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The purpose of this paper is to provide direct comparisons between the views of citizens and officers within a jurisdiction that has been largely influenced by the community‐oriented policing movement. Comparisons between police and citizen views are specifically made in terms of: the relative importance of crime problems in the jurisdiction; the value of community policing programs; overall satisfaction with the performance of the department; and strategies designed to improve the performance of the department.

The methodology of the study is officer and citizen surveys.

Officers and citizens significantly differed in their assessment of the importance of specific crime problems in the jurisdiction, the value of community policing programs, the degree to which they were satisfied with the performance of the department, and their assessment of improvement strategies. These differences are discussed within the context of previous literature that has focused on the implementation and continued acceptance of community policing.

Findings are derived from surveys conducted in one jurisdiction. Findings are limited to the degree that citizen/officer views within this jurisdiction differ from those found elsewhere.

The study utilizes seldom‐used concurrent surveys of officers and citizens within a single jurisdiction. The method allows for the direct comparison of police and citizen views. Thus, this paper provides evidence regarding the feasibility of collaboration between police and citizens, and the continued viability of community‐oriented strategies.

This study aims to evaluate a promising community-oriented policing strategy called “front porch roll call” (FPRC), which involves conducting roll calls in public forums.

A mixed methods approach was used by drawing on survey data, field observations and qualitative interviews to describe how FPRCs were implemented in Saginaw, MI from 2019 to 2022, and how they can be successfully implemented to operate in accordance with the theoretical foundations of community-oriented policing.

Survey data from FPRC attendees reported improvements in their perceptions of police legitimacy, trust in the police and procedural fairness—each of which are vital pathways to developing collaborative crime prevention initiatives in community-oriented policing. Qualitative interviews and field observations provided unique insights into areas of improvement and ways to enhance sustainability for future use.

Community-oriented policing offers a philosophical approach to addressing crime problems through the formation of localized, collaborative solutions that come from police-community partnerships. A key implementation challenge is that such programs can fail to align their initiatives with the theoretical principles of community policing. FPRCs offer an innovative solution that operates closely with the spirit of community-oriented policing. Data from a mixed-methods evaluation provide further insights into their challenges with implementation and ways to improve upon them.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between law enforcement agency domestic violence standard operating procedures (SOPs) and Florida's model policy for domestic violence, as well as type of police agency and policing management model.

Data for this study include the SOPs and self‐reported policing model for Florida law enforcement agencies (n=72), which were collected through an e‐mail request to all Florida agencies. The policing model was dichotomized into “traditional policing” and “community oriented policing” styles. Content analysis was used to analyze each agency's SOPs.

Findings suggest there are no differences in SOP content across “traditional” versus “community oriented policing” policing models. Agencies self‐reporting as community oriented policing agencies were not necessarily any more likely to include preventative or long‐term goals within their domestic violence SOPs than agencies self‐reporting as “traditional” policing agencies. There were also no differences in SOP content across type of police agency.

This research suggests that although SOPs are used to formalize policy for officer decision making, they may not be representative of the policing management model of an agency.

Agencies that identify as community policing agencies should examine whether written policies demonstrate an adherence to the core tenets of community policing.

There is no research that examines the link between written domestic violence policies and agency policing models. This paper adds to the extant literature and suggests topics for future research in this area.

This paper aims to examine the impact of the implementation of community‐oriented policing and problem solving in a small city.

Citizen surveys that measure perceptions and activities of the police are completed before and three years after broader implementation of community policing. Because the existing literature supports the influence of a number of individual, neighborhood, and situational characteristics, several variables are included and controlled.

The results show that although the police invest a great deal of time building partnerships with and problem solving in neighborhoods, there are no significant differences over time in citizen satisfaction with police or in fear of crime. Personal contact with police mediates the influence of individual and neighborhood characteristics on citizen satisfaction. Police presence remains a common significant predictor of citizen satisfaction.

Ensuring anonymity of subjects requires different samples between data collection periods; however, the same stratified random sampling process is used both times. The pre/post research design allows for measuring changes over time, but the lack of a control city threatens internal and external validity.

Citizen satisfaction is an important concern for all police and local governmental administrators; therefore, the findings of this study are useful for smaller agencies that are implementing or planning to implement community‐oriented policing.

With its focus on a small city and the capability to survey citizens before department‐wide implementation, this article expands research conducted on citizen satisfaction with police in a small town.

