research report

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

Problem Solving in Practice:

Implementing Community Policing in Chicago
U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

810 Seventh Street N.W.

Washington, DC 20531

Janet Reno

Attorney General

Daniel Marcus

Acting Associate Attorney General

Mary Lou Leary

Assistant Attorney General

Jeremy Travis

Director, National Institute of Justice

Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice

World Wide Web Site World Wide Web Site 

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

Cover photographs copyright © 1998 Digitalstock, and background photo © 1994 PhotoDisc, Inc.
Problem Solving in Practice

1

Problem Solving in Practice:

Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

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

Jennifer T. Comey, Marianne Kaiser, and Justine H. Lovig

Institute for Policy Research

Northwestern University

April 2000

NCJ 179556
Jeremy Travis, J.D.

Director

Lois Mock

Project Monitor

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

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

Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Findings and conclusions

of the research reported here are those of the authors and do not necessarily

reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

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

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

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

and the Office for Victims of Crime.
Problem Solving in Practice

III

Contents

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

Chicago’s Problem-Solving Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

The Neighborhoods and Problem Solving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Measures of problem-solving capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Social and economic factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Challenges to community policing effectiveness . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Police Problem Solving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Rating the beats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Categorizing the Beats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Excellent programs: Solid leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Reasonable programs: Underdeveloped aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Struggling programs: Little meaningful 

problem-solving activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Failing programs: Little implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Leadership Is Key. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Community Capacity and Police Effectiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Study findings: No direct association between community 

capacity and program implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Enhancing Program Implementation: Recommendations 

for the Future. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Training. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Knowledge bases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Self-assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Leadership capabilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Suggested Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

iii
Problem Solving in Practice

Summary

The Chicago Police Department has adopted a problem-solving

approach to crime and disorder—the Chicago Alternative Policing

Strategy (CAPS)—as part of a move toward community-oriented

policing. With more than 16,600 employees, Chicago’s police department is the second largest in the United States, serving nearly 3 million people and responding to calls over a 225-square-mile area. The

size and complexity of the CAPS initiative have generated significant

changes in the department’s structure and goals during a multiyear

implementation effort. NIJ has funded a long-term evaluation of this

organizational transition. This report presents one aspect of the NIJ

evaluation—the findings of a study conducted in a small sample of

beats to determine how Chicago’s problem-solving model has actually

been implemented. It is hoped this report will serve as a resource for

police and civil leaders who are interested in moving beyond the

rhetoric of community policing and into the reality of making it work.

Implementation studies are important because the policing field is

littered with failed efforts to change police organizations. Translating

the abstract concepts of community policing into day-to-day steps

that police officers can follow is complicated, and motivating officers

to follow those practical instructions is difficult. It is just as difficult

to rebuild the collective efficacy of communities that have lost it and

to involve residents of poor and previously disenfranchised neighborhoods in partnerships with the police. The Chicago study examines

such issues in detail, isolating some of the factors that explain

implementation success and failure.

The study beats were selected to reflect the diversity of the city and

varied greatly in their level of community involvement and their ability to respond to local problems. To assess the capacity of these areas

to help themselves through problem solving, residents were surveyed,

neighborhood meetings were observed, and activists were interviewed.

The study found that poor and internally divided beats experienced

greater difficulty in translating their aspirations into practice than did

better-off and racially homogeneous areas. Residents of higher capacity areas were better at solving their own problems and experienced far

1
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

2

fewer problems, turned out in greater numbers for beat meetings,

and were more likely to become involved in a broad array of problemsolving efforts; also, neighborhood activists in these areas more accurately reflected the racial and class composition of the community.

Assessments based on interviews with police of all ranks, observing

officers at work, attending staff meetings, studying police records, and

interviewing knowledgeable individuals indicated widely varying

implementation of problem solving on the police side—some beats

fielded excellent programs, and others made little progress. The study

data were used to rank the beats in terms of how closely their activities corresponded to the department’s plan. 

The evaluation found that the factor most closely associated with successful program implementation was effective leadership, particularly

the leadership of beat sergeants. Influence on problem solving diminished as rank increased—the closer managers were to the field, the

more their leadership counted. Although district commanders played

an important legitimizing role by providing visible support for the program, program acceptance was more varied at levels below them. The

best beat sergeants pushed their officers to focus on the key problems,

stressed problem solving, clarified the importance of following department protocols, held productive police beat meetings, and encouraged

innovative thinking and actions among team members. Moreover,

the best sergeants expected their officers to support the program and

worked hard to involve individuals in the community and to respond

to their concerns. They kept track of issues raised at beat meetings

and ensured that something was done about them.

In this study, police efforts to involve the community in problem

solving were assessed independently of their success because the

beats varied significantly in their capacity to become organized and

involved. No direct association was found between community capacity and program implementation. In addition, survey-based assessments

of police service appeared to be unrelated to the actual quality of

policing, as observed in the field.

Among the recommendations for enhancing program implementation

is more training for beat officers, who find it difficult to translate the
Problem Solving in Practice

abstract concept of problem solving into their daily routines. Chicago

is also typical in needing to find ways to become more creative in its

problem-solving efforts by learning from its own experiences and

developing mechanisms (e.g., “knowledge bases” of successful practice) to document recurring problems and effective solutions. The city

needs to develop practical ways to measure and monitor the problemsolving efforts of units, teams, and individual officers and to assess

their effectiveness. In addition, the department needs to develop a

leadership cadre that effectively supports community-oriented problem solving from the level of street sergeants to the very top of the

organization, where managers must provide vision for the program

and define the extent to which community-oriented work will be a

central mission.

This report first summarizes Chicago’s community-oriented program

and then describes the problem-solving roles of both citizens and

police. It identifies some important obstacles affecting both citizen

involvement in and police commitment to the program and presents

general strategies for implementing a problem-solving approach based

on the Chicago observations. Additional details about Chicago’s

problem-solving program and the findings of this research may be

found in the books and articles listed on page 34.

Chicago‘s Problem-Solving Model

The Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy involves a significant

expansion of the police mandate. In Chicago’s problem-solving model

for policing, a “problem” is defined as a group of related incidents or

an ongoing situation that concerns a significant portion of those who

live or work in a particular area. A problem is also persistent—it is

unlikely to disappear without active intervention of some magnitude—and must potentially be solved using police and community

resources, because not everything is within their power. A problem

need not be a serious criminal matter. Although dealing with crime

remains at the heart of the police mission, it was envisioned from the

beginning that the police mandate would coordinate responses to a

3
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

4

broad range of community concerns, including social disorder, municipal service problems, and code enforcement matters previously handled by civil courts. Frequently, problems are not legal offenses at all

and can range from noise to people repairing their cars at the curb to

the dilapidated condition of many of the city’s modest bungalows. 

