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Introduction
Policing as a Western social institution entered into a period of increased institutional legitimacy in the late 1990s as violent crime rates were both decreased dramatically and sustained after decades’ long increases. Questions about the legitimacy of police and their capacity to carry out their most basic functions no longer dominated public discussion. The crime crises, it seemed, were largely under control1 or at a minimum no longer captured the imagination of the public. The professionalization of policing seemed to be largely achieved, and the notion that the “crime problem” is something that could be addressed with deliberative public policy strategies was accepted in many corners. Likely for the first time in history, many in both the practitioner and academic communities began to believe that the police really could reduce crime through the adoption of research-based strategies. The manifestation and institutionalization of this belief are evidenced by the adoption of phrases like “evidence-based policing” that have begun to dominate the policing landscape (Sherman, 1998).
However, the facade of professional mastery was challenged, and in a big way, with the events of September 11th, 2001, and both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (August-September 2005). These events brought to light the inherent challenges faced by police when responding to large-scale disasters. More importantly, they sent the message that the public safety community was ill prepared to carry out one of its most basic functions; that is, to be an effective first line of defense when disaster strikes. The September 11th attacks, for example, made it clear that the public safety community was seriously hampered in its ability to perform its most basic emergency operations during disasters caused both by poor planning and communication limitations among the various responding agencies. Many of the police and other first responders, for example, had no ability to even communicate at the site of the World Trade Center attacks due to radio systems that lacked interoperability (Brito, 2007; Careless, 2006; Varano & Dover, 2011).
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita further emphasized that the “lessons learned” in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks as well as the infusion of federal and state resources to help address the systemic problems identified after 9/11 were largely ineffectual. Communication infrastructure was so devastated during Hurricane Katrina, for...