This document discusses the evolution of community policing from traditional policing models. It analyzes community policing strategies including problem-oriented policing used in Newport News, Virginia. Problem-oriented policing focuses on recurring problems using the SARA model of scanning, analysis, response and assessment. The document also discusses how community policing strategies led to the CompStat model which focuses on using crime data and accountability to address problems proactively.

1. Conduct an analysis of community policing
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• Introduction
Policing has evolved over the last century to encompass not only
crimefighting methodologies, but also an
increase in services to the community. It is important to understand
this evolution because (1) the traditional model of policing, based
on random patrol care responding to individual calls for service, is
reactive and ineffective in reducing crime; (2) as a response, police
agencies focused on social problems as well as crime in the 1980s,
engaging the wider community to assist in curbing crime and
disorder; (3) the resulting policing strategy, community policing,
still provides a strong philosophical model used by police agencies
across the United States today; (4) community policing has been
enhanced through a management accountability process called
CompStat, originally beginning in New York under the leadership
of then
Commissioner Bill Bratton; (5) police agencies today employ a
variety of policing strategies and models aimed at preventing crime
as well as arresting offenders; and (6) police agencies today use
new and advanced information technologies to manage operations
and to evaluate the various policing strategies used in their
communities. Community Policing
As explained in Chapter 1, the failure of traditional law
enforcement methods to curb rising crime rates during the 1970s
and 1980s and to reintegrate the police with society gave rise to a
new movement, generally referred to as community oriented
policing (COP) or community policing. One of the first major
critics of the traditional policing model was Herman Goldstein.1 In

2. his classic work Policing a Free Society, Goldstein questioned the
effectiveness of traditional police methods in safeguarding the
constitutional rights and privileges celebrated in American society
(e.g., freedom of speech and expression, due process, the right to
privacy) versus the control of crime and the decay of social order.
Goldstein pointed out that these two goals may be incompatible
under the traditional police model and called for a closer link
between the police and the community.
During the same time period, Wilson and Kelling’s “broken
windows” thesis emerged as a dominant theme
in American policing debate.2 Arguing that crime seemed to
increase dramatically in neighborhoods where visible signs of
social decay and disorder were present (e.g., graffiti on bridge
structures, unkept lots with overgrown weeds, visible drug and
prostitution activities, warehouses with broken windows). Wilson
and Kelling argued that areas with these types of crimes are signs
of decaying neighborhoods and therefore a breeding ground for
more serious crimes. The philosophy of zerotolerance policing
(ZTP) focuses on targeting police responses to less serious crimes
in these areas, addressing the counterintuitive argument that
disorder may elicit more fear than actual crime.3 Where adopted,
officers are not given any discretion in dealing with minor crimes
of disorder; an arrest has to be made. In more recent times, ZTP
has been re
labeled as “disorder policing” in some circles.
Although ZTP has been given credit for reducing crime in some
jurisdictions, most notably New York City,
the empirical evidence of its effectiveness raises some questions,4
as does the assumed progression from disorder to serious crimes.5
Moreover, the strategy may have some unintended consequences:
in New York City the implementation of ZTP was accompanied by
an increase in citizen complainants and lawsuits alleging police
misconduct and abuse of force.6 Still, some policy makers
continue to adopt ZTP, which can
be used as the dominant strategy in an agency or within the

3. framework of other policing strategies such as communityoriented
policing. Others maintain the two strategies are incompatible and
that working closely with the community can achieve ZTP results
without generating increases in complainants and lawsuits. 7
Kelling and Coles went on to argue that “broken windows needed
fixing” and that the police must be directed to do more than just
“crime control.”8 Indeed, they argued that other functions of the
police were as important, and maybe more important, than strictly
enforcing the law and maintaining order. Police should focus more
on a service orientation, building key partnerships with churches,
youth centers, and other neighborhood groups in an effort to forge
new alliances with the community. Crime was seen not as the sole
purview of the police but rather as an entire community
responsibility. Police administrators began to look for new
techniques and operational strategies that emphasized more service
than arrest. Decentralization of services, characterized by
storefront operations and neighborhood centers, began to be
commonplace in police organizations. Old programs, such as the
horse patrol, bike patrol, and the “walking
beat” officer, were reintroduced to American policing as ways to
bring the police and the community closer
together (see Figure 2.1).
Although Braiden9 argues that community policing was “nothing
new under the sun” because it only echoed the ideas expressed by
Sir Robert Peel in the early 1800s, community policing did
represent a refreshing approach to earlier problems. Community
policing embraced the Peelian principle of police as members of
the public giving fulltime attention to community welfare and
existence. Therefore, policing was linked to a myriad of social
issues other than simply crime, including poverty, illiteracy,
racism, teenage pregnancy, and the like.10 Figure 2.1 Officers
interact with community functions in
order to provide customized police services appropriate to
the city area. In this case, an officer on horseback
provides visible patrol for the congested areas of

