Critic

doi:10.1017/9781108278423.003

2 - Critic

Community Policing: A Skeptical View

from Part I - Community Policing

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 August 2019

Stephen D. Mastrofski

Edited by

David Weisburd and

Anthony A. Braga

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David Weisburd: Affiliation:
George Mason University, Virginia
Anthony A. Braga: Affiliation:
Northeastern University, Boston

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Summary

About three decades ago, a few American police leaders caught the wave of community policing reform, and now just about everybody has gone surfing. If recent nationwide polls of police are indicative, many lower-ranking officers are catching the community policing wave (Mastrofski, 2017). Early interest in this reform can be attributed to police anxieties in the 1960s and 70s about skyrocketing crime and urban violence, unmet rising expectations from the civil rights movement, and middle-class alienation from government authority (Fogelson, 1977: ch. 11). Like a “perfect storm” these forces converged, stimulating criticism from blue ribbon commissions and a daily drumbeat of negative press for police. Calls for change were issued, some radical: community control of policing, deprofessionalization, and reassignment of some core police tasks to other government agencies and the private sector. Alarmed and intent on ending this crisis of legitimacy (LaFree, 1998), progressive police and scholars began to explore ways to make American police both more effective and more democratic without losing many of the advances made in policing in the previous half century (Goldstein, 1977; 1990; Trojanowicz & Bucqueroux, 1990; Wilson & Kelling, 1982). The resulting community policing reforms were influenced by fashions in organization development intended to make agencies less bureaucratic, more responsive to the “customer,” and more results oriented (Mastrofski, 1998; Mastrofski and Ritti, 2000). Although early twenty-first-century concerns about the threat of terrorism may have dissipated federal financial support for community policing, highly publicized events featuring violence between police and the community have stoked alarm about the state of police–community relations, resulting in a national blue-ribbon commission document that once again advances community policing as a key to American policing that is more effective and legitimate (President’s Task Force, 2015: 43): “Recommendation: Community policing should be infused throughout the culture and organizational structure of law enforcement agencies.”

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Type: Chapter
Information: Police Innovation
Contrasting Perspectives
, pp. 45 - 68

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108278423.003 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

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