Perceptions of Community Policing Across Community Sectors: Results from a Regional Survey (From Policing and Community Partnerships, P 93-110, 2000, Dennis J. Stevens, ed., -- See NCJ-194083)

• NCJ Number: 194089
• Author(s): Kent R. Kerley
• Date Published: 2002
• Length: 18 pages
• Sale Source: Prentice Hall Publishing
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter investigates perceptions of key community policing issues by local law enforcement leaders, local government officials, and leaders in community nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

Abstract

Data were from a survey of 3,000 local law enforcement leaders, local government officials, and leaders of community NGOs across the Southeast region of the United States. Perceptions were investigated regarding familiarity with community policing, extent to which community policing was utilized, police training needs, police-minority relations, and the focus of community policing training. Results showed that community policing was ubiquitous within law enforcement. Community leaders in government and especially NGOs were much less familiar with the concept of community policing and perceived community policing as being utilized to a much lesser extent in their communities than did law enforcement officials. Many local government and NGO leaders were unable to render any assessment of the extent to which community policing was being used in their communities. Respondents in the three groups also reported very different perceptions of the most pressing police training needs for their local policing agencies, and reported very different perceptions of police-minority relations in their communities. When asked what the main focus of a training institute in community policing should be, the majority of police leaders argued that training should focus on ways to involve officers in community policing programs, and to a much lesser extent, community residents. Local government and NGO leaders reported that the focus of training should be in improving the humanistic skills of officers and teaching them ways in which to create partnerships with community residents. Police leaders tend to offer more optimistic estimates of police-minority relations than do community leaders in government and NGOs. These perceptual differences across the three groups were strong even when controlling for race of respondents, thus suggesting a strong effect of respondents’ structural positions. 56 references