Chapter 7
Police Strategies
Learning Objectives
• After reading this chapter, you will be able to
– Describe the findings from classic police strategy
studies
– Explain why police departments conduct patrols
– Describe how the broken windows model
influenced policing
– Compare and contrast police patrol with community
policing
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SAGE Publications, Inc., 2019
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Learning Objectives
– Explain the basics of problem-oriented policing
– Describe at least five types of targeted policing
– Explain the way that CompStat is applied as a
police management strategy
– Evaluate the influence of homeland security and
terrorism on policing
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Introduction
• A strategy is both a broad set of ideas and a detailed
set of plans for achieving a specific goal, usually over
an extended period of time
• Police strategies are a broad set of ideas and a set of
plans for achieving the primary goals of the police –
reducing crime and disorder
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Police Strategy Studies
• 1960s, protests against Vietnam War, demonstrations
over civil rights and women’s rights, campus unrest,
riots in the street
• President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and
Administration of Justice issued their report, The
Challenge of Crime in a Free Society
– Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of
1968
• Added/changed numerous laws and allowed
federal funds to improve local policing
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Police Strategy Studies
• Created criminal justice programs in colleges
and universities
– LEEP (Law Enforcement Education
Program) funds
• Set aside money for police research and
highlighted the need for empirical studies in the
policing field
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Police Strategy Studies
• The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment
– Divided Kansas city into a number of areas and
assigned each area one of three treatments
• Received no routine patrol and officers were told
to stay out of the area unless they received a
call from a citizen
• Police deployment was left unchanged
• Would receive two to three times as many police
officers as normal
– The researchers found no changes
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Police Strategy Studies
• Kansas City Rapid Response Study, 1976
– Conducted by the Kansas City Police Department,
which wanted to assess another long-held belief in
policing circles that the faster the police responds to
a crime, the more likely the crime will be solved
– Other than crimes that were actually in progress,
there was no increase in the resolution of a crime
the faster the police responded to the call
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Police Strategy Studies
• RAND Criminal Investigation Study
– RAND Corporation conducted a study on police
detectives in 1977
– The researchers wanted to know how successful
police detectives were when it came to solving
crimes
– They found that detective work was superficial,
routine, and nonproductive
– 97.3% of all cases handled by detectives were
actually solved by the victim, witnesses, or (less
frequently) by the police officers arriving on scene
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Police Patrol Deployment
• The traditional method for police patrol either by foot or
by horse
• In the 1890s, there was a sudden craze over the
bicycle in America
• In addition to automobile patrols, police today often use
everything from golf carts at ATVs (All Terrain Vehicles)
and mopeds to motorcycles, water patrol vehicles, and
aircraft
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Police Patrol Deployment
• Four primary functions of what is called routine patrol
– Preventive patrol is focused on maintaining a visible
presence in the community to deter criminal
behavior and disorderly conduct
– Calls-for-service are those emergency (911) and
nonemergency calls that citizens place to the
police, or it may simply be when a citizen flags
down the police
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Police Patrol Deployment
– Officer-initiated contacts – when officers see some
type of traffic infraction or a misdemeanor/felony
committed in their presence
– Administrative duties, such as filling out patrol
vehicle inspections, updating policy manuals, and
all of the paperwork that documents their actions
and the actions of others
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Police Patrol Deployment
• Differential police response system
– Use of different types of responses for different
types of calls in order to deal with a high call
volume versus low number of police resources
• Split patrols
– Policing strategy that involves splitting the police
patrol into two groups
• One is responsible for calls-for-service
• One conducts police patrols and investigations
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Broken Windows Theory, Model, and
Policing
• James Q. Wilson
– Co-authored a paper with George L. Kelling
– Broken windows theory
• Argued that each neighborhood is different, but
each neighborhood faces two problems – crime
itself and fear of crime
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Broken Windows Theory, Model, and
Policing
• If a home has a broken window and that window
does not get fixed, it sends a signal not only to
the criminals that no one cares about the
neighborhood, but it tells the people who live or
visit there that no one cares
• If no one cares and the windows do not get
fixed, not only does it create a sense of fear in
the community, it may also invite criminal
behavior
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Community Policing
• Community policing developed out of a number of
factors that all merged together to create what became
the predominate method of policing in the 1980s and
1990s
– Police–community relations (1950s)
– Findings of empirical studies conducted in the
1970s
– Broken Windows Theory
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Community Policing
• The community policing era went through three
generations of community policing
– Innovation generation, which ran from 1979 to
about 1986
– Diffusion generation, which ran from 1987 to 1994
– Institutionalization generation, which ran from 1995
