforce the law fully and fairly.” But within

the spaces created by these broad concepts, many significantly different ideas—of what the police do each

day, what they are rewarded for, and how their resources are allocated—exist. There may be no particular reason for the current constellation of activities

and purposes to be seen as the only ones that are

either consistent with these broad concepts or capable

of achieving these lofty ends. Thus, there may be

more room for innovation of all kinds than is commonly assumed by either the police or those who

oversee them.

The point of these observations is that it is too easy

for both the police and those who oversee them to

imagine that they are already living in the best of all

possible worlds—one in which the purposes of the

police (at both abstract and concrete levels) are the

right ones, and the means being relied upon (both

organizationwide and in response to particular kinds

of problems) are the most efficient and effective. The

reality, however, may be different. There may be valuable purposes to which the police can contribute that

are not recognized or adequately emphasized in the

current understanding of the police mission. There

also may be valuable new means that could be

adopted to achieve either old or new goals. Such a

situation could have occurred simply because the

world around police departments changed. Thus, it

might be important for them to change their operations (at a programmatic or strategic level); yet, they

are held back by a rigid conception of their mission

and the most efficient means for achieving their goals.

The problems of adapting and using organizations are

less severe in the private sector because private-sector

supervisors and managers think about their organizations differently from those in the public sector.

Instead of thinking about an organization as an intricate machine that has been engineered to achieve a

specific, well-defined purpose as efficiently and

effectively as possible, private-sector supervisors and

managers think of it as an asset whose value is contained in its “distinctive competencies”; that is, in the

things the organization knows how to do well. Typically, their conception of distinctive competence is

relatively abstract. For example, they might think of

a police organization as one that comprises a large

number of well-trained, highly motivated, and

resourceful people—linked to citizens through telephones and radios, and able to get to most places in a

city quickly and to form into different-sized operational groups—who are carrying out the authority of

the State. What they ask themselves, then, about such

an organization is not whether it is achieving a narrow

purpose efficiently and effectively; instead, they ask:

What valuable things could I produce with this
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Mark H. Moore and Margaret Poethig

organization? If one thinks about policing in this way,

one sees a remarkably different set of possibilities

than if one thinks: (1) that the mission of the police

is to control crime; (2) that the best way to do that is

to make arrests; and (3) that the best way to make

arrests is through (a) patrol, (b) rapid response, and

(c) retrospective investigation. Thinking about the

police as an agency of municipal government facilitates and to some degree justifies this fundamental

paradigm shift toward the private-sector model.

How the police contribute to

the quality of urban life and

improve the performance of

municipal government

Given that it is at least plausibly appropriate and

useful to think of the police as an agency of municipal

government, what other roles could the police play?

What additional responsibilities might they assume?

What activities would support these different responsibilities? These questions can be analyzed in three

different categories:

● How, in the context of a wider conception of the

police mission that focuses on enhancing the overall quality of life in a city, police operations can

contribute directly to these broader goals.

● How, in either the old or new vision of the police

mission, the police can contribute to more effective

operations of other agencies of municipal

government or the government as a whole.

● How the police, in their new and expanded

mission, might contribute to the development and

operation of private institutions such as families,

communities, and commerce that cities need to

succeed.

Police roles in supporting the

quality of urban life

Pioneering work on the roles of the police was done

by Herman Goldstein several years after the President’s Crime Commission issued its report.20 It is

somewhat ironic that at precisely the time society was

getting the benefit of Goldstein’s accurate and broad

vision of what the police do and what they contribute

to community life, the Commission was defining a

relatively narrow vision of policing. In Policing a Free

Society, Goldstein succinctly listed the functions of

the police:

● To prevent and control conduct widely recognized

as threatening to life and property (serious crime).

● To aid individuals who are in danger of physical

harm, such as the victim of a criminal attack.

● To protect constitutional guarantees such as the

right of free speech and assembly.

● To facilitate the movement of people and vehicles.

● To assist those who cannot care for themselves:

the intoxicated, the addicted, the mentally ill, the

physically disabled, the old, and the young.

● To resolve conflict, whether between individuals,

groups of individuals, or individuals and their

government.

● To identify problems that have the potential to

become more serious problems for the individual

citizen, the police, or the government.

● To create and maintain a feeling of security in the

community.21

This was a much broader conception of the police role

than the one endorsed by citizens, realized in police

operations, or reliably captured through the measurement systems then (and now) being used to measure

police performance. More recently, scholars have focused attention on three broad purposes that the police

could (and often do) serve that are extremely valuable

to communities, but that nonetheless go unrecognized,

unsupported, and unmeasured.

Crime prevention. One such purpose is to prevent

as well as react to crime. A traditionalist could argue

that a great deal of crime is prevented by reacting

(and threatening to react) quickly and aggressively to

criminal offending. Such actions could deter crime or,

by generating arrests and successful prosecutions,

allow for the incapacitation and/or rehabilitation of

offenders. These mechanisms would prevent future

crimes from being committed. Yet, crime prevention

emphasizes that there may be other things the police

could do to keep offenses from being committed in

the first place and if there are such activities, that they

would be valuable to undertake.
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Initial thoughts about crime prevention tend to focus

on what might be considered “primary prevention”:

efforts directed toward the broad social conditions

that seem to spawn both criminal offenders and

crimes.22 These may be further divided into efforts

designed to either: (1) ensure the healthy development

of children to reduce the likelihood that they will be

inclined to commit crimes, or (2) promote the social

and economic development of poor communities to

create environments that produce not only fewer

criminals but also fewer opportunities and occasions

for committing crime. Such work often seems like

“social” or “community development” work, which is

well beyond the capacities and responsibilities of the

police.

Many tend to agree with this position. Yet, the police

may be able to make important contributions to even

these broad prevention objectives. For example, concern for the healthy development of children has long

been expressed through police activities. In the past,

this was manifested through the (largely, but not

entirely) volunteer efforts associated with Police Athletic Leagues.23 More recently, it has been expressed

in the enthusiasm for the D.A.R.E.® program.24 Even

more important contributions to the healthy development of children may be made by police operations

that do not have the development of children as a

specific objective. For example, by enforcing laws

against domestic violence and child abuse and neglect, by helping to keep routes to schools free from

drug dealing, and by reducing the power and stature

of gangs, the police may contribute to establishing

conditions within which children have a better chance

of navigating the difficult course to responsible

citizenship.25

Moreover, the police also may contribute to community social and economic development by making

themselves available for partnerships with communities that want to develop themselves. Police can be

particularly valuable by dramatically improving the

level of security in these neighborhoods so that hope

is kindled and local residents have reasons for making

investments in themselves, their children, and their

property.26

Still, many of the most valuable contributions the

police can make to crime prevention are the results of

activities that often are considered more superficial

than these primary preventive efforts. For instance,

police engage in a wide variety of efforts focused

on controlling the situational factors that seem to

contribute to crime. Ron Clarke has both developed

the theory of “situational crime prevention” and presented many examples of its success.27 His colleague,

Marcus Felson, has demonstrated the role that

“routine activities” play in shaping the observed patterns of crime.28 Presumably, if the routine activities

that contribute to crime could be disrupted, some

crime could be prevented. Lawrence Sherman has

added to these ideas both by investigating the methods

that would be most effective in preventing future domestic violence and by showing the possibilities of

identifying and responding to “hot spots” and reducing the incidence of gun possession and carrying.29

William Bratton, guided by a theory developed by

James Q. Wilson and George Kelling,30 has shown

that it is possible to reduce serious criminal offending

by focusing on less serious criminal offenses.31 All

this suggests that controlling serious crime through

means other than arrest is a plausible and important

police activity.

Fear reduction and order maintenance. In addition

to crime prevention, scholars have focused on the

police capacity to reduce fear and enhance security.

This line of work began with two findings: (1) levels

of fear seem to be curiously independent of the objective risks of criminal victimization and are influenced

more by signs of disorder than by changes in the real

risks of criminal victimization;32 and (2) some police

activities, such as foot patrol, reduce fear but not

necessarily victimization.33

These findings create an interesting strategic problem

for police leaders and those who oversee their operations: Should they expend resources to reduce fear

even if the actions they take leave actual victimization

rates unchanged? On one hand, such efforts may seem

insubstantial—a cheap public relations effort that

produces a subjective rather than a real effect. Even

worse, such actions might tempt citizens to behave in

ways that would expose them to real criminal victimization. On the other hand, promoting security in the

general population clearly is a police responsibility,

and at least some portion of the fear that citizens

experience is exaggerated—for example, they react

more to fear of criminal attack than to other risks in

their lives, such as the risk of traffic accidents.34

Although the issue is still being debated, the argument

for police acceptance of responsibility for reducing

fear is growing stronger. This movement is partly a
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Mark H. Moore and Margaret Poethig

recognition that fear is an important and costly problem in its own right. However, citizens’ reactions

when they are afraid also exacerbate the real crime

problem.35 When they abandon the streets or arm

themselves, the streets may become more dangerous.

Thus, managing citizens’ responses to fear may make

an important contribution to enhancing security and

controlling crime.

Emergencies and calls for service. Finally, partly

because the police department is the only agency

that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and makes

house calls, police will continue to be the “first responders” to a wide variety of emergencies. These

emergencies can be medical (although ambulance

services increasingly take care of these) or they can

be social, such as deranged people threatening themselves or others, homeless children found wandering

the streets with no parents to care for them, or drunks

at risk of freezing to death after falling asleep on a

park bench.

At various times, it has been declared that such problems should be viewed as social problems rather than

law enforcement problems and that social work agencies, rather than the police, should respond to them.

Generally, the police would not disagree. This work is

dangerous, dirty, and sometimes heartbreaking. The

police would be happy to be rid of it.

The difficulty, however, is that emergencies happen

on the streets late at night. Even though social work

agencies have tried to build up their emergency response capabilities, many of their resources still are

expended on people who work in offices from 9 a.m.

to 5 p.m. rather than on the streets at night. As a result,

much of this work falls into the hands of the police.

In addition to handling emergencies, the police must

immediately be available and accessible to citizens for

rapid responses to serious crime calls. Therefore, they

also are available for a wide variety of other less urgent and perhaps less important purposes. It has been

estimated that less than 5 percent of calls coming into

911 systems of city police departments are for serious

crimes that could be interrupted by a rapid response.36

The vast majority of calls are for crimes that were

committed several hours earlier and for problems that

citizens feel are urgent or important but do not necessarily involve crimes. Many citizens want someone to

hold their hands, listen to their stories, mediate their

minor disputes, help them deal with troublesome

friends and associates, and find a way to get into their

locked apartments and cars.

When one views the police primarily as a component

of the criminal justice system—focused on arresting

people for serious crimes and starting the process of

sending them off to prison—such calls seem like an

enormous waste of police resources. Thus, the task

becomes minimizing the occurrence of nuisance calls

and finding ways to make the minimum response.

When one views the police as an agency of municipal

government—with responsibilities for preventing

crime and reducing fear as well as for arresting criminal offenders and achieving other purposes that local

government considers important—the status of nuisance calls changes. Such calls may represent real

opportunities for crime prevention. For example, loud

noise in an apartment may be a prelude to a domestic

homicide; if reports of the noise are heeded, a preventive intervention could occur. Similarly, reports of

gangs of rowdy youths could foreshadow serious gang

violence. Courteous responses to these calls could

build relationships with individuals in the community

that would increase the likelihood that they would

trust the police enough to call when serious offenses

occur and serious offenders threaten them.