To implement problem solving, police and neighborhood residents

were trained to handle problems using a five-step process:

1. Identify problems and prioritize them incorporating community

input.

2. Analyze information about offenders, victims, and crime locations.

3. Design strategies that address the chronic character of priority problems by thinking “outside the box” of traditional police enforcement tactics and using new resources that were developed by the

city to support problem-solving efforts.

4. Implement the strategies, a step requiring special skill and effort by

the community, police, and other city departments as they attempt

to actually put plans in motion.

5. Evaluate effectiveness through self-assessments to determine how

well the plan has been carried out and what good has been

accomplished. 

In Chicago, important aspects of the police organization were

reengineered to support problem solving. The patrol division was

reorganized, and turf-based teams of officers were trained to deal with

problems in their areas. The 911 system was redesigned to ensure that

the new teams could answer most calls for service within their designated beats. The department also changed its supervision system to

encourage teamwork among beat officers. Beat sergeants were responsible for coordinating their efforts across the 24-hour clock. One

mechanism for doing so was beat team meetings that brought together

all of the officers serving the area on all watches. Beat sergeants, in

turn, reported to a lieutenant charged with coordinating their projects

across a larger geographical area. 
Problem Solving in Practice

The views of the community were represented in two ways: through

district-level advisory committees where policies and strategies were

discussed with commanders, and through monthly community meetings held in every beat. During 1998, nearly 6,000 people attended

these meetings every month. A new office set up in city hall to

encourage participation and to coordinate the efforts of district-level

committees mounted a marketing campaign to spread program awareness and to spark involvement in the problem-solving effort. Priority

problems identified by neighborhood residents were to be incorporated into formal beat plans drawn up by the officers serving each area.

Officers had access to all of the city’s departments to deal with service

problems, and could quickly mobilize services ranging from car tows to

trash pickups. This structure enabled officers to respond effectively to

problems they do not ordinarily handle and for which they are not

traditionally equipped.

Another important feature of Chicago’s problem-solving infrastructure

was training for both neighborhood residents and police. Residents

were expected to take an active role as partners with the police and

on their own. Without training, both groups could have reverted to

their old expectations and habits, and might not have made effective

use of the new problem-solving resources created for the program.

The Neighborhoods and Problem Solving 

To examine the implementation of problem solving in Chicago, 15

police beats were selected for detailed study. Their general locations

are depicted in figure 1, which identifies them by names devised to

reflect their distinctive character. The selection of beats was based

on demographic data with no prior knowledge of the problem-solving

involvement of either residents or police. The beats (which ranged

from 4,000 to 21,000 in population) represented many of the conditions and lifestyles common in Chicago. The populations of some

beats were predominately white, in others they were mostly Latino or

black, and in others they were extremely diverse. Some beats were

crowded with apartments; in others, single-family homes prevailed.

Residents in some beats were well off; in others, they were desperately

5
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

6

poor. The small number of beats selected could not constitute a representative “sample” of the city; in fact, beats from relatively well-off

parts of town were deliberately avoided in order to focus efforts on

places facing difficult problems. The research team spent a great deal

of time in each area observing neighborhood conditions, riding with

Figure 1: Problem-Solving Study Beats in Chicago

Property Values

Solid Mix

Potpourri

Stir Fry

Inner City

Fiesta

Old Guard

Pride

Southtown

Middle Classes

Bungalow Belt

Blue Collars

Rebuilding

Norte

Two-Turf
Problem Solving in Practice

police, examining police files, attending community meetings, and

interviewing community leaders. A survey was conducted among

residents, and substantial quantitative data were collected from police

and other government sources.

One goal of the study was to assess the beats’ capacity to deal with

local problems on their own. The study found that the communities’

“homegrown” capacity for self-defense largely mirrored the pattern of

privilege and privation that characterizes American society in general.

Poor and internally divided beats found it more difficult to translate

their aspirations into practice, while relatively better-off and racially

homogeneous areas solved their own problems more effectively and

experienced far fewer problems.

Measures of problem-solving capacity

Neighborhood problem-solving capacity was measured along three

dimensions: individual, collective, and political. 

Individual. The individual component of capacity is indicated by the

strength of informal social control in each beat. One important problemsolving asset enjoyed by some communities but in short supply elsewhere is a tradition of residents actively intervening to safeguard local

norms when they are threatened. This willingness of individuals to

step forward and challenge violators is one of the principal ways that

communities maintain order on their own initiative. Sampson et al.

stress the importance of informal mechanisms by which communities

can “realize the common values of residents” because it is apparent

that many neighborhoods are unable to safeguard norms relating to

public behavior even when they are supported by a large majority of

individual residents.1 The informal social control measures used in this

study were adapted from their research. The survey questions probed

respondents’ perceptions of how likely it would be for their neighbors

to intervene if a fight occurred in front of their house, if children were

spray-painting graffiti on a local building, and if a teenager were

harassing a senior citizen. Overall, 83 percent thought their neighbors

7
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

8

would be likely to intervene to protect a senior citizen, while only

50 percent thought their neighbors would intervene to stop a fight.

Collective. The collective component of neighborhood capacity is

indicated by the density of local organizational life in each beat.

Organizations enable individuals to share, accumulate, and prioritize

their concerns; engage in constructive debate over what to do about

them; and coordinate their own efforts to deal with concerns at the

top of the agenda. Organizations institutionalize individual effort—by

recruiting new participants while keeping to the old agenda, they can

sustain problem solving when their members tire, retire, or turn to

other interests. They can turn people out for events when the weather

is bad. The Chicago study examined the extent of resident involvement in block watches and neighborhood patrols, community organizations and block clubs, parent-teacher associations and local school

councils, and local churches (an important force in many black areas).

Overall, 58 percent of the households surveyed were involved with at

least one such organization (mostly local churches).

Political. The political aspect of community capacity is reflected in

residents’ ability to extract resources from the outside world. While

problem-oriented policing promotes the image of communities

“pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps,” in many areas residents lack the capacity to deal with their most pressing problems on

their own. In the Chicago study, some beats were closely bound to

city- or metropolitan area-wide institutions that could deliver the

services and money required to tackle local problems. Beats with

strong downtown connections also had the capacity to influence how

government programs and private development efforts were implemented in their areas. Each beat was rated “high,” “moderate,” or

“low” on this dimension on the basis of the field research. Also

assessed was the political capacity of each beat in the electoral

domain—a factor that historically helps get things done in Chicago.

Two properties of political capacity were measured: election turnout

rates and responses to the neighborhood survey indicating that neighbors would be likely to organize to keep their local police station open

if budget cuts threatened to shut it down.
Problem Solving in Practice

These three components could be incorporated into a single numerical measure of the problem-solving capacity of each beat because they

turned out to be so tightly intertwined that there was no practical

utility in examining them separately. Generally, the same beats shared

the advantages of strong organizations, effective informal social controls, and political influence. This is illustrated in figure 2, which plots

the configuration of the 12 beats that could be surveyed along all 3

dimensions of community problem-solving capacity.

