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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate an experiment to improve residents’ opinions of the police in Portland, Oregon. Officers conducted community engagement patrols (CEPs) in 60 high-crime areas. The CEPs prioritized non-investigative contacts with community members to build trust and promote positive police–community interactions in designated high-crime locations. It is hypothesized that community members living in/near intervention sites would report greater exposure to officers, more positive interactions and feel more positively about police than residents in control areas.

In total, 90 crime hot spots were identified using crime reports and calls for service. Locations were randomized into three groups: 2 CEPs/day (n=30), 4 CEPs/day (n=30), and control (i.e. no supplemental patrols, n=30). Officers were dispatched to treatment locations via the computer-aided dispatch system for 90 consecutive days, resulting in 16,200 scheduled CEPs. Surveys were mailed to 11,760 households immediately after the intervention ended and 1,537 were returned (13.1 percent).

Residents from intervention areas reported a higher number of positive police contacts, whereas contacts that residents perceived as negative did not differ between the three conditions. Community attitudes, including perceived police legitimacy, were generally unaffected by CEP dosage.

This paper documents the outcomes of a large-scale field experiment seeking to improve public attitudes toward police using directed CEPs in crime hot spots. Whereas the intervention succeeded in providing more opportunities for positive contact with police, attitude change may necessitate longer-term strategies.

The present study aims to examine the relationship between public and informal social control by investigating whether perceptions of neighborhood policing exhibit a positive or negative relationship to informal control. The influence of police‐resident coproduction (police attendance at community meetings, police accessibility, police‐resident problem solving) on informal control is contrasted with general perceptions of police effectiveness and legitimacy.

Survey data from 81 neighborhood leaders representing 81 Portland, OR neighborhoods (i.e. unit of analysis), along with crime and census data is used. Analysis involves multivariate OLS regression and correlations.

A frequency of police attendance at community meetings was negatively related to informal social control, controlling for neighborhood demographics, crime, and social cohesion. Results indicate a community style of policing may not be enough to overcome deeply entrenched attitudes toward the police in the most disadvantaged communities and at worst may discourage informal social control. Perceptions of neighborhood social cohesion and government responsiveness are the best predictors of increased informal social control.

Further research is needed to understand the development of attitudes toward the police, especially in the most disadvantaged communities. The conclusions of the study are limited by the cross sectional design and use of a single neighborhood leader informant.

This paper attempts to identify how clear, tactical methods of collaborating with residents are related to informal social control.

This is one of the few studies to empirically assess whether public social control through neighborhood policing, in particular police‐resident coproduction and police legitimacy, is related to informal social control.

This paper aims to use three theoretical perspectives to understand variation in public opinion regarding the frequency with which police use race/ethnicity unfairly in making stops: procedural and instrumental justice, local government responsiveness, and intra‐racial differences.

The paper looks at data from a telephone survey of 1,431 Oregon residents: 741 from a stratified state‐wide random sample by county; 164 African‐Americans and 161 Hispanics over samples.

Perceived negative treatment during recent involuntary police contacts is related to a perception that police are more biased. Instrumental judgments regarding local government responsiveness to constituent needs and personal safety showed a negative relationship to perceptions of police bias. African‐American respondents exhibited the strongest police bias opinions; however, intra‐racial analyses showed that perceptions of government responsiveness weaken bias perceptions across race/ethnicity.

Research needs to explore how the public's relationship to their local government influences perceptions of police. The conclusions of the study are limited by the cross‐sectional design.

The study illustrates that proper police‐citizen communication tactics, stop and investigatory procedures, and ethical decision making should continue to be reinforced along with better promotion of local government and police success in meeting constituent needs through the media.

The paper examines the influence of both procedural and instrumental justice perceptions, and voluntary and involuntary police contacts. The sample contains sufficient numbers of African‐Americans and Hispanics and diverse communities (urban, suburban, and rural) to gain a representative view.

A popular practice of community‐policing is police attendance at community meetings. Given the prevalence of this co‐productive activity, research needs to understand the potential variation in police‐community interactions occurring in or reported in community meetings. Developing reliable and valid measurement techniques to characterize interactions occurring at police‐community meetings has strategic planning value for police and community practitioners and scholarly theoretical value. Two observational coding (issue‐specific and global) and sampling (continuous and periodic) strategies are contrasted. Methodological trade‐offs regarding validity, utility, strategic planning value, and theory‐testing value of the different methods are detailed. It is concluded that global measures of police‐community interactions and periodic observations of police‐community meetings can help with understanding variation in police‐community meetings and implementation effectiveness of co‐productive strategies. Yet, to validly understand the cause and effects of police‐community co‐production on building community and public safety, issue‐specific coding strategies and continuous observations of community meetings are necessary.