These are reasons to take nuisance calls seriously,

even if the police are focused only on crime control

and crime prevention. So if we think about the more

general purposes of local government and recall that

the police are among the most visible representatives

of it, then we might conclude that the police should

take citizens’ nuisance calls seriously simply because

the police are the most frequently encountered representatives of local government. Just as citizens form

their general views about State government through

their experiences with the Department of Motor Vehicles, they may form their views about local government through the activities of the police. If the police

are responsive, courteous, and helpful, citizens will

have a favorable view of government in general. If

the police are indifferent or rude and dismiss their

concerns, citizens will form the opposite view. They

might conclude not only that less government is better

than more but that private security is better than public policing, which has important consequences for

the quality of our collective lives.37
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So far, we have observed that if the police rightly

understand their own mission and the operations that

contribute to it, they will make contributions to the

quality of urban life that are far broader than reacting

to crime with arrests. The importance of their contributions becomes even more evident when we think

about the role they play in supporting the operations

of other government agencies and the work of private

institutions such as families, communities, and

commercial enterprises.

Police roles in supporting other

government agencies

In addition to the police, many other government

agencies and their workers contribute to the quality

of urban life: for example, garbage collectors,

firefighters, teachers, recreation staff, and social

workers. The police contribute to overall government

effectiveness and the quality of urban life by making

the world a bit safer for these people to do their work

and by creating an environment in which their efforts

can be more efficacious and last longer than they

would without the police.

In the past, we took it for granted that these workers

would be safe and their contributions could endure;

firefighters and social workers would be willing to

visit all areas of the city, schools would be violence

free, and playgrounds would deteriorate only from

hard use rather than from vandalism. Now it seems

that we have to work harder to ensure the conditions

that we used to take for granted. The police play an

important role in helping to create the conditions

under which these agencies can be effective.

Much of the work the police need to do to support the

work of these organizations is simply more of what

was described above: more effective responses to serious crime, more imaginative efforts to prevent crime

by working on situational factors, more attention to

the conditions that produce fear, and greater willingness to respond to calls for emergency social services

of various kinds and deliver quality services to citizens. Insofar as the police do this, they will make

contributions to the performance of other city

agencies.

Another part of police work is supporting other

agencies’ work without interfering with it. This is

particularly important in dealing with school security,

but it might also be important in dealing with child

protective services and recreational activities. In

all these cases, the “face” of government should be a

primarily civil face: students should see the teacher,

desperate parents should see the social worker, young

athletes should see the coach; they should not need

to see the police. Yet, it might be important to both

city workers and their clients to have a sense of the

police being there in the background—to guarantee

their security and remind them of their responsibilities. Constructing a presence that is reassuring and

authoritative probably requires extensive discussions

between the police and the other agencies. It is not

easy to learn how to “buttress” and “backstop” without entirely usurping the function of another agency;

yet, supporting without taking over is required when

the police operate as an agency of municipal

government.

Another important role of the police as an agency

of local government is helping the government as a

whole identify and respond to problems. Because the

police are on the streets and in close touch with citizens, they are in a position to identify some of the

key problems facing a local community and have a

sense of their importance to the community. The

Washington, D.C., Police Department has sought to

institutionalize and exploit this capability by developing a form that the police fill out when they see a

neighborhood problem that is threatening the quality

of life in a local area. The completed form is forwarded to the relevant city department for action,

and a copy is sent to the Mayor’s Office of Operations.38 This system takes advantage of the police as

problem finders and creates the organizational conditions across the agencies of government that allow

them to work collaboratively to solve local problems.

Baltimore County, Maryland, saw the potential of a

county-based “problem-solving government” after the

police became involved in problem-solving activities

that went beyond the usual police interests in preventing crime and reducing fear.39 Once other agencies

were brought into the system, the police could do a

little less of the organization of problem-solving

initiatives and more problem identification and

assessment. Wesley Skogan has reported on the

significance of this kind of work for the success of

community policing in Chicago.40

For the police to become effective problem solvers or

problem identifiers, some kind of capacity must be

created for the central government to mobilize other
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government agencies in response to problems identified by the police as needing attention. Otherwise, the

problem-solving efforts eventually fall flat. Thus, an

effective local government is critical to the success of

problem-solving policing, as well as the other way

around.

Police roles in supporting private

institutions

Finally, the police make important contributions to

the quality of life and local governance by supporting

the work of private institutions as well as other public

agencies. This is crucial for achieving some of the primary preventive effects described above. For example,

when the police act to prevent domestic violence and

the abuse and neglect of children, they support a key

private institution in its important function of raising

children. When the police reduce burglaries, they give

families a reason to invest and save. When they reduce fear, they create the conditions under which

local merchants can succeed economically.41

As in the case of the support the police can give to

public institutions, much of the success of the police

in supporting private institutions may depend on

learning how to work effectively with them, not only

in general but on a case-by-case basis. The police

capacity to help develop and sustain local community

organizations may be particularly important.42 The

police have an advantage in their efforts to support

community organization development because their

line of work is of intense interest to most citizens.

Controlling crime and enhancing security is often

one of the best organizing issues for communities.

The police also have an advantage because they have

access to resources—including people, vehicles, and

an authoritative and reassuring presence—citizens

need to accomplish their goals. With these capabilities, the police often are in a strong position to help

struggling communities build “social capital” in the

form of explicit understandings about the responsibilities and commitments citizens have to one another.43

In this respect, the police can play an important role

in accomplishing a purpose that U.S. Attorney

General Janet Reno seems to have constantly in

mind: “reweaving the fabric of community.”44

A case example: the

Charlotte-Mecklenburg

Police Department

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, Police

Department demonstrates an understanding of what

the role of the police as an agency of municipal government should be. In Charlotte, both the police and

city government as a whole recognize that what the

police do not only affects crime but also contributes

to the economic vitality and overall quality of life

in the city’s neighborhoods. The police and other

agencies are convinced of the connection between

environmental decay and crime—and find in this

connection further motive for pooling resources in

the planning and implementation of problem-solving

strategies at all levels across all city agencies. This is

the philosophy of the 1990s in Charlotte.

To implement this philosophy, municipal government

changed its structure. In 1993, the municipal government streamlined 29 departments into 9 “key businesses” and 4 “support businesses.” The consolidation

of the city and county police departments coincided

with this reorganization.45 In addition to reducing

costs, the reorganization was intended to enable a

more customer-focused delivery of services to both

individual citizens and neighborhood groups in the

Charlotte area.

Charlotte also has adopted an ambitious neighborhood

revitalization plan. In 1990, a group of influential

leaders from business and government toured the city

and found, just beyond the robust downtown center

(called Uptown), neighborhoods in serious decay.

In response, the city adopted the City Within A City

(CWAC) initiative. CWAC is composed of 73 neighborhoods within a 4-mile radius around Uptown.

Within CWAC, selected neighborhoods are targeted

by local government for integrated service delivery

and neighborhood capacity building.46 In this reorganization for neighborhood improvement, the police

play a critical role.
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An agency of municipal government

in action

How does the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department realize its self-concept as an agency of municipal government in its day-to-day operations? It starts

at the top of the organization. Shortly after the municipal reorganization, city managers sought new

leadership for the police agency that could fit within

their program. In 1994, they hired Dennis Nowicki

to serve as agency head. Since Chief Nowicki’s

appointment, the police department has pushed forward with Charlotte’s Community/Problem-Oriented

Policing (CPOP) strategy and worked closely with

the Neighborhood Development Key Business47 and

other city agencies to ensure a coordinated approach

to solving problems of economic vitality and safety in

Charlotte’s distressed neighborhoods.

Initially, Chief Nowicki found himself in charge of

an agency that perceived itself, and was perceived by

others, as existing outside of the municipal government structure. Rarely, if ever, had the police chief

participated in the twice-a-month executive meetings

between the city manager and the heads of the city

departments. Early on, Nowicki made clear his

willingness and desire to be included in municipal

decisionmaking processes. As one manager in city

government observed:

Chief Nowicki clearly sees himself as

an agent of city government. He articulates an expansive definition of what

police can do for neighborhoods. He

understands the links between economic conditions and crime. And he

has been an advocate in City Council of

investment in nonpolice resources that

impact safety and community vitality.

That’s an unusual position for a police

chief to take in this zero-sum game of

resource allocation—and in the current

political dynamic around the issue of

police resources.48

Under Nowicki, members of the police department

are realizing the advantages of participating in the

city’s team-based approach to neighborhood revitalization. Consider, for example, Officer Michelle

Preston, a community coordinator in the Baker One

district. Officer Preston is a member of one of the

city’s four experimental Code Enforcement Teams.

(Each of the four teams is assigned to one CWAC

neighborhood.) The Code Enforcement Teams include

city housing and litter code inspectors, job training

and community empowerment field workers, and inspectors from the county’s zoning and social services

departments. Officer Preston’s team includes a representative from a nonprofit mental health agency and

three community residents. Working with the combined resources of this team, Officer Preston is able to

quickly and easily bring the enforcement resources of

the city to bear on the problems on her beat.

Officer Preston’s Code Enforcement Team is targeting

Grier Heights, a neighborhood in need of better

housing and programs and strategies to address drug

abuse and teen pregnancy. After a child fell through

the floor of a house into the kitchen below, the team

got the owners of the housing complex—dubbed

“the hole” by officers—to agree to an inspection of all

vacated units before new tenants move in. The team

also hopes to push through a change in the city’s litter

ordinance that would require property owners to trim

trees and clear up the brush in empty lots, which are

frequently used as dumping grounds and also pose a

safety hazard for police and residents. On her own,

Officer Preston sought support from the Alcohol

Beverage Control Board to revoke the liquor license

of a neighborhood store that had been the source of

numerous nuisance complaints.

The Code Enforcement Teams are clearly an effective

way to clean up neighborhoods. They facilitate relationships and communication among agency workers

(thereby enhancing accountability) and enable coordination of activities. Since only a few neighborhoods

at a time can receive the benefit of these Code

Enforcement Teams, perhaps their most important

contribution is the heightened awareness they

engender about the connection between the physical

conditions in a neighborhood and crime. The police,

in addressing chronic crime problems in other neighborhoods, are exhibiting higher levels of attentiveness

to visible signs of neighborhood disorder and a

willingness to act as the catalyst for a concerted

municipal cleanup strategy.

Using measurement systems to guide

operations and recognize their value

To maximize efficiency in resource allocation and

service delivery, more than structural changes and

interpersonal teamwork are required. Measurement
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systems that can support analysis and decision

making and record the contributions of police operations also are key. In Charlotte, several tools and

systems have recently been developed to support the

government’s coordinated neighborhood revitalization

strategy. The Quality of Life Index serves as a tool

to measure neighborhood “wellness” and guide the

allocation of resources. A citywide problem-tracking

system ensures that no complaint gets lost in the maze

of city agencies and that city resources are not wasted

through lack of planning and analysis. A third system

developed by the police department helps the police

identify the physical conditions that foster crime.

