Representing the Community in Community Policing (From Community Policing: Can it Work, P 57-75, 2004, Wesley G. Skogan, ed. -- See NCJ-201829)

• NCJ Number: 201832
• Author(s): Wesley G. Skogan
• Date Published: 2004
• Length: 19 pages
• Grant Number(s): 94-IJ-CX-0046
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute of Justice (NIJ)
• Sale Source: Wadsworth Publishing Co
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Dataset may be archived by the NIJ Data Resources Program at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data

Annotation

This chapter discusses the role that resident involvement plays in community policing.

Abstract

Resident involvement is among the core components of most community policing programs. Forms of involvement vary considerably, ranging from informational programs to advisory boards or decisionmaking committees. One form of resident involvement in community policing is representational. Citizens played a role in identifying and prioritizing neighborhood problems and monitoring the activities of police in Chicago. The police department adopted a decentralized turf orientation by reorganizing patrol work around small geographical areas, the city’s 279 police beats. Officers assigned to beat teams were expected to engage in identifying and addressing a broad range of neighborhood problems in partnership with neighborhood residents and organizations, and to attend community meetings. An administrative mechanism was developed that enabled beat officers to easily trigger a broad range of city services in response to resident complaints and to support problem-solving projects. The vehicle for all consultation and collaboration between police and residents was neighborhood meetings that were held almost every month. The representational structure created by Chicago’s beat meetings translates residents’ priorities into the program in action. There is a strong middle-class bias in participation in the meetings. Beat meetings do a better job at representing already established stakeholders in the community than they do at integrating marginalized groups with fewer mechanisms for voicing their concerns. Neither concern about crime nor dissatisfaction with the quality of police service is well represented in this community-policing program. There were strong correlations between residents’ priorities and the delivery of city services that speak to two widely discussed neighborhood problems: graffiti and abandoned cars. Neighborhoods plagued by these problems received more help. 3 citations, appendix