Cross-dispatching cars across beats, especially when the policy is to respond rapidly to as many call for service as possible, can result in GPO's being out of their beat for most of a shift. Relationships at the beat level are critical. They can be weakened when responsibility is shared as it usually is among those from different watches. Inconsistencies in policies and attitudes toward particular individuals or groups also reduce effectiveness. The conventional wisdom is that some such problems are unavoidable because patrol officers must be organized primarily by watches.
Beat organization is secondary.
For community policing to yield its full potential the conventional wisdom should be challenged. It is possible to organize patrol primarily by space and secondarily by time. A 100,000 population city, or precinct, can be divided into four zones, each headed by a lieutenant with 24-hour responsibility similar to that of a precinct captain or chief of patrol. At the next level, ten to twenty beats can be established with populations ranging from five to ten thousand. Between five and ten patrol officers are assigned permanently to each beat.