Each of these tools also contributes to the conception

and functioning of the police as an agency of

municipal government.

The Quality of Life Index. A few years into the

CWAC initiative, city leaders began to ask about the

impact of the resources being poured into targeted

neighborhoods. Were the neighborhoods becoming

better places to live? The city contracted with the

Urban Institute of the University of North Carolina

at Charlotte (UNCC), the university’s primary public

service outreach arm, to develop an index to measure

neighborhood wellness. They wanted the index to

serve as a performance assessment tool for the team

of city agencies involved in neighborhood revitalization and as a diagnostic tool to help the team determine where the city’s resources were most needed.

With input from all the key city and county agencies,

UNCC created the Quality of Life Index, which

provides indicators of a neighborhood’s stability

and sustainability along four dimensions—social,

economic, physical, and crime. The index is based

on measures of the health of a neighborhood’s population; performance of youths in school; cultural and

recreational opportunities; economic growth and opportunities; condition of the infrastructure; housing

quality; accessibility to parks, commerce, and transportation; environmental quality; levels of crime; and

other variables. Because U.S. census data are soon

outdated, the developers of the index collected most

of the data from city, county, and State agencies and

selected private organizations.

The crime dimension includes data on juvenile delinquency, violent crime, and property crime. Each

variable is a comparison between the rate of crime in

the neighborhood and the citywide crime rate. The

number of hot spots, or clusters of crime incidents,

in a neighborhood is another component of the crime

dimension. Finally, data on the number of open-air

drug markets are incorporated.

The Quality of Life Index does more than serve as

a guide for resource allocation and a baseline for

measuring progress. It also contributes to the conception and function of the police as an agency of

municipal government in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

For example, by identifying the specific components

used to measure the quality of life in a neighborhood,

it encourages the police to think about what they

can do—independently or in concert with other

agencies—to affect each of those components. If

school performance matters for the measure of a

neighborhood’s quality of life, then the police may be

encouraged to think about what they can do to help

improve the learning environment for children. The

police might want to consider what they can do to

motivate neighborhood institutions such as churches,

schools, and libraries to offer more youth programs.

Finally, the police may decide to be more attentive to

conditions they observe that affect the health of residents, once they understand the importance of those

factors to the overall stability of the neighborhood.

However, the Quality of Life Index does little to

identify or motivate specific community- or

problem-oriented policing activities. Only the hot

spot and drug market variables provide some guidance for the police on where to focus their activities.

If the Quality of Life Index included variables that

measured actual police activity, it could serve both

as an effective motivator for the police and as a research tool for exploring whether selected police activities are linked to desired outcomes. In its current

form, the index represents only the potential for

measuring what matters in Charlotte.

Problem assignment and tracking. Another mechanism for improving the response and coordination

of city agencies in the delivery of services to neighborhoods is a citywide electronic problem-tracking

system currently being implemented by the CharlotteMecklenburg Planning Commission. The system

was designed by a team of representatives from each

key business. The goal of the system is to ensure

accountability, efficient problem solving, and regular

feedback to citizens.
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In this new system, any city department that receives

a complaint from a citizen becomes responsible for

ensuring that the problem is addressed. So, even if a

complaint received by the Transportation Department

is a Solid Waste Department responsibility, Transportation is required to take the lead role in coordinating

the response. The receiving department enters the

complaint into the citywide electronic database,

searches the database for similar problems or complaint patterns, ensures that a team is assembled to

address complex problems, and contacts and regularly

updates the complainant about the city’s service delivery plan. The system is supported and maintained

by the Planning Commission’s new Neighborhood

Problem-Solving Office.

Once the problem-tracking system is fully operational, it is likely that the police will take responsibility for a wide range of complaints. It also is likely

that these complaints will not be much different

from the complaints that police already handle. However, the electronic record, easily retrievable and

analyzable, will be a valuable source of information

about the level and range of contributions the police

make to the quality of life in the city and to other

agencies.

Geographic Information System. The CharlotteMecklenburg Police Department’s Research and

Planning Division has developed a Geographic Information System (GIS) to support officers’ analyses of

problems. GIS is based on the idea that disorder—the

physical conditions in a neighborhood—is associated

with the level and concentration of crime incidents.

The system, once it becomes accessible to officers

through their laptop computers, will permit the visual

identification of possible environmental reasons for

the high incidence of crime or complaints in a specific

area. Based on their analysis, officers can begin planning strategies and organizing municipal resources to

address the problem.

GIS provides several layers of information. It shows

the location of crime incidents as well as ordinance

violations. Through windshield surveys, the system’s

developers plotted the location of pay phones, bus

stops, trails, abandoned buildings, and other neighborhood features. GIS provides information about property ownership, owner occupancy, zoning, demolition

orders, and the condition of curbs, gutters, and sidewalks. Finally, the developers, with information from

the power company about the lumination value of the

street lights, approximated the lighted areas on the

streets and sidewalks. The developers are waiting for

the completion of a planimetric database, which will

provide a layer of information for the entire county,

including the outlines of buildings, pavement, footpaths, tree lines, and all other physical features that

can be digitized from an aerial photograph.

Though still in its pilot stages, GIS already has served

as a problem analysis tool in selected neighborhoods.

The police in some districts, unwilling to wait for

the automated citywide expansion of the system, are

building the database for specific neighborhoods

manually, based on an address-by-address survey.

The enthusiasm for the system among officers is further evidence of the broad concept police have of their

responsibilities and scope of activity.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg police

and measuring what matters

In addition to the measures that have been developed

at the city level to support the overall strategy of improving the performance of municipal government

and that have been used to understand and shape the

police contribution to this broader goal, the CharlotteMecklenburg Police Department has developed its

own systems for measuring its impact on the lives of

citizens in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area. These

include (1) surveys of citizens to determine levels of

victimization and attitudes toward the police, and

(2) evaluations of district-level efforts to reduce crime

and solve public order problems.

Surveys. Surveying residents to assess their perceptions of safety and police services is a frequent, though

not yet routine, activity of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg

Police Department. Starting in 1995, a general public

opinion survey, a survey to measure public perceptions

of safety in Uptown, a survey of burglary victims, and a

survey of domestic violence victims were administered.

The surveys were developed and administered for the

city by the Department of Criminal Justice at UNCC or

by the police department’s own Research and Planning

Division.

The general survey measured residents’ opinions

about their neighborhoods and their problems; priorities for the police; perceptions of safety in their own

neighborhoods and in other parts of the city; levels of

victimization; and perceptions of police performance

and satisfaction with police service, including traffic
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enforcement, visibility, community policing activity,

and courteousness of police officers. The Uptown

survey was designed to help identify the factors that

led residents to feel safe or unsafe in Uptown.

The surveys of burglary and domestic violence victims assessed their experiences with police handling

of their cases, including how frequently the officers

arrived in the amount of time the telephone operator

told the victim it would take; whether the victim felt

the responding officers gathered all of the available

information relevant to the case; and whether victims

felt the telephone operators, responding officers, and

followup investigators were courteous and helpful.

For the burglary victim survey, respondents were

asked whether they thought the burglary incident

could have been avoided through some action of

their own or by the police.

Individual districts also developed and implemented

customer satisfaction surveys of their own. One district conducted a telephone survey of individuals

who had contacted the police. Another distributed

postcards to citizens who had contacted the police

that were designed to be mailed back to the district.

Both of these district-level surveys focused on the

respondents’ perceptions of the courteousness, professionalism, and helpfulness of the police officers who

responded to the call for service.

An ideal package of surveys, according to Richard

Lumb, Director of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police

Department’s Research and Planning Division, would

include surveys of four individual districts a year on

a 3-year rotation cycle. Before the police department

makes such an extensive investment, however, more

results are needed from the surveys that already have

been conducted. Problems identified in the surveys

should be addressed and the strategies implemented

to address them should be evaluated, Lumb says.

District evaluation. Evaluating problem-solving

activities is as much a challenge for the CharlotteMecklenburg Police Department as it is for every

other police department. The department’s goal, however, is to develop a system not only to measure the

results of past activities but also to stimulate further

problem-solving efforts. To this end, the department

has institutionalized a district evaluation that is submitted monthly to the chief. This evaluation is used

not to compare one district’s progress to another but

to measure the progress in each district over time.

Originally, the district evaluation report was to include a broad collection of factors measuring safety

conditions, citizen fear of victimization, social wellbeing, crime trends and patterns, and police staffing

and performance levels. However, most of the proposed elements were dropped due to difficulties in

collecting the data, both internally and from other

agencies. The final district evaluation form focuses

on staffing and personnel data, including the number

of letters of appreciation and use-of-force and other

complaints received by officers; workload data, such

as calls for service and the number of community

meetings attended; and data related to problem solving, such as the number of problems identified and

solved (by type), volunteer hours, and open-air drug

markets identified and closed.

Deputy Chief Bob Schurmeier, who heads the

department’s strategic planning group, believes that

a truly relevant and workable district evaluation system will depend on automation of data collection and

recordkeeping and the willingness of officers to observe and record information. “We have to sell the

officers on the value of collecting, tracking, interpreting, and using the data to the benefit of the city,” he

says. “If they don’t understand the usefulness of the

data, they won’t collect it properly or they’ll make

it up.” According to Captain Jackie Maxwell of the

Baker One district, the real successes of Community/

Problem-Oriented Policing are “small wins” that usually go undocumented. “They’re passed on verbally,

if at all,” she adds. “No one yet has come up with an

adequate way to quantify qualitative things.”

Summary and conclusion

In sum, it seems appropriate to view the police as

an agency of city government as well as an important

part of the criminal justice system. By doing so, however, the vision of how the police can contribute to

city life is enlarged, thereby expanding the conception

of the police mission. Since measures of police effectiveness must be designed to match the mission (i.e.,

the understanding of how the police might make important contributions to their cities), it follows then

that the measures now used must be complemented

by others. No one wants to relieve the police of

responding to crime. Thus, all current police performance measures should be retained. The important

question is what new measures should be added both
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to remind the police that these other contributions are

important and to properly account for the full value

they contribute to their cities.

We are convinced that the police should add two new

capabilities to their current measurement efforts. The

first is a large, continuing capacity to survey citizens.

A set of surveys should focus on different populations, ask different questions, and be designed to

serve different purposes. For example, a general population survey should capture information about criminal victimization, reasons for not reporting crimes to

the police, general attitudes toward the police, levels

of fear, and types of self-defense citizens rely on to

supplement the protection they get from the police.

Such a survey is important, partly to develop a more

accurate picture than we now have about the real level

of criminal victimization, partly to measure levels of

fear as well as victimization, partly to measure citizen

satisfaction with the quality of police service, and

partly to discover the level and type of self-defense

that is being used to complement police efforts.

A customer survey should be administered to a

sample of individuals who call the police (or ask

officers on the streets or in station houses) for assistance. This survey would focus primarily on the

quality of the service they received as well as the type

of service they requested. This is most useful in gauging the performance of the police as representatives

of city government. Perhaps this survey could be

extended to include other government agencies and

private institutions with whom the police work.