1.6

1.5

1.4

1.3

1.2

1.1

1.0

0.9

2.400 2.605 2.810 3.015 3.220 3.425 3.630

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

downtown

connections

politically

mobilized

moderate high

Bungalow Belt Property Values

Old Guard

Pride

Two-Turf

Blue Collars

Stir Fry Norte

Solid Mix

Potpourri

Fiesta

low

low

high

informal social controls

organizational involvement

Rebuilding

high

Figure 2: Problem-Solving Capacity: Informal Social Controls, 

Organizational Involvement, and Political Capacity

9
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

10

Social and economic factors

Community problem-solving capacity was strongly rooted in the social

and economic makeup of the study areas. Choices such as helping out,

joining up, and turning out to vote were heavily structured by race

and class. Problem-solving capacity was strongly linked to affluence.

It was greater in police beats dominated by homeowners and higher

income households, and where people lived in single-family homes

as married couples and two-parent families. Property Values, the most

affluent beat, scored the highest on every measure of community

capacity. A picturesque neighborhood of large houses, this area is

home to many top city administrators and political leaders; its beat

meetings were held in the clubhouse of a golf course. Older, long-term

residents predominated in self-regulating and well-organized areas

like Bungalow Belt (home to white city workers) and Old Guard

(a middle-class, black community). Latinos (Mexican-Americans in

Fiesta, Puerto Ricans in Norte, and both groups in Two-Turf) were at

a disadvantage compared with either whites or blacks. Community

capacity was also higher in racially homogeneous areas, including as

many black as predominately white beats, and it was weaker in diverse

places. Of the beats shown in figure 2, those highest in homogeneity

were Pride, Old Guard, and Rebuilding (all black), and Bungalow Belt

and Property Values (all white). 

Not surprisingly, community capacity was strongly linked to the urban

ills that have sparked interest in problem-solving policing. Residents

of high-capacity beats reported far fewer problems than their counterparts, and they were less fearful of neighborhood crime. In general,

residents of black beats cited drug-related problems in the survey;

those in predominately Latino areas reported gang-related problems;

and residents in predominately white areas were most concerned

about property crime and traffic-related issues. The extent of neighborhood physical decay was strongly linked to income and other

measures of affluence. Residents of the three most racially diverse

beats identified a more divergent set of problems, but the second

most frequently cited problem in each area fell in the social disorder

category. Residents of Norte and Rebuilding were concerned about
Problem Solving in Practice

gentrification; residents of Bungalow Belt and Blue Collars were worried

about neighborhood racial transition. And residents of low-capacity

beats had significantly more negative views of the police, which

served as a warning that mounting an effective program might be

difficult.

The survey included three questions about the quality of police service in the community. Residents were asked about the responsiveness

of the police to community concerns, whether police were dealing

with problems of real concern to residents, and how good a job police

were doing in working with residents to solve local problems. Among

the 12 beats, only 2 gave police at least an average rating of “good”

on these items. They were the only two well-off, predominately white

beats: Property Values and Bungalow Belt. Three Latino areas (TwoTurf, Fiesta, and Norte) gave police the least favorable rating.

Residents of better-off beats were more heavily involved in CAPS as

well. Attendance at beat community meetings was higher in highcapacity areas. Pride ranked first, followed by Bungalow Belt and Old

Guard. Surveys of meeting participants found that those from highcapacity beats were more likely to become actively involved in problem solving. Property Values ranked highest on this measure, and

Fiesta ranked lowest. A source of the linkage between capacity and

both meeting attendance and problem solving by residents was the

role played by community organizations. Organized residents attended

more faithfully and were more involved in getting things done, while

residents who were not networked within the community attended

fitfully and did not contribute much.

High-capacity beats were also more fully represented in the city’s

program; those who attended beat meetings there more closely

matched the demographic complexion of the area. In low-capacity

areas, meeting attendees overrepresented the best-off elements of the

community, as measured by income, education, and home ownership,

and participants came from isolated pockets of the beat. Beat meetings

in Two-Turf (Latino) and Inner City (the poorest black community in

the study) were attended almost exclusively by the areas’ relatively

few homeowners. Meetings in high-capacity areas were also more

11
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

12

representative in the sense that participants were linked to other

residents through the web of community organizations active there.

Challenges to community policing effectiveness

The study findings raise two challenges to Chicago’s community policing program and, perhaps, to others around the country. The first is

whether the program will be able to effectively help worse-off areas

become better off, because many are concerned that community

policing will work best—and perhaps only work at all—in stable,

home-owning, “pro-police” neighborhoods. The second is whether

community policing can function effectively in racially diverse communities, where residents may point fingers at each other over the

area’s problems.

Low- versus high-capacity areas. The risk that a problem-solving

approach to policing might principally assist better-off neighborhoods

in becoming even better off is a real one. Factors that placed these

neighborhoods in the high-capacity category also made them easy

venues for community-oriented police work. An officer working in

Bungalow Belt described his as “the perfect CAPS beat” in reference

to its family orientation, concern about property values, strong organizations, and high turnout (averaging more than 100 residents each

month) at beat meetings. Based on beat surveys, residents of highcapacity beats also identified more closely with the police; these beats

included the two largely middle-class black communities (Pride and

Old Guard). Therefore, the challenge facing community policing is to

implement an effective program in low-capacity areas. Doing so would

help worse-off areas become better off. It would also speak to the concerns of Chicagoans who are most disaffected from the police and are

most likely to doubt their responsiveness to the community.

Among those in the worse-off category were residents of Stir Fry, an

area populated nearly evenly by whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asians.

Stir Fry’s organizational life stood at almost zero. In terms of perceived

willingness to come to the aid of a senior citizen, Stir Fry ranked last,

and only two beats ranked below it in willingness to challenge spraypainting vandals. The beat population was 93 percent rental, and
Problem Solving in Practice

62 percent of survey respondents had lived there less than 5 years. All

6,000 of the beat’s residents lived in a 4- by 5-block area. Homeless

shelters, service centers, halfway houses, and single-room occupancy

hotels were abundant, drawing needy people like magnets. People

roamed the streets day and night, including male and female prostitutes and their pimps, panhandlers, “bag ladies” and their male counterparts, runaways, peddlers, drunks, and street drug dealers. Groups of

older men loitered in front of convenience stores selling loose cigarettes and small bottles of liquor, and refuse from the area’s many fastfood outlets littered the sidewalks. Public urination and defecation

also were significant problems. Stir Fry led the 15 study beats in the

rate at which police were dispatched to handle disturbances and noncrime matters, including homeless people sleeping in vacant lots,

parks, and public facilities. The area needed help, but the area’s alderman was opposed to community policing, and (as described below)

the police failed to implement the program there.

