NCJ Number
209672
Date Published
2002
Length
182 pages
Annotation
Based on an analysis of police-citizen interactions in 60 neighborhoods, this study developed an ecological theory of police-citizen relations that views policing as a product of power relations among communities.
Abstract
The data used to test the ecological hypotheses proposed in this book came from the 1977 Police Services Study, which has retained its status as the police study with the most wide-ranging details and extensive magnitude to date. A critical part of the project consisted of an in-depth examination of 24 police departments and 60 neighborhoods. Intensive on-site data collection was conducted in the summer of 1977 by researchers in three standard metropolitan statistical areas: Rochester, NY; St. Louis, MO; and Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL. The police departments selected yielded a sample that reflected a cross-section of organizational arrangements and service conditions for urban policing in the United States. Information was obtained from police officers' encounters with citizens observed during selected shifts, telephone interviews with citizens, and observation of general patrol shifts. The analysis of the data tested the ecological theory that although individual police officers and citizens compose the microcosm of thousands of individual face-to-face encounters, the reality of inequality in wealth, political power, education, and social assets exist prior to and outside of these individual encounters. The data analysis corroborated most of the proposed hypotheses in finding that the police did act more legalistically and coercively in lower class, minority, and youth-laden neighborhoods, as well as in neighborhoods pervaded by fear and disorder. Citizen negative attitudes toward police were much less pervasive in respectable neighborhoods. Based on these findings, the author argues that the contemporary theory of community policing can only improve police-citizen interactions if the socioeconomic characteristics of deprived neighborhoods are upgraded through broad political and socioeconomic action. 10 tables and 276 references