onward
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Community Policing
• Cordner identified the four dimensions of community
policing
– Philosophical dimension
– Strategic dimension
– Programmatic dimension
– Organizational dimension
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Problem-Oriented Policing
• Herman Goldstein, 1977, Policing a Free Society
– Reflected on the state of American policing and set
himself on a course to think about how policing
could be improved
– In 1979, Goldstein published “Improving Policing: A
Problem-Oriented Approach” in Crime &
Delinquency
• Argued that police focused too much on the
means and not the ends
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Problem-Oriented Policing
• Police focus on handling calls-for-service
without necessarily focusing on the desired
outcome or end product – solving problems
• Problem-oriented policing has been considered an
effective police strategy
• SARA model
– Scanning
– Analysis
– Response phase
– Assessment phase
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Problem-Oriented Policing
• POP thought to be effective
• Two cautions:
– Police-centric responses
– Displacement effect
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Targeted Policing
• Police target their resources to specific areas, times,
and targets in order to deter crime
• Several varieties:
– Directed patrol
• Officers responsible for monitoring specific
location for crime and disorder
– Aggressive patrol
• Police officers using the law to aggressively
target known crime locations
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Targeted Policing
– Saturation patrol
• Deployment of multiple officers for a specific
location
– Zero-tolerance policing (police crackdowns)
• Police spend time on the minor infractions
before they lead to more serious crime
– Stop and frisk
• U.S. Supreme Court case of Terry v. Ohio
(1968)
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Targeted Policing
– Tactical patrol
• Freed from calls-for-service to target problem
locations through multiple means
– Hot spots policing
• Emphasis on geography
– Crime-specific policing
• Plotting location for a specific crime
– Operation Ceasefire (Boston, 1990s)
• Different approaches to resolving the problem of
youth gun violence
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Four Related Strategies
• Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design
– Method for analyzing how the physical environment
impacts crime and criminal behavior and then
altering the physical environment to deter crime
• Pulling-levers strategy
– Developed out of Operation Ceasefire in Boston in
the 1990s
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Four Related Strategies
– Different programs focused on the offenders,
victims, schools, teachers, others to the problem of
youth bringing guns to school, and still others were
gang-oriented
• Evidence-based policing
– Evidence-based policing is then about using data
on offenders, victims, and crimes, as well as the
geographic nature of all three, to help guide police
intervention through the use of empirical studies
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Four Related Strategies
• Predictive policing
– Takes the use of empirical data even further and
attempts to make predictions about what crimes are
likely to occur, where, and when
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CompStat
• Derived from computer statistics
• CompStat worked through command-level meetings
where the police commissioner and his or her staff met
with the precinct commanders and his or her staff and
asked about the major problems in their area of
responsibility
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Homeland Security and Policing
• These were typically reserved, however, for major
confrontations such as hostage situations
• Special Weapons and Tactics
• Special Response Teams
• Police Paramilitary Units
– Militarization of the police in America
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Homeland Security and Policing
• Police departments around the nation began entering
into agreements with the federal law enforcement
agencies
– Joint operations and task forces
• Terrorism Task Forces and Joint Drug Task
Forces
• Usually led by the federal law enforcement
agencies, often the FBI, DEA, etc.
– Concept of counterterrorism, which had long been
the focus of the military, suddenly became applied
to the police
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Homeland Security and Policing
• Collection of intelligence
– Intelligence-led policing
• Built around the collection of information, the
analysis of threats, and the use of risk
assessments to determine potential threats and
to create actionable intelligence for police to
respond to potential threats
• Fusion centers – regional information sharing
centers that would act as focal point for
information that may provide police departments
the actionable intelligence they need to respond
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Conclusion
• Police strategies
• Early studies of police practices evaluated long-held
police assumptions
• Police calls-for-service rose dramatically in 1970s due
to implementation of 9-1-1 system
• Broken windows theory
• Community policing three generations: innovation
(1979–1986), diffusion (1987–1994), and
institutionalization (1995–present)
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Conclusion
• Community policing four dimensions – philosophical,
strategic, programmatic, and organizational
• Problem-oriented policing
• Development of the SARA model
• Targeted policing
• Four other related strategies – Crime Prevention
Through Environmental Design, pulling- levers policing,
evidence-based policing, and predictive policing
Payne, Introduction to Criminal Justice: A Balanced Approach 2e
SAGE Publications, Inc., 2019
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Conclusion
• CompStat
• The use of police paramilitary units
• Aftermath of 9/11, the United States became focused
on homeland security, and the police followed:
– National Incident Management System and the
Incident Command System
– Counterterrorism programs, intelligence-led
policing, and the use of fusion centers
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SAGE Publications, Inc., 2019
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