4. Manhattan.
(© Enigma/Alamy) Although precise definitions of community
policing are hard to find, it generally is an operational and
management philosophy that is uniquely identifiable. Primarily,
community policing was characterized by ongoing attempts to
promote greater community involvement in the police function.
For the most part, the movement focused on programs that fostered
five elements: (1) a commitment to crime prevention, (2) public
scrutiny of the police, (3) accountability of police actions to the
public, (4) customized police service, and (5) community
organization.11
Community policing advocates argue that traditional policing is a
system of response; that is, the police respond to calls for services
after the activity occurs. Police response is then reactive and
incident driven rather than proactive and preventive. Further, a
randomized motor patrol neither lowers crime nor increases
the chances of catching suspects. Increasing the number of police,
then, has limited impact on the crime rate because improving
response time on calls for service has little relevance to preventing
the original incident.12 In addition, the role of the individual police
officer is largely limited within the confines of patrol and response.
In present practice, COP is a proactive approach to crime control
with three complimentary elements: (1) community partnerships,
(2) problem solving, using the SARA model, and (3)
organizational transformation (see Figure 2.2). Organizational
transformation means changing the police department so it
supports COP. For example, because new values and methods are
being introduced, the awards and performance appraisal systems
must be designed to reinforce COP.13 Community Policing and
Compstat
Although community policing has not had the drastic effects its
supporters had hoped, the premise behind the philosophy has in
turn
led to the quality movement within policing: making the police be
more efficient and effective. Today, most ambitious police

5. methodology focuses on precisely that concept—CompStat. The
word
CompStat is derived from “comp,” stemming from the word
“computer,” and “stat,” which originates from “statistics.” The
process
was originally developed in New York City by then-Commissioner
William Bratton in the mid 1990s,14 and continues in some form
today
in most major cities. CompStat is a process that looks at the
individual
needs of the community and then designs proactive strategies to
stop
or prevent crime. To accomplish this goal, Bratton required his
department (New York in the 1990s and Los Angeles in the 2000s)
to
analyze crime data weekly and required police administrators to
meet
regularly to share information between divisions and precincts. A
key
component of CompStat is to force police commanders to address
crime and social problems in their areas of responsibility and to
address them immediately. Police commanders are then held
accountable for the success or failure of their plans and decisions.
Combining the two strategies of in-depth analysis with
management
accountability is the heart of the process. Quick FACTS Review of
Research on
Traditional Policing 1. Increasing the number of police does not
lower the crime rate
or increase the proportion of solved crimes. 2. Randomized motor
patrol neither lowers crime nor increases
the chances of catching suspects. 3. Two-person patrol cars are not
more effective than oneperson cars in lowering crime rates or
catching criminals; they are
also no safer. 4. Saturation patrol does not reduce crime; instead, it

6. displaces
crime. 5. The kind of crime that terrifies Americans most
(mugging,
rape, robbery, burglary, and homicide) is rarely encountered by
police on patrol. 6. Improving response time on calls has no effect
on the
likelihood of arresting criminals or even in satisfying involved
citizens. 7. Crimes are not solved through criminal investigations
conducted by police—they are solved because suspects are
immediately apprehended or someone identifies them (name or
license number). Essentially, CompStat is a collection of modern
management
practices, military-like deployment efforts, and strong enforcement
strategies all based on the availability of accurate and timely
statistical crime data. Four core principles highlight a police
department’s model of CompStat: 1. Accurate and timely
intelligence and statistical crime
information based on geographical settings and/or areas. High-tech
computer systems and geographical mapping programs are most
helpful in providing the aggregate and individual data often
required for effective CompStat efforts. However, more
rudimentary
aspects of visual crime analysis can be accomplished through daily
pin mapping and bulletins. 2. Rapid deployment of resources,
particularly combining the
immediate presence of uniform patrol working in concert with
directed undercover operations. Rapid deployment of other city
and governmental resources, such as nuisance and abatement
personnel, sanitation workers, and alcoholic beverage and
licensing
enforcement, is an additional aspect of this principle. 3. Effective
tactics and strategies of enforcement that focus on
visible street crimes or “quality-of-life” crimes, such as loitering,
drinking in public, street prostitution, or even jumping subway
turnstiles. 4. Relentless follow-up and assessment, which include

