Implementing Community Policing: The Administrative Problem

• NCJ Number: 141236
• Author(s): G L Kelling; W J Bratton
• Date Published: 1993
• Length: 12 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: US Dept of Justice NIJ Pub
• Corporate Author: National Institute of Justice (NIJ)
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Historical Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Perspectives on Policing, N 17 (July 1993)

Annotation

Community policing represents a new future for law enforcement, but administrative problems are inherent in shifting organizations and professionals toward problem- oriented policing and responding effectively to community needs.

Abstract

Middle management is a key source of resistance to policing reforms, particularly because middle management ranks are bloated in many police departments. Early policing reforms and associated administrative problems had two elements, crime fighting and police officer control. Reformers confronted entrepreneurial, tactical, and administrative problems as they attempted to shift the strategy of policing to law enforcement. Entrepreneurial problems included redefining core police services and ensuring that an adequate market or demand for such services existed. Engineering problems involved devising tactics and technologies required to provide those services. Meanwhile, administrative problems included creating the organizational structure and managerial processes required to develop, maintain, and monitor the organization's activities. For entrepreneurial problems, reformers emphasized crime fighting and police officer control. The tactical solution of reformers initially centered on patrol and criminal investigation; later, reformers developed the more sophisticated tactics of preventive patrol, rapid response to service calls, and interception patrol. The solution to administrative problems focused on improving productivity by rationalizing both production efforts and management. As part of the law enforcement strategy, reformers moved to simplify the work of patrol officers, the service base of the police profession. Middle managers became the leading edge in the establishment of centralized control over the internal environment and organizational operations of police departments. Three case studies illustrating the role of middle management in centralizing control over police organizations in Dallas, Cincinnati, and Kansas City are presented. The importance of middle management in community policing efforts in selected Maryland, Wisconsin, Texas, Nevada, and New York jurisdictions is examined. 25 notes