Finally, serious consideration should be given to conducting regular surveys of people stopped or arrested

by the police. It might be important to learn what citizens who encounter the police as enforcers think of

their experience. For example, such surveys occasionally have revealed evidence that some police were

systematically victimizing citizens through extortion.

Conversely, in some places where this technique has

been used, the police have been surprised to discover

that many people they arrest give them high marks

for their professionalism and courtesy. Such surveys

could provide a sense of how economically and carefully the police use the authority they are granted to

do their job. This is at least as important as knowing

how well they use the money entrusted to them.

The second capability the police should develop is a

continuing process for evaluating their own proactive

problem-solving efforts. In 1987, John Eck and

William Spelman offered a vision of this process in

Problem Solving: Problem-Oriented Policing in Newport News, in which they describe the Newport News

Police Department’s overall problem-solving initiative: how many projects were initiated, what motivated them, and what resources were committed. All

the efforts were at least informally evaluated through

reports on whether the problem was solved and

through letters from citizens who were satisfied. In

addition, a few of the initiatives (those that were

relatively large and seemed to have more general

significance) were evaluated more formally through

the use of statistics and other measures.49

The Newport News report was produced as a research

document designed to show whether problem-solving

policing could be implemented and, if implemented,

would be effective. Ideally, however, such a document

would become part of a police department’s regular

reporting system. Indeed, it is only through a document of this type that proactive problem-solving

efforts of the police can be measured accurately.

Furthermore, these are the kinds of efforts that are

likely to be important as the police turn their attention

to preventing crime, reacting to it, and working cooperatively with other agencies to help solve a variety of

city problems.

In addition to institutionalizing these kinds of reports,

police agencies could join with other municipal

agencies to develop measures of overall community

well-being, much as Charlotte-Mecklenburg has done.

If the police believe they control crime not only to

ensure justice and enhance citizen security but also

to contribute to the broader goal of improving the

quality of community life, then they must find ways

to measure factors such as levels of citizen satisfaction, confidence in the future and government, and the

economic and social health of the city. It is no accident that the word “police” comes from the root word

polis (the Greek word for a city or state, especially

when characterized by a sense of community), for the

police make important contributions to the quality of

life in the polis. That is what they can and should do.

Therefore, the value of the police should be recognized through their contributions to the quality of life,

both politically and in the measurement systems the

polity constructs to hold its agents accountable.
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Notes

1. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and

Administration of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a

Free Society, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967.

2. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and

Administration of Justice, Task Force Report: The

Police, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing

Office, 1967.

3. Moore, Mark H., “Problem-Solving and Community

Policing,” in Modern Policing, ed. Michael Tonry and

Norval Morris, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1992: 99–158.

4. The classic view of what police actually do is offered

by Goldstein, Herman, Policing a Free Society, Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1977.

5. Alpert, Geoffrey P., and Mark H. Moore, “Measuring

Police Performance in the New Paradigm of Policing,”

in Performance Measures for the Criminal Justice System: Discussion Papers from the BJS-Princeton Project,

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of

Justice Statistics, 1993: 109–141.

6. Philadelphia Police Study Task Force, Philadelphia

and Its Police: Toward a New Partnership, Philadelphia:

Philadelphia Police Department, 1987.

7. Some localities have voted special taxes to support

police operations. See Trojanowicz, Robert C., An

Evaluation of the Neighborhood Foot Patrol Program

in Flint, Michigan, East Lansing, MI: Michigan State

University, 1982. For a case describing this process, see

Kennedy, David, and Mark H. Moore, “Patrol Allocation

in Portland, Oregon,” John F. Kennedy School of Government, Case Numbers C15–88–818.0 and C15–88–

819.0, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1988.

8. Philadelphia Police Study Task Force, Philadelphia

and Its Police, 129.

9. On historical trends in the adoption and enforcement

of local ordinances, see Monkkonen, Eric H., “History

of Urban Police,” in Modern Policing, 547–580. See

also Kelling, George L., and Catherine M. Coles, Fixing

Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime

in Our Communities, New York: Free Press, 1997.

10. On use of force, see Geller, William A., and Hans

Toch, eds., And Justice for All: Understanding and Controlling Police Abuse of Force, Washington, DC: Police

Executive Research Forum, 1995. On high-speed auto

chases, see Alpert, Geoffrey P., and Roger G. Dunham,

“Policing Hot Pursuits: The Discovery of Aleatory

Elements,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

80 (2) (Summer 1989): 521–539.

11. The classic formulation of the myriad tasks of the

police is in Goldstein, Policing a Free Society.

12. This statement also belongs to Herman Goldstein.

See Goldstein, Herman, Problem-Oriented Policing,

Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.

13. For a more general discussion of how we think about

the use of organizations in the public sector and how that

contrasts with the way we think about organizations in

the private sector, see Moore, Mark H., Creating Public

Value: Strategic Management in Government, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.

14. Ibid.

15. Scott, Esther, and Robert Leone, “Registry of Motor

Vehicles: Watertown Branch,” John F. Kennedy School

of Government, Case Number C16–84–580, Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University, 1984.

16. Dickert, Jillian, and Mark H. Moore, “Pentagon and

the Drug Wars,” John F. Kennedy School of Government, Case Number C16–92–1149, Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University, 1992.

17. Sherman, Lawrence W., and Richard A. Berk, “The

Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment,” in Police

Foundation Reports, Washington, DC: Police Foundation, 1984.

18. Eck, John E., and William Spelman, ProblemSolving: Problem-Oriented Policing in Newport News,

Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum,

1987.

19. Moore, Mark H., Creating Public Value, chap. 3.

20. Goldstein, Herman, Policing a Free Society.

21. Ibid., p. 35.

22. For a discussion of the strengths and limitations of

looking at crime from a public health perspective, see

Moore, Mark H., Deborah Prothrow-Stith, Bernard

Guyer, and Howard Spivak, “Violence and Intentional

Injuries: Criminal Justice and Public Health Perspectives

on an Urgent National Problem,” in Understanding and

Preventing Violence, Vol. 4: Consequences and Control,

ed. Albert J. Reiss, Jr., and Jeffrey A. Roth, Washington,

DC: National Academy Press, 1994.
The Police as an Agency of Municipal Government

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23. Kelling, George L., “Juveniles and Police: The End

of the Nightstick,” in From Children to Citizens, Vol. II:

The Role of the Juvenile Court, ed. Francis X. Hartmann,

New York: Springer-Verlag, 1987.

24. Kennedy, David, and Alan Altshuler, “Spreading the

Gospel: The Origin and Growth of the D.A.R.E.® Program,” John F. Kennedy School of Government, Case

Number C16–91–1029, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1991.

25. On the importance of controlling domestic violence,

abuse, and neglect as a way of fostering the healthy

development of children, see Widom, Cathy Spatz, The

Cycle of Violence, Research in Brief, Washington, DC:

U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice,

1992, NCJ 136607.

26. Moore, Mark H., “Security and Community Development,” in The Future of Community Development: A

Social Science Synthesis, ed. Ronald F. Ferguson and

William T. Dickens, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, forthcoming.

27. Clarke, Ronald V., “Situational Crime Prevention:

Its Theoretical Basis and Practical Scope,” in Crime

and Justice: An Annual Review of Research, vol. 4, ed.

Michael Tonry and Norval Morris, Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 1983.

28. Felson, Marcus, “Routine Activities and Crime Prevention in the Developing Metropolis,” Criminology 25

(November 1987): 911–931.

29. Sherman and Berk, “The Minneapolis Domestic

Violence Experiment”; and Sherman, Lawrence W.,

P.R. Gartin, and M.E. Buerger, “Hot Spots of Predatory

Crime: Routine Activities and the Criminology of

Place,” Criminology 27 (1) (February 1989): 27–55.

30. Wilson, James Q., and George L. Kelling, “Broken

Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety,” The

Atlantic Monthly 249 (3) (March 1982): 29–38.

31. See Kelling and Coles, Fixing Broken Windows,

chaps. 4 and 5.

32. Merry, Sally Engle, Urban Danger: Life in a Neighborhood of Strangers, Philadelphia: Temple University

Press, 1981.

33. Police Foundation, The Newark Foot Patrol Experiment, Washington, DC: Police Foundation, 1981.

34. See “Images of Fear: On the Perception and Reality

of Crime,” Forum with Claude Brown et al., Harper’s

(May 1985): 39–47; and “Found: The Cure for Fear

Itself,” The Observer (June 2, 1996): 15.

35. Skogan, Wesley G., Disorder and Decline: Crime

and the Spiral of Decay in American Neighborhoods,

New York: Free Press, 1990.

36. McEwen, J. Thomas, E.F. Connors, and M.I. Cohen,

Evaluation of the Differential Police Response Field

Test: Final Report, Washington, DC: U.S. Department

of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1984.

37. Cunningham, William C., and Todd H. Taylor,

The Hallcrest Report: Private Security and Police in

America, Portland, OR: Chancellor, 1985. See also

Shearing, Clifford D., and Philip C. Stenning, “Modern

Private Security: Its Growth and Implications,” in Crime

and Justice: An Annual Review of Research, vol. 3, ed.

Michael Tonry and Norval Morris, Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 1981.

38. Based on interviews with the Washington, D.C.,

police in March 1991.

39. Kennedy, David M., and Malcolm K. Sparrow,

“Fighting Fear in Baltimore County,” John F. Kennedy

School of Government, Case Number C16–90–938.0,

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1990.

40. Chicago Community Policing Evaluation Consortium, Community Policing in Chicago, Year 1: An

Interim Report, Chicago: Illinois Criminal Justice

Information Authority, 1994.

41. Stewart, James K., “The Urban Strangler: How

Crime Causes Poverty in the Inner City,” Policy Review

(Summer 1986): 6–10.

42. Weingart, Saul N., Francis X. Hartmann, and David

Osborne, Case Studies of Community Anti-Drug Efforts,

Research in Brief, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of

Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1994, NCJ 149316.

See also Rosenbaum, Dennis P., ed., Community Crime

Prevention: Does It Work?, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage

Publications, Inc., 1986; and Rosenbaum, Dennis P., ed.,

The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the

Promises, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.,

1994.

43. Putnam, Robert, “Bowling Alone: America’s

Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy 6 (1)

(January 1995): 65–78; and Putnam, Robert, Making

Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy,

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.

44. Moore, “Security and Community Development.”

45. Although a consolidated city-county agency, the

police department is under the authority of the city

manager. The combined Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police
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Mark H. Moore and Margaret Poethig

Department has 1,600 members, 1,300 of whom are

sworn officers.

46. Since the start of the CWAC initiative, the city also

has identified, through a Neighborhood Statistical Area

Assessment, clusters of neighborhoods outside CWAC

that show signs of distress.

47. Neighborhood Development Key Business is a

consolidation of the former community development,

community relations, employment and training, economic development, and neighborhood services departments. The Community Empowerment Division is

charged with building neighborhood capacity and, in so

doing, provides auxiliary support for community policing. The division provides leadership and conflict resolution training for neighborhood residents and leaders,

supports neighborhood problem solving, and finds ways

to increase citizen participation in government.

