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The argument is presented that, is contrast to expectations, the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA) of 2000 will not be responsible for significant change in the practice of civil asset forfeiture, that the Act is a sheep in wolf's clothing. While it has ushered in some important procedural changes, CAFRA does not address several of what critics perceive to be the most significant problems associated with civil asset forfeiture, among them are a questionable standard of proof, equitable sharing, and the so‐called “taint doctrine.” Thus, it is likely that civil asset forfeiture will continue to be a valuable law enforcement tool in the war on drugs.

Qualified immunity is a defense available to law enforcement officials in Section 1983 lawsuits alleging constitutional violations. Whether qualified immunity is granted hinges on the objective reasonableness of the officer’s actions; that is, on what a reasonable officer would have done under the circumstances. However, when a plaintiff alleges a Fourth Amendment violation, another objective reasonableness test is used. The result can be a paradoxical finding of reasonably unreasonable conduct. The present study examines this quizzical feature of civil liability law and seeks to clarify the role that both objective reasonableness tests play. In doing so, it examines the varying definitions of objective reasonableness, reviews a number of court decisions where the Fourth Amendment and qualified immunity have collided, and makes recommendations for minimizing future confusion.

The growth of formal police‐probation partnerships in the USA has been accompanied by an increased awareness of the potential threats of mission distortion. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the dynamics of mission distribution

The paper is based on interviews with police and community corrections officers involved in an active partnership in Spokane, Washington. The paper emphasizes the abuse of authority, stalking horse incidents, and the scope of legitimate police and probation authority.

Ultimately, mission distortion has the potential to undermine the credibility of police‐probation partnerships.

The paper offers training and policy recommendations for police and community corrections administrators.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a foot patrol and citizen contact-based policing intervention in a suburb outside Dallas. Funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance “Smart Policing” initiative, the intervention consisted of assigning a single bilingual officer to an economically disadvantaged apartment complex in the heart of the city.

An examination of calls for service across several offense types was performed for the target complex, the adjacent neighborhood, and a nearby apartment complex. The aims of the study were to determine whether the intervention affected specific calls for service and geographic and/or temporal displacement/diffusion occurred.

Two key findings emerged. First, the intervention produced several hypothesized reductions and increases in specific call types, but temporal displacement rendered those effects short-lived. Second, diffusion to surrounding areas was observed and persisted through various treatment dosages.

The study provides useful information to practitioners who might seek to implement foot-patrol-based tactics in hot spots and micro-places. However, foot patrol and/or citizen contact patrol alone may not yield sustainable crime reductions in their target areas.

Few recent studies have examined the efficacy of foot patrol in crime hot spots. No recent studies have evaluated citizen contact patrol within micro-places. This study sought to address both limitations.

This paper explores the relationship between community‐policing and grants provided by the Office of Community‐Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) in the US Justice Department. Community policing data were gathered via a survey of 700 municipal and county law enforcement agencies employing more than 100 full‐time sworn officers/deputies. Grant data were gathered on the same agencies via a Freedom of Information Act request filed with the COPS Office. Census data were used for control purposes. General findings suggest that COPS funding is strongly associated with community‐policing. Specific findings are: first, hiring grants were more associated with community‐policing than grants designed to promote innovative programs and second, agencies with several COPS grants were more likely to report community‐policing programs than agencies with fewer COPS grants.

Proponents of police officer residency requirements maintain that police officers who live in the area they serve contribute to the local tax base, provide better information dissemination, and represent community interests in their agencies. However, little research has been conducted to assess the extent to which residency requirements affect public perceptions of the police. This paper explores the relationship between police residency requirements at the municipal level and citizen satisfaction with law enforcement – specifically, the connection between residency requirements and reported confidence in the abilities of the police to prevent crime, solve crime, and protect citizens. Data derived from a national survey of citizen satisfaction with criminal justice institutions conducted during 1995 and from the 1993 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey of agencies with more than 100 sworn officers reveal, among other things, that residency requirements affect citizens’ perceptions of the police in a negative way.

The adoption of community oriented policing (COP) is likely to have an impact on patterns of civil liability claims filed against police departments and officers. We hypothesize that COP practices may lead to an increase in civil liability claims by expanding the scope of police responsibilities and roles and by altering patterns of police citizen interactions which, in turn, could affect the clarity and uses of three legal standards which support civil liability claims: negligence in state tort claims, “color of law” under Section 1983, and the “legal duty” standard. We call for further research and suggest some managerial strategies to avoid the eventualities presented.

Although textiles is one of the oldest crafts and goes back to prehistory—it is believed that weaving grew up in the neolithic or later stone age—our modern civilization is producing such rapid and numerous developments in so many aspects of the subject that the individual is hard put to keep up with only a fraction of them.