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Introduction
Since the 1980s, police agencies nationwide have operated under the auspices of community policing. Nearly all departments serving large, urban populations embed community policing in their mission statements, as do majorities of departments in mid-sized and small jurisdictions. Most large and mid-sized departments also maintain problem-solving partnerships with local organizations (Reaves, 2015).
In spite of the prevalence of stated commitment to community policing and its closely related counterparts (problem solving and order maintenance), there is little evidence as to whether street-level officers themselves buy into the philosophy and practice of community partnerships, problem solving and a focus on low-level disorder. In the midst of the community-policing heyday of the 1990s, Lurigio and Skogan (1994, pp. 315-316) observed that “the transition to community policing is frequently a battle for the hearts and minds of police officers.” It is not clear whether that battle was ever won.
The present paper aims to address this gap in the research. Using survey data from officers in a mid-sized city department, we examine officers’ endorsement of community policing, order maintenance and traditional law enforcement. Descriptive statistics gauge the overall temperature of officers’ attitudes toward each role orientation. Regression models containing variables tapping into facets of the work environment speak to whether these different aspects of the police job influence officers’ role orientations. The results have implications for police leaders seeking to instill their officers with a greater commitment to engaging with citizens and promoting quality of life.
Community policing: a brief history
Community policing began as a reaction to the deficits of the professional model that dominated policing throughout the early-to-latter decades of the twentieth century. The Civil Rights Movement and accompanying protests and riots, the Stonewall Riots, and clashes between police and college students and Vietnam War protestors exposed painful divides between the police and the citizenry (for reviews, see Gau, 2019; Paoline et al., 2016). Police were out of touch.
At the same time, disorder was spreading through urban centers. Although it is difficult to say whether urban blight caused middle-class (mostly white) citizens to flee to the suburbs or whether, conversely, “white flight” (and black flight) caused urban blight (see Massey and Denton, 1993), the two forces co-occurred and reinforced one another. Previously an attraction...