48. Personal interview with Lynne Jones Doblin, Neighborhood Development Manager, January 29, 1997.

49. Eck and Spelman, Problem Solving.
169

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The Police, the Media, and 

Public Attitudes

ing its conclusions. Press sought to describe the work

of the press in relation to the police, figuring that to

understand how the view of the police is shaped, it

would be helpful first to understand the work of the

shapers. This paper then is divided into two parts.

First is a discussion of the press and its work; second

is a discussion of the academic literature and its

lessons.

Part one

We begin with a few simple truths that are not so

simple. What does the press want? It wants stories.

Ideally, reporters want exclusives; better yet, exclusives that expose wrongdoing. At an irreducible

minimum, reporters assigned to the police want crime

stories—the television people need pictures, too—

delivered quickly by a reliable official spokesman.

With the outlines of a story in hand, the reporters

can then supplement—if they’ve the time and inclination—by visiting a crime scene or seeking out someone with real or imagined knowledge. The prize here

is the telling detail—the turn of irony, the extra dollop

of tragedy, the larger pattern into which this crime

fits—that can turn a police blotter item into an event

of drama or wider significance.

The press is not a monolith, as some conspiracy theorists would have it, but it is a food chain. Television

now supplies a majority of the news that most people

get. (This includes the “news” provided by talk shows

and other “information-providers” such as Sally Jesse

Raphael, Oprah, and Jerry Springer.) But television

still looks to print for leads, for subjects, and for its

agenda.

So who are these not-so-hidden persuaders? They

come in several different categories. Broadly speaking, they tend to be young and inexperienced, sent

out to learn their craft before they’re trusted with

such exotic species as city council members and

G–18s. “The police beat is an intake job,” says David

They work in dreary, overcrowded offices, with the

music of police radios droning in the background.

At crime scenes, they mask their emotions. At the

homes of victims, they are all sincerity and condolence, wheedling to get someone talking. They are, in

a phrase, action junkies, who idle between bouts of

mayhem, waiting for their next big chance. Are these

the ghouls from homicide, the jaded from the sergeants benevolent association, the cynical from internal affairs? Nah. These are police reporters, the men

and women who take the crime reports of the day and

convert them into the news and entertainment that

fills tonight’s broadcasts and tomorrow’s papers.

Although no party to the relationship much likes to

talk about it, the police and the press share a remarkable number of characteristics. They are professional

skeptics and professionally self-righteous. Their job

is to ask questions that in any normal circumstance

would be regarded as impertinent at best. They seek

the cold comfort of facts. They come upon situations

of horrific chaos and narrow them into stories, into

arrests, into a version of reality that is explainable

and therefore comforting. They serve institutions

that have outsized roles in their communities—and

sometimes forget that the power and respect they

enjoy is only on loan. They like to think of themselves as different, a caste apart, beset by unworthy

critics in a nasty world. They tend to work out of the

same building, and, of course, they distrust each other

even as they breathe life into the word symbiotic.

With that kinship in mind, we meet to discuss, among

other things, how the media influence the perception

of the police held by that most innocent of bystanders, the public. As with many of our topics, this is

a broad one. It is on our agenda because it presumably contributes to the meta-topic at hand: how the

performance of police is and should be assessed.

With that in mind, this paper divided fairly neatly into

a complementary package. Benson did the hard work,

reviewing the relevant academic literature and analyzAric Press and Andrew Benson
The Police, the Media, and Public Attitudes

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Anderson, the former editor of Police magazine and a

long-time editorial page writer at the New York Times.

“A young person comes on the paper and he’s sent

to go cover crimes. It’s sort of an emergency room

internship to toughen up the kid. So what happens?

He does as good a job as he can and gets to the point

where he’s interested in more important issues. How

is the department structured? What is its operating

philosophy? Where does its budget go? And at the

point he’s transferred to Washington or overseas.”

They are not all kids, of course. When they can afford

it, city editors assign two or more reporters to the

police beat. The junior person still chases squad cars;

the other is assigned to do big-picture stories—trends,

headquarters jockeying, or what they insist upon calling “investigations.” Sometimes, the senior man—and

in these cases it’s always a man—is a burnt-out case,

a reporter who has been around so long at headquarters that he is regarded by all parties as a fellow traveler. He can be valuable to both sides, but he dates

from an age that was not as adversarial, an age that is

unlikely to return anytime soon.

Even at papers that cannot afford to double-team the

police, there is an ethic that more than the daily crime

stories need coverage. But editors’ talk can be cheap.

When Bruce Cory was hired by one of the Houston

papers (there was once more than one) to cover

police, he was told to cover the department as an

institution. Coming out of a niche publication that

specialized in criminal justice, he had a surfeit of

ideas. In the event, however, his first responsibility

was to cover every homicide in town. After a while he

stopped pursuing anything else, and then he resigned.

The third category in this taxonomy is the columnist.

For these purposes, we focus on the subgroup that

has played a disproportionate role in northeastern

cities. These are men, typically Irish, typically with

friends and relatives on the police force, who no matter how free they are to roam across subject areas, will

inevitably return to local police stories. They have

excellent sources and can generally be relied upon to

report, in dramatic fashion, the views of a case as seen

by one of the lead detectives. Occasionally they break

important news—Jimmy Breslin’s reports on the use

of stun guns in a precinct house won a Pulitzer Prize.

But these men are very important not so much for the

information they impart—which is sometimes of

dubious value—but because their writing is given

prominence, and they set a tone and style for younger

reporters who are aiming not for Afghanistan but for

a high local profile. The exception to this approach is

Leonard Levitt of the late and much-lamented New

York Newsday. At that paper, and now in its shrunken

successor, the Queens edition of Newsday, Levitt

writes a column specifically about police headquarters. Unlike the others who still seek to emulate

Damon Runyon and Breslin, Levitt serves as the

department’s Liz Smith/David Broder.

Finally, and of considerable importance, is the investigator. These are reporters with the freedom to roam

across their territory looking for mischief to expose.

They are very good at what they do, they set police

chiefs’ teeth on edge, and their work, however rarely

it appears, can be found on the front page. Two classic

examples are Selwyn Rabb of the New York Times,

whose work on a 1960s bungled murder case was the

basis for “Kojak,” and Brian Donovan of Newsday,

whose last expose of a police pension scandal won a

Pulitzer Prize.

In all this, crime news is paramount. In a distant second is news of the headquarters bureaucracy—who is

up or down, what are the chances of labor unrest, etc.

This coverage is often not detailed enough to be of

much help or interest to anyone except the participants or their family members. Third is coverage of

program initiatives. For quick reference, review the

files of the Sunday New York Times Magazine for one

breathless story after another describing in great detail

the favorite idea of the resident police commissioner.

Typically, these stories are told through the eyes of

one officer or unit. And last are the special projects.

For the most part, these are distinguished efforts that

allow editors and publishers to demonstrate their public spirit. Readers often turn the page, but they have

great influence on prize juries and policymakers.

Among many examples, consider the Boston Globe on

the abject disorganization of Boston’s police department; the Washington Post on recruiting failures by

the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, and New

York Newsday on precinct-level corruption.

The last is a particularly good example of how the

world works. In 1991, Newsday ran a multipart series

alleging failures in the New York Police Department’s

(NYPD’s) internal affairs operation. Leonard Levitt

was disappointed that the other papers didn’t follow

these stories; the PD’s press office was furious that
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Aric Press and Andrew Benson

there were so many unnamed sources involved that it

could not fight back against Newsday. After a time,

Mike McAlary, a columnist on another paper, began

writing about one cop’s corruption complaints.

Newsday sought to reclaim the story. It had a tip that

the U.S. Attorney’s Office was beginning to sniff

around the subject. Levitt wrote that story, but he says

that an editor changed the wording to make it into a

full-fledged “investigation.” That was a flat error. But

before Levitt or anyone else could correct it, Mayor

David Dinkins had created a blue ribbon commission

to probe corruption in the NYPD.

Police stories

Now, what do the police want in all this? The police

want “good” press. By that they mean favorable reports that emphasize bravery in the field and wisdom

at headquarters. Good press is also the absence of bad

press. Bad press in this context describes abuse, corruption, and other mistakes. Sometimes officials have

difficulty discerning the difference. “The holy grail

that every public relations person is in search of is

positive press,” says Suzanne Trazoff, a former NYPD

deputy commissioner for public information. “When I

got to the PD, I heard that the beat reporters were all

negative. But it just wasn’t true. I had come from [the

city’s welfare department] where there was never a

good story. At the PD, reporters liked doing good

stories about cops.”

But they could never do enough to satisfy some

members of the department. Cops, like reporters, see

the world as divided into two parts—Us and Them.

Rather than leading to a mature understanding of

each other’s roles, these attitudes can lead to hostility.

“The overwhelming majority of police officers, from

commanders on down through the ranks, felt the

media were not on their side,” says Vin LaPorchio, a

former director of communications for the Boston Police Department. “It was always adversarial.” He said

that some officers made exceptions for “reporters they

liked. They were the ones regarded as ‘most-balanced’

or most ‘pro-cop,’ depending on how you looked

at it.”

Despite such attitudes, departments are in the business

of feeding the mouths that occasionally bite them.

(The old saw has truth: Reporters are either at your

neck or at your feet.) Crime reports and arrests are

matters of public record and as such are distributed by

headquarters’ staff. Partly this is a matter of convenience, partly it is a desire to seek out witnesses

and evidence from the public, and partly it’s a selfprotective need to put the information out before

someone else, such as an unhappy civilian, does. The

second category of story, according to Trazoff, is the

one that’s important to headquarters and to City Hall.

“Policy stories,” she says, “are not big news the way

the crime of the day is, and they’re harder to get coverage for. But they are important to City Hall and to

each agency. They want to let the public know what’s

happening.” The third category of story relates to the

second. It’s the police commissioner’s story. According to Jeremy Travis, our host and a former senior

aide to three New York police commissioners,

“Commissioners need to show their personal stamps;

the public likes that. It’s an effective way to communicate to the troops. And it lets you dominate the

field. You want to put it out there, so critics have less

playing room.”

So, from all this, what is the impression left on the

public of the police? It is an agency that announces

crimes, makes arrests, has a few ideas, struggles with

labor-management issues, suffers from some corruption, employs a few brutal officers who may or may

not live within the jurisdiction, and appears to be led

by a succession of well-meaning administrators who

do not seem to last very long. These may be false or

misleading impressions, but they are the ones that

both the press and police cooperate to put forward.

Is there an issue missing here? Not in the era known

as B.B. (Before [former commissioner William]

Bratton). But in this A.B. period (we’ll save the

designation A.D. for the mayor of New York), the

conversation is changing. The agenda now includes

public safety and the police department’s role in

guaranteeing it. This is a topic that traditionalists

approach with great care. “In ’93, we had the lowest

crime stats in 20 years,” LaPorchio recalls. “They

were just excellent numbers. But we only issued measured statements. We never gave the impression that

our efforts made them go down because we always

feared that next year they’d go back up. Police officers are a little cautious about their impact on crime

reductions.” Not anymore, not A.B.

The remarkable drop in crime reports in New York

(and across the Nation) and the ensuing remarkable

press coverage is well known. The implications on
The Police, the Media, and Public Attitudes

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the press-police relationship of this change in the public conversation are still being thought through. John

Linder is a management/organization/public relations

consultant who has worked closely with Bratton over

the years. Consider his view: “The press has an enormous role in influencing the way in which police have

been managed in virtually every city in the country.