The purpose of this case study was to investigate the learning strategies of police officers. Participants were 80 police officers serving in a Midwestern police agency. Of these, 49 were assigned to patrol duties and 31 were assigned to community oriented policing duties. Each participant completed the “Assessing the Learning Strategies of Adults” (ATLAS) instrument. When individual variables were examined in describing learning strategies among police officers, no significant differences were found using both chi‐square and a one‐way ANOVA. A multivariate discriminant analysis produced a recognizable discriminant function, and three variables met the criteria to be included in the interpretation of the meaning of the discriminant function. Predominately, male police officers prescribed to the learning strategy traits that are desired in community oriented policing. Police officers who ascribed to the learning strategies which are more congruent with traditional policing were slightly younger than the officers who ascribed to the learning strategy appropriate for community policing. Furthermore, more females in this study ascribed to learning strategies more related to traditional policing.

Many criminologists have investigated the implementation process concerning the transformation toward community‐oriented policing, while researchers interested in the area of work and occupations and/or complex organizations have examined factors which contribute to or inhibit successful organizational change. To date, however, there has been little empirical research addressing the issue of employee receptivity to such change. The present study examines the effects of sheriff’s deputies’ socio‐demographic characteristics, work orientations, and perceptions of agency readiness/preparedness on their receptivity to organizational change. These deputies are employed in a sheriff’s department undergoing an agency‐wide shift toward community‐oriented policing. Our findings suggest that a service orientation and a belief that the agency has attained an appropriate level of preparedness positively influence their receptivity to change.

In January of 1999, following the philosophy of community oriented policing, the Polish National Police restructured its organization. This article presents results of two phases out of a larger research project conducted with the Polish police and community members representing diverse environments including college students, politicians, and media representatives. Our results represent an analysis of over 2,000 questionnaires distributed to the members of the Polish police and contrasted against data collected from hundreds of questionnaires answered by college students in three cities. The questionnaire was designed to measure the degree of understanding of the role of the police in a democratic society, as perceived by both the public and the police. Some of the main principles of community‐oriented – problem‐solving policing are revisited in the questionnaire, providing a baseline for discussion about the feasibility of implementation of a philosophical paradigm in real‐life environments, when the actors involved have no clear concept about the roles they are supposed to play.

Most police agencies in the USA make the claim that they use social media, and such use is drawing a great academic attention. Most studies on police use of social media focus on the content of police social media websites. Little research, however, has been conducted regarding what types of police agencies are in fact making use of social media. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap in the knowledge.

The study reported here analyzes the 2013 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) data set to identify the principal organizational characteristics of police agencies associated with the use of social media. Binary logistic regression is used to identify significant independent predictors of police use of social media, viewed here as a form of innovation.

The findings indicate that the workforce size (commissioned and civilian personnel) of a police agency, the level of participation in multi-jurisdictional task forces and the early use of an official agency website to communicate with the public are the predictors of police use of social media.

Three theories pertaining to organizational behavior (i.e. contingency theory, institutional theory, and resource dependency theory), as well as Maguire’s (2003) study, are used to establish the theoretical framework for the research reported here.

Viewed as a pioneering study testing organizational theories related to police use of social media, the current study sets forth findings that help deepen the collective understanding of contingency theory, institutional theory and resource dependency theory as frameworks for explaining organizational behavior in policing.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the environment in which law enforcement officers operate is a main source of their job satisfaction, which is related to their overall work performance. In this line of research, a recent study by Johnson (2015) examined the organizational, job, and officer characteristics that may predict a police officer’s organizational commitment.

The current study replicates and extends the analyses performed in that study using an alternative data source to understand the influence of these measures on sheriff deputies’ organizational commitment during their organization’s shift to community-oriented policing.

Our results, while similar to those of Johnson (2015), revealed some unique findings. For example, in the current analyses, several organizational- and job- factors were significantly associated with deputies’ commitment to the sheriffs’ office. Specifically, deputies who report receiving higher supervisor feedback, higher peer cohesion, higher job variety and autonomy, and lower job-related stress were more highly committed to their law enforcement agency.

Key implications emerge for police administrators aspiring to influence employee organizational commitment during major agency shifts.

Overall, the present paper largely supports and progresses the findings of Johnson (2015) by extending them to sheriffs’ deputies, who are still largely underrepresented in policing research, and to an agency undergoing a dramatic organizational change. As such, the present study represents an important next step in understanding the factors that influence organizational commitment in law enforcement organizations.

Discusses the actual conceptions about policing used by social scientists. Police models are central entities of thoughts and ideas on policing, which include an observable internal coherence. Stresses that there are in fact only four central police models: the military‐bureaucratic model; the lawful policing model; community‐oriented policing (COP); and public‐private divide policing. Precisely in articulating COP against its negative references, the essence becomes clearer. Concludes that each concrete police apparatus can be considered as a combination of police models. The democratization process can be endangered by the growing dominance of a public‐private (divide) police model. That is the main reason why it is important to encourage the search for a more profound theoretical basis for policing the community.