Racially diverse areas. Diversity presents another challenge to community policing. Racially and ethnically homogeneous areas found it

easier to become organized, and more people in such areas reported

that their neighbors were willing to intervene to safeguard social

norms when threatened. At beat meetings, residents were comfortable

with attributing their crime problems to nameless “outsiders.” All of

the areas with significant community capacity were primarily homogeneous in composition, including both white and black beats. In

diverse communities, suspicion and fear may divide an area along

race, class, and lifestyle lines. Diversity makes it easier to blame others

and abdicate personal responsibility for taking constructive action.

Groups may find themselves battling each other over local priorities

and access to resources. In diverse areas, the sites at which meetings

were held in the beat determined which groups showed up. Beat meetings rarely represented the population as a whole in these areas; they

were usually dominated by the better-off faction, and decisions about

where to meet were often the subject of hot rhetoric. In beats like

Norte and Rebuilding, police risked being drawn into battles over

gentrification. In Stir Fry, they were caught between warring factions

of gentrifiers and supporters of the status quo, with the latter convinced that community policing was part of a plot by city hall to

13
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

14

make war on the disadvantaged. Police are pressed to choose sides in

diverse areas, and their efforts threaten to become politicized.

The impact of diversity on community capacity was illustrated in Blue

Collars. Although this study area had many fundamentals in its favor,

it did not register high levels of involvement or intervention. Blue

Collars, an area of neat, single-family homes and two-family duplexes,

was home to a significant number of city workers with stable, middleincome jobs. In terms of income, it ranked in the top quarter of all

beats in the city. Compared with similar beats, however, Blue Collars

was much less organized and politically mobilized. The area exercised

a lower level of informal social control than it should have exercised

because racial transition within the community had upset existing

relationships and discouraged the maintenance of beatwide alliances

and mutual support. Newly arrived Latino residents were much less

involved in local organizations, and the organizations that survived

served shrunken, ethnically homogeneous parts of the beat. Residents

did not know their new neighbors and were not sure that they would

intervene if things went wrong. The two groups identified quite different concerns. Newcomers were substantially less likely to think they

were receiving adequate service from the police, and they were less

optimistic about how well community policing had progressed in the

area. White residents were concerned about the area’s newly visible

graffiti, which they read as signaling an emerging gang problem associated with neighborhood change.

It is possible, however, for police to provide a bridging link in diverse

communities. Beat meetings and district advisory committees can

bring together community members in a regular, safe, public forum

where participants’ concerns can be aired and their common interests

recognized, perhaps for the first time. Chicago’s program provides an

incentive for cooperation because a clear community voice can make

a more credible claim for attention from the police and their partner

agencies. Residents united around a common set of problems are able

to leverage more resources than they can leverage by speaking separately. Finally, as compared with many other venues where lowvisibility policies are made and acted upon, beat officers can be

expected to operate in a relatively law- and rule-bound fashion.
Problem Solving in Practice

They are less free than politicians or investors to decide matters on

the basis of their personal views. With proper mechanisms for supervision and accountability in place, they should be able to safeguard the

rights of all citizens, and such safeguards will help them find common

ground for taking action.

Police Problem Solving

The study beats were also a laboratory for evaluating how well problem solving actually was being implemented. They were chosen on

the basis of their demography, location, and residential character

rather than on the basis of any advance knowledge of policing there.

Among the 15 beats examined, 4 were judged to be doing an excellent job, 5 were fielding reasonable programs, 2 were struggling to

make the grade, and 4 had failed to implement much problem solving

at all. Their rankings were based on assessments of five program

dimensions: management actions at the district level, supervisory

work conducted by beat team sergeants, problem-solving efforts of

beat officers, officers’ attempts to involve the community, and the

formal beat plans drawn up reflecting (in theory) the involvement or

oversight of all participants. Each of the five assessments involved

rating performance on several specific program elements as excellent,

passing, or failing. Summing the specific ratings to form scores for

each of the five dimensions, and then aggregating them in a summary

index, resulted in a ranking of the beats in terms of the extent of

program implementation in each.

Rating the beats

The study beat ratings were based on personal interviews with officers,

beat team leaders, Neighborhood Relations sergeants, district administrative managers, and commanders. Members of the evaluation staff

also went on patrol with beat officers, and made independent observations of each area. They attended community gatherings, meetings of

beat team members, and monthly district advisory committee meetings. Also, they inspected the paperwork on file in the district stations

15
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

16

and attended administrative meetings; interviewed business operators,

local activists, and organization leaders; and attended neighborhood

meetings. Observers also attended meetings in which headquarters

personnel reviewed the district’s action plans. Field work was guided

by outlines detailing information that would be required later.

Observers’ detailed notes were reviewed centrally by several readers,

who used them to rate the status of each program element in each

beat. Ratings were then reviewed again by the entire evaluation staff,

and a consensus was reached about the three-point rating of each beat

on each program element. Summary scores were then calculated combining the specific elements of each of the five evaluative dimensions.

The following descriptions of each of the five dimensions illustrate

the important organizational arrangements involved in fielding a

comprehensive community policing program.

District management. Assessing district management involved rating

the extent to which the commanders understood the department’s

philosophy and new protocols. Those earning a high score on this factor understood that significant changes were called for in department

operations; that the city’s goal was to create partnerships with community residents and other city agencies; that information sharing with

the community is a “two-way street”; and that problem-solving strategies needed to be developed jointly with their new partners. Those

who received a low score mostly thought CAPS was a “warm and

fuzzy” public relations program designed to make civilians feel better

about the police. The commanders were also rated on the extent to

which they provided vocal support for the program when working

with their officers and in public. The study probed whether the lieutenants who served on the management team actively reviewed beat

plans, provided feedback on them, and visibly supervised their beat

team sergeants. Districts received higher ratings where lieutenants

attended beat team meetings, made recommendations or helped their

sergeants obtain needed resources, requested updates on problems or

on the success of strategies, and were knowledgeable about what was

going on in the beats.
Problem Solving in Practice

Team sergeants. The leadership provided by beat team sergeants was

assessed based on whether they understood the department’s philosophy and new protocols, provided vocal support for the program, and

expressed enthusiasm about the program when working with their

officers and in public. Sergeants who fared poorly on this measure

feared letting the community help set police priorities and thought

that community policing was a public relations gimmick. They belittled the program or announced that it was not doing any good and

could never work. Genuinely enthusiastic beat sergeants were easy to

spot at beat team and community meetings and around the station

house. They liked their new assignment, cared about doing a good

job, and appreciated the new tools and resources at their disposal.