The press is concerned with corruption and the appearance of corruption. No one managed toward a

goal of reducing crime. No one thought the police

could do it. Now they can. The press could perform a

valuable role by trying to monitor the performance of

government, the actual performance of government

instead of the appearance.”

The police commissioner’s role

What would it mean to the press and the police to

live in a world in which the police pledge to reduce

crime and ensure safety? Already, the press influences

decisionmaking at the highest levels. Everywhere,

except perhaps Los Angeles, it seems to be an accepted rule that if a case merits press attention it is apt

to get extra police resources. And most senior police

executives acknowledge that once having reached a

decision they will attempt to have it portrayed as positively as possible in the news media. But, says Paul

Browne, a former reporter who became a key aide to

former New York Police Commissioner Raymond

Kelly, “There’s always been an understanding that the

mayor runs a reelection campaign while the PC [police commissioner] runs a paramilitary organization.

Those are supposed to be different operations.”

Managing public safety, which of course is more a

matter of perception than reality, is a campaign unto

itself. If the police commissioner is determined to be

the public’s paladin, then he or she has to take on a

different and enlarged role, particularly with respect

to the press. This is not a game for amateurs, and

there are plenty of pros around to help manage it.

Here are, at a minimum, the things a police commissioner will have to consider doing to succeed in this

new world:

● Stick to a message. Safety has to be sold, daily

and aggressively. It will not do to run a safer city

and not have everyone know it. What would be the

point? This is really analogous to running a political campaign, with one serious difference: Nearly

every day, there are gruesome events taking place

that can step on even the most artfully constructed

message.

● Rent a medium. Selling a campaign requires positive appeals, and the press is not a good vehicle for

that. The other option, as Linder notes, is paid media. He did it with Bratton when Bratton was chief

of the New York Transit Police and helped build

public confidence in the safety of the trains. He

thought similar work was possible with the New

York Police Department but had neither the time

nor the budget to try.

● Information control. You can’t convince civilians

that their city is safe if they are listening to a steady

drumbeat of reports describing crime. And where

do those reports come from? They come from the

police. Once started down the message road, how

long before a police commissioner or a mayor is

tempted to limit information? Not long, as the New

York Times reported on July 2, 1995:

Headline: Crime Coverage Mellows,

and Answers Are Not at All Simple

Byline: By William Glaberson

Body: The New York City news media,

usually packed with chilling accounts of

urban mayhem, have been presenting a

mellower portrait of crime in the city

lately.

Although there are always especially

horrifying crimes that force their way

into the headlines, like the murder spree

of Darnell Collins last month, a review

of recent crime coverage indicates there

has been sharply less of it—less than

half the number of articles in the city’s

newspapers than in a comparable

period last year.

Is the decline just a reflection of the

well-documented slide in New York’s

crime rate? Is it, perhaps, a result of the

media obsession with the O.J. Simpson

trial?

Or is it, as some reporters and editors

suggest, the product of shrewd management of crime news by a mayor who
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Aric Press and Andrew Benson

won election pledging to crack down on

crime?

In their view, the cutbacks that Mayor

Rudolph W. Giuliani ordered at police

headquarters last February have made it

so difficult to find out basic information

about crimes in New York that—

whatever his intentions—the effect has

been to reduce crime coverage.

Jerry Schmetterer, who oversees police

coverage as deputy metropolitan editor

at the Daily News, said of the Giuliani

administration’s moves at police

headquarters, “They are creating a perception that they don’t want bad news

reported.”

 Although Giuliani aides say there is no

attempt at manipulation, the criticism

that Mr. Schmetterer and his colleagues

voice is at the center of a debate over

how much information the government

owes news organizations. And some

experts on journalism and criminal

justice suggest that a strategy aimed at

easing people’s sometimes exaggerated

fears of crime might not be so bad.

The dispute began last winter when

Mayor Giuliani said the police

department’s public information office

was “out of control” and ordered its

staff cut by more than two-thirds—

28 officers in February to 8 newly

assigned officers and 1 civilian. The

mayor also forced the resignation of the

Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, John Miller.

At the time, the widely reported interpretation was that Mr. Giuliani was

jealous of the press attention that Police

Commissioner William J. Bratton had

attracted and wanted to take more of the

credit for the city’s declining crime rate.

But as time has passed, an additional

consequence has appeared: The smaller

public information unit made up of

officers without public relations experience has simply been less able to

supply information.

● Running the numbers. The whole strategy depends on the city getting safer. What happens if the

numbers turn up and the safe-city plan goes south?

There might be a temptation to fix the numbers.

“The danger to the department of letting yourself

be driven by how your numbers play in the press,”

says Paul Browne, “is that you are in danger of

corrupting the reporting system.” Blanket denials

don’t work here. The Uniform Crime Reports used

to be a play thing in some cities. And numbers

given outsized importance—look at school test

scores—sometimes have a way of being tampered

with. This only has to happen once for a departmental message to lose credibility with the public.

● A hiding place. Every public figure needs one.

Another way of putting it is officials must have the

ability to define an issue so that its mere presence

is not crippling. Crime does not lend itself nicely

to such treatment. “S—t happens every day,” says

Browne, pungently, “and our defense is we didn’t

do it. We have to clean it up. If your career can be

ended because somebody else did something atrocious, you and everyone around you is put in a

crazy position.”

In this new world, there might be some changes in

the press, too. At the beginning of a successful public

safety campaign, artful leaking to a reporter from

the most important outlet in town will serve a police

commissioner extremely well. The reporter will be

happy—he gets an easy exclusive. But reporters

change assignments almost as rapidly as police commissioners and the next guy may not be so pliable.

Or even worse, the standards may change. The press

thrives on failure, thrives on it so much that it defines

it so it can find it. Reducing homicides from 2,400 to

1,200 is dandy. But how long before someone starts

asking why 1,200 is an acceptable number? In this

game, the headline does not have to read “Do Something Dave!” There’s a nice ring to “Do Something

Howie!,” too.

But I digress. What follows is Benson’s careful exegesis, and I have delayed you too long. But one last

thought: We should talk sometime about the power

of the entertainment media to influence opinion. As

surely as commercial advertising moves products,

so too do fictional portrayals influence our views of
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crime, cops, and safety. Consider it the Sipowicz

Effect, named for the gruff detective on “NYPD

Blue.” This show reaches more Americans than any

news program. Its message: Cops are flawed good

guys who always get the bad guys. (I mention also the

show called “The Commish.” He doesn’t chase headlines. He chases bad guys, gets them too.) Those are

powerful, positive messages, whatever their attenuated connection to reality. No department is likely

to top them. So, as we all move into the A.B. era,

police executives would be well advised to remember

the advice another television cop used to offer:

“Be careful out there.” It can always get worse.

Media-created reality

Shortly after the turn of the century, journalist Lincoln

Steffens picked a brief newspaper fight with his friend

and crime-beat competitor, Jacob Riis, in New York

City. Steffens scooped the competition on a peculiar

burglary, which set off a flurry of crime reporting by

the city’s crime-beat reporters.

“It was one of the worst crime waves I ever witnessed,” Steffens recounted later, “and the explanations were embarrassing to the reform police

board . . . .”

The “crime wave” ended when President Teddy

Roosevelt interceded in the newspaper war, urging

his friends, Steffens and Riis, to ease up on the crime

news because it undermined the Progressive reforms

of New York’s corrupt city government. Decades later

in his autobiography, Steffens seemed to chuckle

when recounting the incident.

“I enjoy crime waves. I made one once . . .” he wrote

in a chapter entitled, “I Make a Crime Wave.” “I feel

that I know something the wise men do not know

about crime waves and so I get a certain sense of

happy superiority out of reading editorials, sermons,

speeches, and learned theses on my specialty”

(Steffens, 1931: 285).

Decades later, one media critic remarked, “For all

the fear they inspired, it wasn’t that more crimes were

being committed—only that more of them were

getting into the paper” (Snyder, 1992: 201–2).

Some say that the news media are like a mirror,

merely reflecting the day’s activities. But that notion

is simplistic and perhaps a bit naive. If Steffens were

still alive today, no doubt he would also chuckle at the

legacy he has left in the news media:

● In 1976, New York City experienced a major crime

wave of brutal attacks on the elderly. The city’s

news media publicized a rising tide of crime, and

the public outcry prompted a government response

to help protect the elderly. Yet, at the same time,

official police statistics showed an actual decrease

in those types of crime compared to the previous

year. “New York’s crime wave was a public event

produced through newswork. . . . A crime wave

is a ‘thing’ in public consciousness which organizes people’s perceptions of an aspect of their

community. It was this ‘thing’ that the media created,” wrote sociologist Mark Fishman, who studied the phenomenon (Fishman, 1980).

● In 1986, the Nation’s major newsmagazines and

network news were in a year-long frenzy about

drug abuse, particularly the use of crack cocaine.

“The Nation’s No. 1 menace,” declared U.S. News

and World Report in July. The problem, as described by one observer, was that the statistics did

not show that more people were abusing drugs.

Drug abuse, according to the National Institute on

Drug Abuse, was hovering at about 16 percent

among high school seniors for the previous 7 years.

“Nobody, but nobody, was going to defend drug

abuse in America, least of all the people who use

drugs every day. In a way, it was the perfect cover

story: sensational, colorful, gruesome, alarmist,

with a veneer of social responsibility. Unfortunately, it wasn’t true” (Weisman, 1986: 15).

● In a study of news coverage in Chicago, murder

ranked as the No. 1 reported crime in the Tribune,

accounting for 26.2 percent of all crime covered by

the newspaper. In actuality, according to the Chicago Police Department, murder accounted for

only 0.2 percent of all crimes during that same

period. Theft was the most frequently occurring

crime, accounting for 36 percent of all crimes. But

Tribune stories only mentioned theft crimes 3.4

percent of the time (Graber, 1980: 40). “In every

category—crimes, criminals, crimefighters, the

investigation of crime, arrests, case processing,

and case disposition—the media present a world

of crime and justice that is not found in reality”

(Surette, 1992: 245–6).
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For most Americans, the reality of crime is what they

see on television or at the movies and what they read

in the newspaper or in a magazine. An overwhelming

majority of citizens report they have not been a crime

victim in the past year nor do they know anyone who

has been a crime victim (see, for example, Gallup

Poll Monthly, February 1993: 33). So they learn about

crime and the police from entertainment shows like

“Top Cops,” from the police news roundup in their

local newspaper, and from the lead news stories on the

local TV station. “People today live in two worlds: a

real world and a media world. The first is limited by

direct experience; the second is bounded only by the

decisions of editors and producers” (Zucker, 1978:

239, quoted in Surette, 1992: 81).

All in all, the media give their audience a lot of crime

news. In her 1976 study, Doris Graber found that

crime and justice topics averaged 25 percent of all

news in the newspapers, 20 percent on local television, and 13 percent on national television. Stories

that focused on individual crimes were 9 percent of

news coverage in the newspapers, 8 percent on local

television, and 4 percent on national television

(Graber, 1980).

