Another department used pagers and distributed officers page numbers within the community. That seems to have also met with considerable success. Such racial tensions that may exist in these neighborhoods could be exacerbated by the perception that CPOs are from a different culture. Training in racial and cultural sensitivity may help to a degree, but more minority officers are needed in community policing programs. By far the greatest use of bike patrols in the current set of evaluations is drug law enforcement.
Bicycles are effective devices for approaching suspected drug transactions undetected.
It seems that bikes could be used more in a way to facilitate positive interaction with the citizens in a community. Further research on staff morale and turnover among CPOs. During next year's follow-up of community policing programs, we propose to interview a sample of officers who have left community policing squads for other assignments within their police department. This should enable us to determine more precisely the reasons for the high turnover rate among community policing programs. References Bureau of Justice Assistance.