Low-rated sergeants were unconvinced that the program offered much

and felt harried by their new responsibilities. The extent to which the

sergeants encouraged compliance with problem-solving procedures

and paperwork was also rated. Sergeants in lower rated beats felt

harassed by paperwork and were unwilling to impose the required

forms on their officers. Sergeants near the top of the rating scale

encouraged their officers to engage in specific problem-solving tasks

using the department’s analysis model. They steered officers in this

direction and gave them positive feedback when they made progress,

most visibly at beat team meetings. Low-rated sergeants mostly

thought that the problem-solving model was too complicated to actually use in practice. Sergeants were also rated on their ability to keep

their records in good order, motivate their officers to keep their beat

planners (binders containing information about the area) up to date,

and encourage their officers to provide progress reports on the

problems identified in the beat plan.

In addition, sergeants were assessed on whether they encouraged their

officers to target the priorities established in the beat plan. In beats

receiving a high score, sergeants motivated their officers to pay attention to the priority problems identified there. This included calling

for reports about what was being done about official priorities at beat

team meetings and regularly exhorting officers to follow up on them.

Part of the problem-solving package was the notion that beat policing

is a team activity that runs around the clock. Beat team meetings

were held to bring together officers from all shifts to identify priority

17
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

18

problems and develop strategies for addressing them. Officers in lowranked beats often did not know what the official priorities were and

went on patrol without much guidance from their supervisors. Finally,

sergeants were rated by the productivity of their beat team meetings.

Productive team meetings were well attended and energetic, and virtually everyone present played an active role. Plans were made and

debated, and officers felt free to add or critique ideas. Sometimes the

experiences of other beats were discussed.

Beat officers. Beat team officers’ activities were rated along three

dimensions. The first was whether they actually worked on the problems identified as priorities for their beats. Under CAPS, each beat

team was expected to choose two to four issues on which to focus

their problem-solving energies. These were to be identified in their

beat plans. The study examined whether officers actually worked on

those priority problems in a consistent or sustained fashion. For example, police in one beat identified seven priority problems; of these,

six were successfully resolved (by their criteria), and records clearly

tracked how they were handled and the extra resources required to

do so. In another beat, officers closed three of the beat’s five formally

identified priority problems within a year. At team meetings, virtually

every officer became involved in debates over how best to address

these issues.

In terms of the problem-solving model, while all beat officers had

been trained to analyze crime and use the five-step process adopted

by the department, the study team held them to a fairly loose standard

in assessing their problem-solving practices. Consideration was given

to the following: Was there any deliberation following problem identification, or did officers just act instinctively? Did officers talk over

potential strategies? Was there evidence that they assessed their

progress or made midcourse corrections during their efforts? In one

area, self-assessment occurred during meetings that officers held regularly with leaders of a local crime watch group. They discussed local

problems and strategies for coping with them that could be fielded by

both police and the group on its own. In another area, the day-watch

beat officer (on this shift they worked alone in safer areas) kept careful records in his beat binder and acted quickly when the city attorney
Problem Solving in Practice

assigned a prosecutor to assist officers in his district. He had good

records on troubled buildings in his beat, several of which were associated with problems formally identified as priority issues. The two

quickly developed a plan for evicting bad tenants in some troubled

buildings and for demolishing an abandoned building.

The third factor rated was whether beat officers were actually employing any creative—or at least nontraditional—strategies for solving

problems. This was one of the aspects of the new program that did not

surface often. Most beat teams retained traditional tactics, including

patrolling, ticketing, and making arrests. Some of the innovations

involved communicating and working with new civilian partners,

including school principals and local merchants. Teams also promoted

citizens’ efforts, including “positive loitering” projects and neighborhood marches. In one beat, police coordinated the efforts of the alderman, real estate developers, members of the local school council, and

beat residents to solve one problem.

Community involvement. Beat teams were rated on their efforts

to involve the community, and the productivity of each beat’s community meetings was also assessed. The teams were scored as being

productive if interchanges regularly occurred between police and residents regarding beat problems and what was to be done about them.

Consideration was given to whether police reported back to residents

on the status of problems discussed at previous meetings or on their

efforts to do something about them. In one area, the beat sergeant

felt that making community meetings “pay off” was the best way to

encourage participation, so officers kept careful track of each problem

raised at beat community meetings. They were discussed individually

at beat team meetings that were held immediately afterward, and

action plans were agreed upon. At each beat community meeting,

team members then reported back on what they had done about the

problems discussed at the last meeting and their current status.

Consideration was also given to whether officers engaged in any community outreach efforts, including attempts to inform the public about

beat community meetings or other events. Instances in which they

took the initiative to develop a good relationship with community

residents were noted. In one area, officers visited the homes of recent

19
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

20

burglary victims and encouraged them to attend beat community

meetings. In another, officers and a group of residents discussed how

to improve attendance at beat community meetings, eventually

deciding to try a new location that would be more accessible to many

residents (and attendance increased). In a third, police included an

active and knowledgeable civilian in the team’s police-only meetings.

In another diverse area, police worked hard to ensure that good translators (not just someone present who would volunteer) were available

for beat meetings. It is important to note that police efforts to involve

the community in problem solving were assessed independently of

their success because, as noted above, the beats varied significantly

in their latent capacity to become organized and involved.

The study rated whether police involved residents in some way in

attempting to solve a problem. This was one of the most sophisticated elements of Chicago’s problem-solving program and was rarely

observed. Although evidence of working partnerships was sparse, some

precursors to joint police-community action were uncovered. In one

area, residents and police together organized marches against street

prostitution. In another, police worked closely with residents to

address problems with a building owned by an absentee slumlord.

They gathered crime data and reports about specific problems in

the building, worked with the city inspector, and worked to see the

slumlord convicted and subsequently serve several weeks in jail on

a criminal housing neglect charge.

Beat plans. Finally, the quality of the formal beat plan filed by each

beat was rated on two criteria. The first was whether the plan was well

thought out, whether it addressed what were considered to be the real

and obvious problems in the area, and whether it showed evidence of

thinking through the problems identified using the steps in which

officers had received training. Some of the most highly rated beat

plans specified a role for other city agencies, special units within the

police department, and community organizations. Others were thrown

together at the last minute to meet a deadline, without input from

team officers and without attention to the issues raised by the public

at beat community meetings. The completeness and logic of beat

plans were assessed by reviewing the material stored in each beat’s

master file at the station house.
Problem Solving in Practice

The second criterion of the beat plan rating was the extent to which

the problems identified in the plan matched community assessments

of what the beat’s real problems were. In beats receiving a low measure on this rating scale, drastic discrepancies were observed between

the public’s view (as revealed by the survey and interviews with local

activists) and police priorities. In some instances, the police knew this

but disregarded public opinion, often because it did not prioritize “real

crime.” A harder call occurred when problems were left off the plan

because officers feared that police headquarters would not think they

were important enough. At least once, a district management team

was chastised for listing what the top brass thought was a “nonproblem” just because it was a community priority. Near the top of the

rating scale, the beats’ priorities were very much in line with the

concerns of residents voiced at beat community meetings.