In the Chicago Tribune, the coverage of individual

crimes just about matched election coverage and was

topped by only two other topics: foreign affairs and

domestic policy. Individual crime coverage received

nearly three times as much attention as the presidency

or the Congress or the state of the economy and

nearly four times as much coverage as State or city

government.

A more recent study, conducted in 1991, found that

news that focuses on crime, law, and justice accounts

for just under one-half of all news coverage in newspapers, about half of all coverage on television, and

well over one-half of all news coverage on radio

(Ericson et al., 1991).

All that attention seems to be fueling the public’s

appetite for crime news. According to research studies, TV news audiences are most interested in flames,

blood, and sex and least interested in ethnic news and

labor news (Bagdikian, 1978: 272).

Early on, newspapers recognized the public’s interest

in crime news. In 1836, James Gordon Bennett of the

New York Herald reported in a series of articles “one

of the most foul and premeditated murders that ever

fell to our lot to record.” His stories described the

hatchet murder of a New York prostitute by one of her

“admirers,” then later cast doubt that the police had

the right suspect after conducting his own investigation. As a result, the suspect was acquitted, and the

circulation of the Herald tripled (Pickett, 1977:

93–94, quoted in Bates, 1989).

By the late 19th century, crime news had become

a staple of the mass-circulation newspapers of

America’s big cities. As Snyder writes of New York’s

newspapers, “The penny press became the guides for

a readership confounded by the city’s diversity—and

alternately fascinated and repelled by the crime, vice,

and poverty at its core” (Snyder, 1992: 198).

Today, as many as 95 percent of the general population say the mass media are their primary source of

information about crime, surveys report (Graber,

1979).

But, as Steffens observes, this media-created

perception differs from reality. And whether it is an

intentional crime wave or an unintended effect of

news reporting routines, the news media have an

effect on the attitudes and perceptions of their audiences. That effect can alter their perception of crime

and criminal justice, raising their level of fear or causing them to act in a different manner than they

normally would.

The news media’s portrayal of crime news can affect

the public, as outlined below, and it may in turn,

affect the public’s attitude toward police and other

criminal justice practitioners. Likewise, the attitudes

toward criminal justice can make a difference in how

policymakers pursue strategies to address crime.

Three of the major news media effects are outlined

below, followed by a discussion of the effects of

crime news specifically and how those effects relate to

public attitudes toward police.

Agenda setting

Numerous studies have shown that people attach

greater importance to a problem when the problem

has been highlighted by the news media. The media,

by emphasizing or ignoring topics, may influence the

list of issues that are important to the public—what

the public thinks about, even if it is not what the public thinks (see, for example, Cohen, 1963, quoted in
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Surette, 1992). At some point, the media agenda

becomes the public agenda, the theory goes.

Under the agenda-setting theory, these guiding principles emerged (O’Keefe, 1971: 243, quoted in

Surette, 1992):

1. The mass media may help form attitudes toward

new subjects when little prior opinion exists.

2. The mass media may influence attitudes that are

weakly held.

3. The mass media may strengthen one attitude at the

expense of a series of others when the strength of the

several attitudes is evenly balanced.

4. The mass media can change even strongly held attitudes when they are able to report new facts.

5. The mass media may suggest new courses of action

that appear to better satisfy wants and needs.

6. The mass media’s strongest and most universally

recognized effect remains the reinforcement or

strengthening of predispositions.

The influence of the news media, however, is subtle

and is itself affected by personal characteristics of the

public and the personal interactions among people.

For instance, people with direct, real-world experiences on a topic are less likely to be influenced by

news media depictions of that same topic. Not all

types of news media have the same influence, nor do

they have the same influence on different topics.

“In essence, the research indicates that media effects

are variable, are more common for television than

for newspapers, appear to increase with exposure,

are more significant the less direct experience people

have with an issue, are more significant for newer

issues but diminish quickly, and are nonlinear, sometimes reciprocal, and highly interactive with other

social and individual processes” (Surette, 1992: 88).

A refinement of the agenda-setting theory takes into

account how the news media agenda may or may

not influence the agenda held by policymakers.

Those policymakers may act on their own without the

public’s urging, or they may act counter to the public

agenda. The agenda-building theory looks at how the

policymaker agenda is influenced by the importance

the news media place on given topics. For example,

research into the effects of investigative reporting has

shown that the most consistent factor in determining

the impact of the media on policy is the relationship

that forms between the media and local policymakers

(Protess et al., 1991). In that case, the largely passive

public can apparently be circumvented.

Priming

This media-effects theory refers to the ability that

news stories have to summon forth bits and pieces

of memory from a person’s mind on a given topic.

Conducting experiments using local television broadcasts, researchers Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder

found that when people evaluate complex political

phenomena, they do not use all the political knowledge they have. They can consider only what comes

to mind at the moment, and television news, it turns

out, is a powerful determinant of what springs to mind

and what is forgotten. By drawing attention to some

aspects of political life at the expense of others, television news helps to set the terms by which political

judgments are reached and political choices are made

(Iyengar and Kinder, 1987).

When primed by television news stories that focused

on national defense, people judged the President

largely by how well he has provided, as they see it,

for the Nation’s defense. When primed with stories

about inflation, people assessed the President’s performance largely on whether they believed he has

handled inflation well.

Although the experiments used political issues and the

presidency, it seems likely that the same effect would

occur when focusing on other issues, like crime, and

other leaders, like mayors and police chiefs.

Framing

Again looking at television news, Iyengar shows

unintended effects of the news format on public opinion (Iyengar, 1991). The research looked at the two

primary news formats, episodic and thematic, that

provide frames for news presentations. The episodic

newsframe focuses on specific events or particular

cases, while the thematic newsframe places political

issues and events in some general context. Television

presents news almost exclusively in an episodic format, Iyengar writes, which colors the presentation

of issues and eliminates others from the newscast

entirely. For instance, during the 1980s, network
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newscasts showed hundreds of reports of particular

acts of terrorism but virtually no reports on the socioeconomic or political antecedents of terrorism. Global

warming, on the other hand, was hardly covered at

all because it cannot be readily reduced to a specific

event or occurrence.

Through a series of experiments, the researcher found

that the episodic news format affects the public’s

attributions of responsibility for political issues, so

that viewers are “less likely to hold public officials

accountable for the existence of some problem and

also less likely to hold them responsible for alleviating it. By discouraging viewers from attributing

responsibility for national issues to political actors,

television decreases the public’s control over their

elected representatives and the policies they pursue”

(Iyengar, 1991: 2–3). Likewise, viewers are less likely

to attribute societal causes to problems.

Crime story: public views of crime

As noted earlier, the news media emphasize the most

violent and the least frequent crimes at the expense

of other more frequent crimes—and at the expense

of other less visual issues. So murders grab the

headlines, even if they are rare occurrences.

The public, however, apparently does not pick up that

distinction. When asked whether they thought coverage of crime by television exaggerates the amount of

crime, the public overwhelmingly said they did not

think it did (Gallup Poll Monthly, December 1993).

The public has a fear of crime that in most cases is out

of proportion to the actual incidence or risk of crime,

and as criminologists have noted, that fear can lead to

actions that make neighborhoods less safe.

What does this fear come from? Researchers have

found that repeated exposure to television news can

alter people’s perceptions of reality, especially in the

absence of direct experience, such that they adopt a

view of the world characterized by suspicion, fear,

alienation, distrust, cynicism, and a belief that the

world is a violent, crime-ridden, dangerous place (see

Surette, 1992).

This so-called “mean-world view” leads to a set of

attitudes and beliefs about crime and crimefighting,

although some of those views are tempered by direct

experience with crime. As Surette notes, “At the least,

heavy consumers of television do share certain beliefs

about high societal crime and victimization levels.

For Gerbner and his associates, a mean-world view

translates into attitudes regarding who can employ

violence against whom, who are appropriate victims

of crime, and who are likely criminals. It posits a

world in which it is appropriate for some to have

power and some to not” (Surette, 1992: 91).

Other researchers have found that a reliance on television news was associated with antiestablishment

attitudes that included social distrust, political cynicism, and powerlessness—a set of attitudes described

as “videomalaise” (M. Robinson, 1976).

The impact of crime news on the public’s fear of

crime appears to hold true for newspaper readers

as well. Heath (1984) found that readers report

fearing crime more if a newspaper publishes a high

proportion of local crime news in a random or

sensationalistic manner.

Yet it is television that is thought to contribute more

to the public’s heightened level of fear. “Newspaper

exposure tends to be associated with beliefs about the

distribution and frequency of crime, whereas television exposure is associated with attitudes, such as fear

of crime and victimization,” notes Surette (1992: 93).

Just how the news media influence an individual’s

view of crime is hard to pin down because of individual differences in personal experiences and social

interactions. But the overall presentation of crime in

the news media tends to lead the public to support

more punitive criminal justice policies over social

welfare policies to reduce crime.

In a recent Gallup poll, 51 percent agreed that additional money and effort should go to attacking the

social and economic problems that lead to crime

through better education and training, while 42

percent agreed that money and effort should go to

deterring crime by improving law enforcement with

more prisons, police, and judges (Gallup Poll

Monthly, August 1994: 12).

But over the past 5 years of Gallup polling, that support for social programs dropped from 61 percent in

1989 and a 5-year high of 67 percent in 1992 to just

barely 50 percent. Likewise, the support for enforcement programs increased from 32 percent in 1989 and

a 5-year low of 25 percent in 1992 to 42 percent.
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In the same poll, crime and violence were cited as the

most important problem first mentioned by 21 percent

of the respondents, beating out health care at 12 percent and the economy at 9 percent.

“The repetitiveness and pervasiveness of the media’s

general crime and justice content increase the possibility that the media may have significant unplanned

effects on attitudes, particularly in the area of crime

and justice and especially for persons with limited

alternative sources of information. And because of the

media’s emphasis on law enforcement and crime control, we can expect that any media effects would tend

to promote crime control more than due process policies” (Surette, 1992: 87).

Graber, though, found that the public, while favoring

crime control policies, had stronger support for social

programs to reduce crime than the media portrayals

would lead one to believe. The news media largely

ignored social causes of crime and failed to stress

socioeconomic reform as a way of coping with

escalating crime. Instead, news stories placed an

emphasis on the criminal justice process and on

individual lawbreakers. “Curable deficiencies in the

existing criminal justice system and personality defects in individuals are depicted by the media as the

main causes of rampant crime. Social causes play a

subordinate, though by no means nonexistent, role.

Suggested remedies are sparse and do not generally

include social reforms” (Graber, 1980: 74).

That differed from the public’s view, as Graber notes,

“Social and economic factors were regularly mentioned by panel members as causes of crime, and

social and economic reforms were advocated, albeit

within the existing political structures. . . . These

views were heavily attributed to personal experiences

and evaluations, as well as conversations with lay and

professional sources.”

Iyengar found that people who viewed episodic

coverage of crime tended to produce fewer societal

attributions for crime, a circumstance that exists

because television news fails to make the connection

between crime and the social causes of crime for the

public. “Americans’ failure to see interconnections

between issues may be a side effect of episodic news

coverage. Most would agree that social problems such

as poverty, racial inequality, drug usage, and crime

are related in cause and treatment. Yet, television

typically depicts these recurring political problems as

discrete instances and events. This tendency may

obscure the ‘big picture’ and impede the process of

generalization . . .” (1991: 137).