7. placing
accountability and responsibility not only on the individual police
officer on the beat but also on individual police managers of
traditionally defined areas, such as division heads or precinct
captains.15 CompStat focuses on using the most accurate and
timely information
and data available to the police, opening lines of communication
both
horizontally and vertically within the organization, activating the
community at large, and improving the overall efficiency and
effectiveness of the police. CompStat is problem-oriented and
preventive, and stresses the need to focus on problems rather than
on
past incidents. In this manner, CompStat significantly departs from
the traditional police model by taking a preventive approach rather
than a more reactive, incident-driven approach. CompStat
meetings
tend to focus on an individual area or a community’s problems
with an
eye toward remedying the situation or preventing future crime.
The CompStat process is not limited to large, metropolitan
agencies.
Indeed, CompStat can be implemented in cities of all sizes with
diverse populations and varying crime rates. The process helps
police
executives clarify their agency’s mission and focus its efforts on
the
most important issues first, identifying problems early and
developing
effective strategies for remediation and prevention. Most
importantly,
the CompStat process allows the organization to learn quickly
what
works and what does not, while providing a flexible methodology
to

8. try innovative programs and promising strategies.16 Community
Policing Models
Many cities have implemented a blend of community policing
strategies with CompStat. To understand the merger of these
important movements and the evolution of policing today, three
historical case studies that highlight the evolution of the
community
policing philosophy are presented: Newport News, Virginia;
Chicago,
Illinois; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Newport News, Virginia
In 1983, under the direction of a new chief, Darrel Stephens, the
Newport News Police Department developed a “problem-oriented”
approach to policing. Known as problem-oriented policing, this
innovative style of community policy focused on the department’s
traditional response to major, recurring problems. Its goal was to
reassess the traditional, incident-driven aspects of police work and
fundamentally change the way the Newport News Police
Department
viewed its mission. The resulting self-analysis yielded an
important
four-step, problem-solving methodology (commonly referred to
as SARA) that has become an integral part of daily operations
Scanning—Instead of relying on broad, law-related concepts,
such as robbery, burglary, and auto theft, officers are encouraged
to
group individual, related incidents that come to their attention as
“problems” and define these problems in more precise and useful
terms. For example, an incident that typically would be classified
simply as a “robbery” might be seen as part of a pattern of
prostitution-related robberies committed by transvestites in
centercity hotels. In essence, officers are expected to look for
possible
problems and accurately define them as part of their daily routine.
Analysis—Officers working on a well-defined problem then
collect information from a variety of public and private sources,

9. not
just traditional police data, such as criminal records and past
offense reports. Officers rely on problem analysis guides that direct
officers to examine offenders, victims, the social and physical
environment, and previous responses to the problem. The goal is to
understand the scope, nature, and causes of the problem and
formulate a variety of options for its resolution. Response—The
knowledge gained in the analysis stage is then used to develop and
implement solutions. Officers seek the assistance of citizens,
businesses, other police units, other public and private
organizations, and anyone else who can help develop a program of
action. Solutions may go well beyond traditional police responses
to
include other community agencies and/or municipal
organizations. Assessment—Finally, officers evaluate the impact
and the effectiveness of their responses. Were the original
problems
actually solved or alleviated? They may use the results to revise a
response, to collect more data, or even to redefine the problem.17
Goldstein18 further explains this systematic process in his
book Problem-Oriented Policing. Destined to become a classic in
the
field, Goldstein’s work attempts to give meaning to each of the
four
steps. For instance, a problem is expanded to mean a cluster of
similar, related, or recurring incidents rather than a single incident.
The assumption is that few incidents are isolated; instead they are
part of a wider set of urban social phenomena. Examples of such
community problems are the following: • Disorderly youth who
regularly congregate in the parking lot
of a specific convenience store • Street prostitutes and associated
“jack roll” robberies of
patrons that continually occur in the same area • Drunk and
drinking drivers around the skid-row area of the
city • Panhandlers, vagrants, and other displaced people living on

10. the sidewalk in a business district • Juvenile runaways, prostitutes,
and drug dealers congregating
at the downtown bus depot • Robberies of commercial
establishments at major intersections
of a main thoroughfare of a suburban area that is a corridor leading
out of a large central city19 Note that each of these problems
incorporates not only a potential or
real crime but also a wider community/social issue. Further, each
problem has been identified with a specific location.
Goldstein20 emphasizes that the traditional functions of crime
analysis
under the problem-solving methodology take on much wider and
deeper importance. The pooling of data and subsequent analysis
provide the basis for problem identification and response
strategies.
Therefore, the accuracy and timeliness of such information
becomes a
necessity for the department.
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