Categorizing the Beats

The final categorization of the study beats as excellent, reasonable,

struggling, or failing was based on a statistical clustering using the five

evaluative scores. The beats cast together in each cluster resembled

one another more closely on all five dimensions than they resembled

beats in another cluster.

Excellent programs: Solid leadership

The best programs were mounted in Two-Turf, Bungalow Belt, Norte,

and Inner City. These beats enjoyed solid leadership by beat team

leaders, and their officers often were enthusiastic and innovative.

For the most part, their beat plans and profiles were up to date, and

quite frequently they were used by officers as well as team leaders.

The priority problems identified in the beat plans were regularly

addressed. Beat team meetings were well attended and officers spoke

up. They also regularly engaged in community outreach efforts. While

sophisticated joint problem solving was not necessarily in evidence

(it was rare everywhere), information was consistently and effectively

shared between police and residents at beat community meetings.

21
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

22

“Paperwork” did not seem to be a big problem here; in fact, police

working in some of these beats developed their own, including special

forms for addressing problems brought up at beat meetings but not yet

prioritized, and they made frequent use of interdepartmental request

forms so that other units and outside resources could be brought to

bear on beat issues. City services forms were also frequently used by

officers on beat teams receiving higher ratings, in contrast to officers

on beat teams receiving lower ratings, who tended to see the city

services forms as yet another imposition by the brass downtown.

Two-Turf was the most highly rated beat. Police there regularly

worked on priority problems and reported on progress at beat team

and community meetings. They were also quick to take on fresh problems raised at beat community meetings. Their team meetings were

energetic, and the officers did not hesitate to debate ideas that were

tossed around, even when their bosses were present. They developed

nontraditional solutions to two issues identified by the community as

important: public drinking and truck parking on residential streets.

They also added street prostitution to the official list of priority problems at the insistence of the community, although they did not think

it was a serious problem in the area. The day shift was aggressive in

combating graffiti, a significant problem in this Latino area. The team

sergeant developed well-conceived beat plans that identified clear and

addressable problems at specific locations. He insisted that officers follow up on all issues raised at community meetings, and he kept a list

to make sure that they did. The sergeant and his officers worked to

build citizen involvement in community meetings and had good relations with neighborhood activists. Police in Two-Turf made aggressive

use of city services, and representatives of city agencies were frequently invited to attend community meetings. The lieutenant in charge

actively reviewed the work of his teams, attended community and

beat team meetings, and on occasion identified problems that transcended a single beat and called for a coordinated response. The

Neighborhood Relations unit created and distributed a newsletter for

the district but (consistent with the department’s plan) stood aside

and let beat team officers conduct public meetings.
Problem Solving in Practice

Reasonable programs: Underdeveloped aspects 

In general, beats with reasonable programs had most elements of

the city’s program in place, but aspects of their work were underdeveloped. The five beats in this group included Solid Mix (which

was quite diverse), Middle Classes (white and black homeowners),

Rebuilding (blacks threatened with gentrification), Southtown (blacks

and Latinos), and Property Values. While beat team members in these

areas could be conscientious, well intentioned, and open to the program, some were not regularly working on priority problems or making

efforts to involve the community. The beat team sergeants might

have a good grasp of problem solving and stay up to date administratively, but some failed to give feedback or guidance to their officers.

Although most officers seemed to be vested in the program, an entire

watch group (usually midnight) sometimes evaded involvement.

Younger officers often demonstrated a preference for aggressive and

action-oriented tactics over community work, and in the beats ranking toward the bottom of this category the police were still largely

incident driven.

Struggling programs: Little meaningful 

problem-solving activity

Beat teams in one of the two struggling areas—Blue Collars and

Potpourri (extremely diverse)—gave lip service to the concept of

problem solving but showed little evidence of understanding it in any

meaningful way; in the other area they understood the intentions of

the program but were uninterested in extending themselves to make

it effective. In neither area was much of an effort made to explore the

benefits of the new systems and resources available to them, and community involvement was seen by too many officers as a burden. In

neither case did the beat sergeant provide much leadership. One simply showed lack of enthusiasm for the program, and the other was

unsuccessful in rousing his group of rather unimaginative officers.

Their beat plans were incomplete and virtually never were consulted.

Officers frequently did not attend to issues raised at beat community

meetings, and sometimes they failed to report on their efforts when

they did.

23
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

24

Failing programs: Little implementation

In the failing areas, few elements of the program had been implemented or even attempted. These areas included Fiesta, Old Guard, Pride,

and Stir Fry. Officers serving there often indicated they felt hopeless

about their ability to make a dent in problems in their beats, and their

sergeants felt that community policing would not change matters—

except to burden their officers with more responsibilities and unnecessary paperwork. They relied almost solely on traditional policing

tactics, and their beat plans were largely ignored by the beat team.

Officers often demonstrated resentment toward community meetings,

indicating they were perceived primarily as forums for residents to

criticize the police or demand that they waste their time on noncrime

problems.

Policing in Stir Fry fell at the bottom of the list. Officers who worked

there assumed they could not resolve any of the beat’s problems. They

did not look beyond their traditional crime-fighting role but did not

think that standard tactics were going to make a difference either.

Beat team members indicated that they were not doing anything different than they had in the past, but still reported that “community

policing isn’t working.” Their sergeant thought CAPS was a public

relations program and resented the paperwork it imposed on him. He

made up his beat plan to encompass a few efforts already undertaken

by local activists and then declared that he would not use it. He did

not want to press too hard on his officers, who already felt “put upon”

by the demands of problem solving. His view of beat community

meetings was that they were just a forum for voicing complaints about

the police. Fiesta’s officers just appeared to be frozen in time, doing

what they always had done, seemingly untouched by the department’s

new directives. Their tactics were unmarked by the problem-solving

training they had received. Their response to drunks and panhandlers

on the area’s bustling commercial strip was to chase them away. They

held the community at arm’s length and sat apart during community

meetings. They did not utilize the city’s new service request forms. As

one officer put it, “Everybody complains to us. Why can’t the community call their alderman to complain? What do potholes have to do
Problem Solving in Practice

with police work?” In this graffiti-plastered area, only three-tenths of

one percent of the city’s cleanup efforts were triggered by a police

service request. 

Leadership Is Key

The evaluation indicated that the most important factor determining

the extent to which problem solving was implemented on the ground

was leadership. Leadership accounted for a great deal of the variation

among the beats, and the closer leaders were to officers in the field,

the more their leadership counted. Although there was considerable

variation among the district commanders included in this study, that

did not account for as much of the variation among the beats as did

the differences in efforts among beat team sergeants. The commanders’ understanding of community policing and their expressed support

of and commitment to the program were fairly visible to observers and

other members of the district management team, but these factors

were not closely mirrored by what beat sergeants or their officers did

or their extent of community outreach.