Public support for specific crime programs, it stands

to reason, would lead to those programs being funded

and implemented by policymakers. Surette makes

these tentative conclusions: “The media emphasis on

crime has frequently been credited with raising the

public’s fear of being victimized to disproportionate

levels and hence giving crime an inappropriately high

ranking on the public agenda (Gordon and Heath,

1981: 228–229). The high ranking encourages the development of media-directed ‘moral crusades’ against

specific crime issues, heightens public anxiety about

crime, and pushes or blocks other serious social problems such as hunger from the public agenda” (Cohen

and Young, 1981).

Views of crimefighting

Given the public’s view of crime, one could expect

the public to have a negative view of the police.

The news media present the public with a torrent of

gruesome and violent crimes, raising the level of fear.

These crimes appear in the media as a series of unconnected violent acts, and the police seem powerless

to stop them. When the news media focus on causes

of crimes, they look to deficiencies in the criminal

justice system as much as anything as the reason

for crime. Societal causes of crime—poverty,

unemployment, lack of education—are rarely cited.

But despite the media’s constructed reality of crime,

there is evidence of considerable support for the

police. In fact, the public does not appear to blame

the police for what they perceive is a rise in crime.

In 1972 and 1975, the National Crime Survey asked

respondents in 13 American cities to rate their local

police.

“When we consider that fully 81 percent of the 1975

respondents said that police performance was either

good or fair, it is apparent that a large amount of favorable opinion toward the police exists in the public

mind,” the study concludes (Garofalo, 1977: 10).

Other surveys at the time reported similar findings.

Although most of the respondents indicated that their

local police could improve (68 percent), the improve-
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ments most often cited were the need for more police

officers or more officers directed to specific areas or

duties (such as foot patrols).

However, when race and age were considered, the

performance of police slipped among some groups.

African Americans and younger respondents gave

police lower ratings, although even among young

African-Americans (ages 16–29), 71 percent rated the

performance of police as good or average (Garofalo,

1977: 13).

The survey also found that respondents who rated

their neighborhoods as much more dangerous compared with other neighborhoods in the metropolitan

area were four times as likely to give the police a

very negative rating than were respondents in neighborhoods they thought were much less dangerous

(Garofalo, 1977: 18). However, those who felt safe at

night in their neighborhoods rated police performance

only slightly better than those who felt unsafe.

The author comments, “The extent to which people

feel personally safe about being out alone in their

neighborhoods at night does not have much effect

on their ratings of the local police, but when people

evaluate the safety of their neighborhoods relative to

other neighborhoods, their evaluations are related to

their perceptions of the adequacy of local police

performance” (Garofalo, 1977: 18).

Likewise, those who reported they were crime victims

in the previous year, especially victims of more serious crime, were more likely to rate police performance

negatively than those who were not crime victims

(Garofalo, 1977: 21). However, police ratings do not

strongly influence whether or not a victim reports a

crime to the police (Garofalo, 1977: 36).

So, even with an increase in crime or a perceived

increase in crime, the public does not appear to blame

the police for it. “Apparently, respondents did not

think that the crime problem was attributable to any

deficiencies in the job being done by their local

police,” the author concludes (Garofalo, 1977: 36).

Graber, in her 1976 study of crime news, found that

57 percent of her panel members gave police a “good

rating,” although whites gave more positive assessments than African-Americans. That positive rating,

she notes, continued the favorable ratings police officers had received throughout the previous decade.

When asked for responses for the “fair” ratings, the

panelists noted the difficulty of the problems faced by

police, including insufficient manpower, lack of public cooperation, lack of skills and dedication, and the

poor caliber of police personnel. She observes that a

typical comment often was prefaced by “considering

the tough problems they face” or “given community

attitudes” followed by a favorable evaluation.

She notes, “This leaves the impression that a large

proportion of those who gave the police less than top

ratings put the blame on the criminal justice system in

general and the difficulty of its mission rather than the

particular institution” (Graber, 1980: 78).

Other parts of the criminal justice system did not

receive as good an evaluation as police in the Graber

study, a finding confirmed by later surveys of the

public. Both the court and corrections systems were

deemed deficient, a circumstance Graber pegs to the

public’s relative unfamiliarity with them. “Unlike the

courts and correctional institutions, which seem

remote, forbidding, and unpredictable, many people

regard the police as a source of aid in various emergencies, including catching and safekeeping of

criminals. People can understand and relate to the job

performed by police. By contrast, they are mystified

by the ways of the courts and correctional system and

hold them responsible for returning unreformed

criminals to society” (p. 78).

In a 1991 national survey conducted by the National

Victim Center (Warr, 1995), the public rated the

performance of the police above that of prosecutors,

judges, prisons, and parole boards.

In her study, Graber asked the panelists to rate the

success of the police in catching criminals, because

she surmised that apprehending criminals is widely

considered to be the most important function of the

police. She found that 48 percent of the panel saw the

police as very successful, 14 percent saw police as

unsuccessful, and the remainder gave answers

qualified to various crimes.

Nearly two decades later, the public still regards the

police highly. Respondents were asked in 1993 to rate

how well the police in their city were dealing with

crime; 71 percent rated the police as doing an excellent or good job. However, that assessment was much

lower for African-Americans, only 48 percent of

whom gave an excellent or good rating to police in
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their cities (Gallup Poll Monthly, February 1993: 31).

And both whites and African-Americans agreed with

the statement that police treat criminal suspects

differently in low-income neighborhoods than in

middle- or high-income neighborhoods.

As Warr (1995) notes, the police receive consistently

higher ratings from the public in honesty and ethical

standards than many other professions and that ranking has increased since the 1970s. Roughly half of

respondents in 1993 and 1994 Gallup surveys rated

the honesty and ethical standards of the police as very

high or high, up from 37 percent in 1977. That gave

police a ranking as high as medical doctors and teachers and placed them higher than lawyers (16 percent

in 1993) and U.S. senators (18 percent). On another

question, a large majority of Americans had a great

deal of respect for the police, even during the 1991

Rodney King incident. Gallup surveys from 1973 to

1995 show that the public has the highest confidence

rating in police over the past 20 years than any other

institution, except for the military and organized

religion (Gallup Poll Monthly, October 1991 and

August 1994).

Similar to Graber’s observations, Reiss (1967, quoted

in Warr, 1995), notes that the lofty police evaluations

by the public probably have more to do with sympathy for the difficult job police have to handle than

with an objective evaluation of police performance.

Graber reports that panelists believed economic and

social causes deter efficient crimefighting, and they

believed strongly that citizens can best aid the fight

against crime by correcting these societal causes.

For instance, 85 percent of the recommendations

from panelists suggested that citizens should work

for programs designed to reduce economic and educational deficiencies among the crime-prone population.

Fourteen percent called for better crime reporting by

citizens and for more participation in stopping illegal

activities. Overall, 86 percent believed that citizens

are lax in aiding in the fight against crime (Graber,

1980).

The generally positive assessment of police came in

recent years even as the public believed crime was

higher in the United States than it was a year previously and reported that they worried about being

sexually assaulted or murdered more than they did

a decade ago (Gallup Poll Monthly, December

1993: 21).

Trends in public opinion appear to show that the general fear of crime, although disproportionately higher

than actual incidence of crime, has remained generally stable since the 1970s and 1980s (Niemi et al.,

1988: 134–135). In a 1993 Gallup poll, respondents

reported that crime in their neighborhoods had not

increased over last year, and neither they nor anyone

they knew were victims of crime in the previous year,

although again, responses by African-Americans

differed (Gallup Poll Monthly, February 1993: 27).

A year later, however, the proportion of Americans

who rated crime as the most important problem in the

country soared to 37 percent in a January 1994 Gallup

survey (Warr, 1995). Alderman (1994) attributed the

increase to a series of highly publicized crimes and

trials that were under way beginning in the fall of

1993, including the murder of Polly Klaas, the assault

on Nancy Kerrigan, the Long Island commuter train

shooting rampage, the murder trial of the Menendez

brothers, and the court proceedings surrounding the

assault on Reginald Denny.

Conclusions and

recommendations

The research seems clear that the news media have

pervasive, unintended, and unpredictable influences

on public opinion. For instance, the news media can

influence the importance the public attaches to a particular problem, the factors by which it evaluates its

leaders, and the extent to which it makes connections

between problems and causes.

The evidence also strongly suggests that the steady

stream of crime news from the media affects the public, so that they are more fearful about the risks of

crime than they need be and are more likely to demand punitive criminal justice policies to control

crime. That is true even though the public generally

understands the societal causes of crime and supports

programs to counteract them, despite the news

media’s avoidance of that portrayal of crime.

The demand by the public for a specific response to

crime is likely to lead policymakers to heed the

public or, at the very least, to make it more difficult

for policymakers to get support for responses that are

counter to public opinion. Along those lines, Fishman

notes that the media crime frenzy over elderly crimes
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in New York swiftly led to police and criminal justice

reforms.

“Even though one cannot be mugged by a crime

wave, one can be frightened. And on the basis of this

fear, one can put more police on the streets, enact new

laws, and move away to the suburbs. Crime waves

may be ‘things of the mind’ but they are real in their

consequences” (Fishman, 1980: 11).

These attitudes about crime, however, do not appear

to bring down the public’s generally high rating of

the police. Instead, they may have a positive effect on

public attitudes toward police in that the public views

the police as having a difficult job, being at the

forefront of crime.

As a way to address the negative effects of news

media accounts, criminologists and journalists have

called for more context in crime stories (see, for

example, Edmonson, 1994; Tozer, 1993; Bishop,

1993). By tying in the trends, patterns, and causes of

crimes, the public would get a better picture of what

crime is occurring, where it is occurring, and how

often it is occurring. That gives them information by

which they can make informed decisions about their

personal safety.

This should lead criminologists and police administrators to provide more of the statistics and research

data to the public through the news media. Police

departments are virtually the exclusive source of

information for crime news. It makes sense that the

crime news be accompanied by statistical data or

inferences from administrators that bring context

and order to the seemingly unconnected series of

crimes and violent acts emanating from television

and newspapers.

Criminal justice policymakers must pay heed to the

reports of the news media. This notion was espoused

in 1921 by Felix Frankfurter, then a professor of administrative law at Harvard Law School, in a study he

helped lead of the Cleveland criminal justice system

(Fosdick et al., 1922). Frankfurter contributed a chapter outlining how the Cleveland newspapers affected

criminal justice in the city. He called on the newspapers to take a more high-minded approach to crime

coverage, recognizing the strong effect they had on

public opinion.

“The public derives its opinions about the administration of criminal justice from the kind, the quality, and

the volume of newspaper matter affecting criminal

justice [and] the influence exerted by public opinion

on the system of criminal justice is largely dependent

upon the extent of informed opinion in the community

. . . . The whole scheme of criminal justice, particularly under an elective system with short tenures,

is pervasively affected . . . by the views which are

gradually deposited in the minds of the electors

through the more vivid and persistent, and therefore

more potent, influence of the daily news columns . . .”

(Fosdick et al., 1922: 518).

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