Community Policing Instructions: Review Literature Locate Article Essay

Community Policing

Instructions: Review literature locate article study addressing a Criminal Justice Organization deals: Community Policing Changes operations a result terrorist attacks 9/11 if a corrections facility, operations a result technology, regulations, demographics.

Changes within a criminal justice organization:

Community policing article review

Lord, V.B., Kuhns, J.B., & Friday, P.C. (2009). Small city community policing and citizen satisfaction. Policing, 32(4), 574-594. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/13639510911000713

Community policing has become a popular approach to improve neighborhood-police relations in many cities, but according to the article "Small city community policing and citizen satisfaction," few studies have been conducted to examine its efficacy in more intimate contexts. The article's profiled a small, Southern city which had implemented a community-oriented policing approach and surveyed citizen perceptions before and after the implementation (Lord, Kuhns, & Friday 2009). The research study was quantitative and used a comparative, longitudinal approach to analyzing the data.

The authors noted that measuring changes that are due to community policing can be challenging, given that many other factors within the environment -- social as well as economic shifts -- can contribute to a rise or decrease in crime, regardless of the type of philosophy underlining the departmental approach. Using satisfaction surveys of the citizens in terms of their perceptions of law enforcement was thought to be more reflective of program efficacy, versus an absolute increase or decrease in crime or physical improvement or deterioration of the local environment. The citizen survey used to measure overall program efficacy consisted of "perceptions of crime and problems in the neighborhood, personal experience of crime and interactions with police officers, awareness of community-oriented policing and demographic information" (Lord, Kuhns, & Friday 2009).

The change in the police department was primarily organized by the chief of police, however the shift to community policing had already been embarked upon by the city at an earlier date in an incomplete fashion. "Prior to 2002, most of the officers had not been adequately and formally trained in the SARA/problem solving process. By 2005 community policing and problem solving was more thoroughly integrated into the departmental mission and training processes, and formal documentation of problem-solving projects and accountability for performance were expected by officers across the department" (Lord, Kuhns, & Friday 2009). Overall, the officers' perceptions of community policing were extremely positive at the beginning. The approach to community policing contained what are considered the four critical pillars of implementing community policing: philosophical; strategic; tactical; and organizational changes.

To support the philosophy of greater community-officer dialogue officers were assigned to "citizen input and partnership building…neighborhood, business, and individual-citizen meetings" (Lord, Kuhns, & Friday 2009). All officers received training in problem-oriented policing and were expected to implement the problem-oriented model into their daily lives in the form of the SARA model or Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment (SARA model, 2013, CPOP). From a strategic perspective, officers were assigned to specific districts in satellite police stations to reduce the length of time needed for community members to access police assistance. Tactically, there was a shift to more non-confrontational approaches to policing in the community, and members in neighborhood associations were asked to collaborate with officers "in prioritizing and resolving problems" (Lord, Kuhns, & Friday 2009). The organizational structure was shifted to give more responsibility to district captains, thus making the police more responsive to immediate needs.

To assess these changes, the affected citizens in a random sampling were surveyed before the change occurred in 2002 and after the full implementation in 2005. It was hypothesized that satisfaction and awareness of policing efforts would increase, fear would decrease, and that these relationships between the variables would be consistent across all demographic groups. However, these hypotheses were not supported by the survey results: "even though the police…