COPS Program and the Spread of Community Policing Practices, 1995-2000

• NCJ Number: 200517
• Author(s): Calvin C. Johnson; Jeffrey A. Roth
• Date Published: February 2003
• Length: 71 pages
• Publication Series: NIJ Research Report
• Grant Number(s): 95-IJ-CX-0073
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)

Annotation

The implementation of community policing practices from 1995 to 2000 is the focus of this report from the Urban Institute and the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology.

Abstract

The Clinton administration’s Community Oriented Policing Services Program (COPS) is best known for placing 100,000 police officers on the streets of the United States. This report presents the findings from a national report concerning agencies’ implementation of community policing practices from 1995 to 1998. Previous research indicate that medium and large agencies reported increases in community policing tactics from 1995 to 1998. The authors discuss whether the same agencies’ use of community policing continued to grow from 1998 to 2000 and whether COPS grant recipients expanded their community policing tactics more rapidly than non-COPS grant recipients. A survey addressing various agencies’ community policing partnership programs demonstrated that the medium and large agencies profiled from 1995 to 1998 reported no new community policing tactics for the time period from 1998 to 2000. However, by 2000, COPS grantees did report significantly wider use of community policing partnership building tactics than did non-COPS grant recipients. For small agencies, community policing tactics continued to grow and increase in number from 1998 to 2000, and COPS grant recipients reported greater numbers of community policing tactics than did non-COPS grant recipients. An extensive series of tables detailing survey results is followed by appendices presenting both the policing tactics checklist and the survey design. References