Lieutenants who directly oversaw the beat team sergeants had greater

impact on beat ratings than did district commanders. Across the

beats, how actively lieutenants managed their sergeants and officers

made a difference in what they did. There was a great deal of variation in how the lieutenants did their jobs. Some carefully reviewed

beat plans and gave their sergeants feedback to improve them, and

others simply signed them. A few (but not many) studied beat plans

intently enough to identify generic problems that cut across beat

boundaries. Some made a practice of occasionally attending beat team

and community meetings, while others did not appear to know much

about what went on there.

The beat team sergeants played the key role in the process. What they

did accounted for a great deal of the variation in what their officers

managed to accomplish. Assessment of beat officers’ performance was

based on whether they actually worked on the problems identified

as priorities for the beat, employed the steps that constituted the

25
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

26

problem-solving model, and developed nontraditional strategies in

tackling problems on their beat. They performed these activities more

frequently when their sergeants pushed them to focus on the key

problems, stressed problem solving, clarified the importance of following department protocols, and held productive team meetings. For

example, Bungalow Belt’s sergeant strongly supported community

policing. He directed extremely productive team meetings and contributed his own creative strategies to discussions about resolving

problems. He kept officers focused on the beat’s priority problems

and reminded them to keep their paperwork up to date. On the other

hand, Fiesta’s sergeant just went through the motions. He composed

a beat plan on his own that ignored many of the beat’s visible problems, and his officers did not know what the area’s prioritized problems were. Pride’s sergeant thought community policing was a public

relations trick; he dubbed it “public appeasement policing” and

complained it was about missing garbage can lids.

The best sergeants also worked hard to involve the community and

to respond to their concerns. Community meetings in Bungalow Belt

featured printed agendas, crime maps, and flip charts for recording

problems and solutions, and the sergeant there worked hard to convince residents to take an active role in problem solving. Police in

Norte, a predominately Latino beat, had difficulty involving residents,

so the team identified a problem that residents could help them tackle—illegal dumping—and encouraged them to take on the “eyes and

ears” task of identifying offending trucks. In Old Guard—a homeowning, middle-class, “pro-police” black community with the thirdhighest beat meeting attendance rate of the group—the sergeant did

not know the beat or the people who lived there, did not press his

officers to work on prioritized problems, and thought that community

meetings were being held too frequently because the same problems

came up every time.
Problem Solving in Practice

Community Capacity and Police

Effectiveness

The ratings developed through the study showed how effectively

problem-oriented policing was being delivered in different kinds of

city neighborhoods. In particular, they could be compared to the indicators of community capacity previously described in this report to

assess the extent to which police efforts reinforced existing capabilities or supplemented the efforts of communities struggling to cope

with their problems. The first question is, Was problem solving in

Chicago helping better-off areas become even better off, or was it

helping worse-off places become better off? The high-capacity places

were already well positioned to defend themselves through politics,

downtown connections, their infrastructure of community organizations, and people’s willingness to intervene to protect the community.

They already admired the police, they turned out in larger numbers to

attend their beat meetings, and those who came to meetings became

involved in a wide range of problem-solving partnerships because of

the breadth of their linkages with each other and the community. 

In the surveys conducted, they reported that they were not so overwhelmed with problems, which were fewer in high-capacity areas. 

It was not clear how much help they really needed as compared with

Chicagoans living in areas rated farther down the community capacity

scale. 

Study findings: No direct association between community

capacity and program implementation 

The study findings are represented in figure 3. The horizontal axis

situates each beat in terms of its capacity, ranging from low to high.

The vertical axis arrays each beat on its police implementation ranking, placing those where problem solving was the most advanced near

the top and those where it was not far advanced near the bottom.

Figure 3 includes three beats that were not surveyed, although police

operations were intensively studied there: Middle Classes, Inner City,

and Southtown. These beats were included using statistical techniques

27
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

28

to estimate their capacity score based on variables such as voter

turnout that were highly correlated with capacity. These areas are

presented in italics in figure 3 to denote their more tentative position.

As figure 3 illustrates, no direct association was found between community capacity and program implementation. Rather, worse-off

places were about as likely to enjoy well-implemented or poorly

implemented programs as were their better-off neighbors. This is quite

different from the results observed in the distribution of community

-1.1 -0.6 -0.1 0.4

8

6

4

2

0

10

12

14

16

0.9 1.4 1.9

high

Two-Turf

Norte

Solid Mix

Blue Collars

Potpourri

Fiesta

Stir Fry

Pride

Old Guard

problem solving ranking

Inner City

community capacity index

low

Southtown

low

Bungalow Belt

Rebuilding

Property Values

high

Middle Classes

Figure 3: Community Capacity and Police Problem Solving
Problem Solving in Practice

capacity. In that case, measure after measure pointed to advantages

shared by the same set of communities. The benefits of informal social

control, organizational involvement, political mobilization, and downtown connections all seemed to accrue to the same fortunate areas.

They were also the most racially homogeneous, stable, home-owning,

and affluent beats. However, it was not the case that better-off places

with a homegrown capability for handling problems were also the

beats where police problem-solving efforts were most firmly in place.

Only one beat (Bungalow Belt) scored near the top on both dimensions, and two other beats fell into the “reasonable programs” category

and also ranked high on their capacity for self defense (Middle Classes

and Property Values).

The distribution of successful and unsuccessful programs also did not

closely mirror the heterogeneity or homogeneity of these areas. Those

with the best programs were often quite diverse. Among them, only

black Inner City had a high homogeneity index; Two-Turf and Norte

housed significant numbers of blacks as well as both Puerto Ricans

and Mexican-Americans, and Solid Mix was home to whites, Latinos,

and small numbers of residents of other ethnicities. On the other

hand, the two most diverse areas—Stir Fry and Potpourri—were not

well served at all.

Ironically, even in the beat that showed the greatest congruence

between a well-implemented problem-solving program and high levels

of community capacity and racial homogeneity, these advantages did

not automatically translate into wild success. Bungalow Belt was honeycombed with community organizations, and beat meetings there

averaged more than 100 participants; however, residents were not

particularly involved in joint projects with the police. They worked

independently of police because their foremost concern was white

flight from the neighborhood. Their efforts were directed mostly at

protecting property values and stabilizing the local real estate market

through home improvement campaigns, special mortgage loan programs, and aggressive marketing of the area among prospective home

buyers. CAPS provided a valuable framework for encouraging police

to do their work more effectively, but residents worked on their highest

priority concerns outside the structure provided by the city’s problemsolving framework.

29
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

30

On the other hand, three of the most highly rated beats had relatively

little “homegrown” capacity for problem solving. In those areas (TwoTurf, Norte, and Inner City), police supplemented the efforts of communities with relatively limited capabilities for resolving their own

problems. In terms of income, all three fell among the bottom quarter

of all beats in the city. None was particularly stable—all were in the

bottom half of the study beats in terms of age and length of residence—nor did any have strong enough connections downtown to

demand better police service. All three scored low on political mobilization, and none had demonstrated much ability to extract resources

from the wider community. They also were not places where police

and the public just naturally got along. In the survey, all three of these

highly rated beats were in the bottom half on a measure of the perceived quality of police service. One lesson of this study is that public

perception of police service provides an uncertain guide to the actual

quality of local policing, at least as was observed in action in these

communities. Finally, these were not places with easy-to-handle problems, where successes were easy to achieve. All were plagued by drugs

and gangs.

Although there was no clear association between the “haves and

have-nots” and the quality of community policing in these areas, there

certainly were left-out places. Near the bottom of the implementation

index shown in figure 3 lay three communities that were in great need

of help but were not receiving much: Stir Fry, Fiesta, and Potpourri.

All were poor, disenfranchised, and among the five beats with the

largest volume of problems, but they also had struggling or failing

problem-solving programs. Finally, two middle-income black beats—

Pride and Old Guard—lay in the quadrant where communities had a

high self-help capacity but community policing was not very effectively implemented. The irony is that these beats were among the most

supportive of the police, ranking third and fourth in the survey. They

were homogeneous with respect to race, and they were served largely

by black police officers. Both also had proven downtown connections

and a high capacity to mobilize politically, but the police did not

manage to implement the program there. These left-out beats were

primarily the victims of organizational circumstance. Implementation

of Chicago’s problem-solving program was highly dependent on
Problem Solving in Practice

staffing, management, and leadership factors, all of which were internal to the department and not particularly reflective of the capacities

of the community.

Enhancing Program Implementation:

Recommendations for the Future

The findings described in this report reflect observations over a 1-year

period, but the city’s program is continually evolving. Some administrative moves were made to speed program implementation while the

evaluation was under way but before the moves could have much

effect. For example, extensive meetings were held between program

managers and representatives of the districts’ management teams to

review the quality of their beat plans and the first of their new districtlevel plans. These daylong sessions were an occasion to review with

everyone how the program was supposed to work. Leaders also needed

the support of those below them to translate this vision into operational terms. In Chicago, the solution to this problem was more training for sergeants. Sergeants never practiced problem solving themselves, so they needed a thorough grounding in the basics. The new

stance of the organization called for them to “coach” or “mentor”

officers in their new roles, but the habits of the older, hierarchical

management structure were hard to break. 

What can be done to facilitate the implementation of problem solving? Recommendations for the future include efforts to develop training, knowledge bases, self-assessment, and leadership capabilities.

Training

More training is needed for beat officers. Problem solving calls for

police to think creatively and to invent or adopt tactics that they

were not taught as rookies (although they are now an integral part of

Chicago’s curriculum). Problem solving relies heavily on judgment

and initiative in a department where officers have long been expected

to do their job by following the rules in the book. In the absence of

31
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

32

effective training (and supervision), it is easy for police to fall back

on familiar ways of dealing with whatever problem is at hand. It is

also easier not to make mistakes that way, which is important if there

are few positive rewards for doing good community-oriented work

(see below). However, training is expensive and time consuming and

can easily be shortchanged. Without good training, police are likely

to move directly from identifying problems to acting on them instinctively, shortcutting information gathering and analysis.

Knowledge bases

It is also time to think about enhancing the capacity of police departments to learn from themselves, to support more creative problem

solving. Relatively little planned nontraditional problem solving

was observed, while ad hoc efforts of individual officers largely went

undocumented. Officers had no systematic way to share their expertise

or even just their problem-solving experiences. Departments need to

build “knowledge bases” of successful practice that can inform future

problem-solving efforts, perhaps by creating online systems that will

match simple descriptions of current problems with an inventory of

past successes in tackling similar problems. They also need to provide

references that will enable departments to find the required resources

and expertise.

Self-assessment

The most important recommendation is the most difficult one. Like

other cities, Chicago needs to develop practical ways to measure and

monitor the problem-solving efforts of units, teams, and individual

officers, and to assess their effectiveness. Large police departments

have a great deal of difficulty in determining whether any problem

solving is taking place and, if so, whether it is any good. Police officers

go out into the night alone or in pairs, and they work largely without

direct supervision. Usually departments can keep track of only their

most overt activities—how many calls they respond to, how fast they

drive, whether they arrest anyone or hand out enough tickets, how

often they show up late for work, and whether they attract any formal
Problem Solving in Practice

complaints from civilians. Departments obviously track the crime

reports made by victims, because the resulting dispatches that have

to be dealt with represent the largest demand on the labor pool. As

Herman Goldstein points out, many of the indicators that drive operational policing decisions and are used to assess officer and unit effectiveness have little to do with the substance of policing.2 They have to

do with keeping everyone busy and out of trouble. Those in the policing field know this, and it is a great source of frustration that there are

few cheap and easy-to-interpret measures of the substance of policing

to use in their stead. At the time this study was conducted, there were

none for measuring the extent of problems, except in the gardenvariety crime category. Also, there were no reliable and practical ways

of assessing whether officers were working on any of the problems;

no measures of the quality of their work; and no indicators of their

effectiveness at solving the problems identified.

Leadership capabilities

As previously noted, there were district commanders who were committed to problem solving but unable to get things going on the street.

The sergeants directly in charge had a clearer idea about what beat

officers were doing, but at that level commitment to the program was

spotty. The efforts of beat team officers and even their sergeants were

relatively disconnected from the orientation of district managers. How

well the commanders understood community policing and how vocal

they were in support of the program were fairly visible to observers

and to some members of the district management team, but these factors were not closely mirrored by what beat sergeants or their officers

did or their extent of community outreach.

Change can occur only if a department’s top managers, as well as senior community leaders, supply leadership and a vision of where the

organization is headed. Knowing what they are doing now has to be

matched with a clear statement of what they want to be doing in the

future. They have to clarify the extent to which community-oriented

work is a central mission of the department and how all parts of the

organization can contribute to the mission. It is important that senior

managers try, every day, to do something to push the organization

33
Implementing Community Policing in Chicago

34

down its new path. They must extend their message downward,

through the communication, accountability, and reward structures

that provide the levers by which they steer the organization.

Suggested Reading

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

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

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

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

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

1999.

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

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

Waveland Press, 1998: 159–174.

Notes

1. Sampson, Robert, Steven W. Raudenbush, and Felton Earls,

“Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective

Efficacy,” Science 227 (August 15, 1997): 1–7.

2. Goldstein, Herman, Problem-Oriented Policing, New York: 

McGraw-Hill, 1990.
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