National League of Cities: Excellence in Community Policing Awards 1996, 1997, and 1998

• NCJ Number: 194117
• Date Published: 2000
• Length: 7 pages
• Grant Number(s): 95-IJ-CX-0064
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description

Annotation

This report describes the procedure and outcomes of the National League of Cities' (NLC's) Excellence in Community Policing Awards for 1996, 1997, and 1998.

Abstract

Under the National Institute of Justice grant, the awards competition identified promising community-oriented policing efforts at the local government level for the NLC membership. This report lists the key factors in the administration of the competitive process, describes the development of the program and the procedure for reaching the competitors, and lists the States that had entries (46 States and Puerto Rico applied over the 3 years). Information is provided on the breakdown of applicants by city type and applications by categories. The "community policing in action" category received the largest response, followed by the category of "community policing in schools/youth/gangs." A review of the winners and honorable mentions found the following factors to be the keys to successful community-policing efforts: collaborative efforts with the community, the business community, and other agencies; clear identification of the problem; clear outline of the program or effort's plan and objectives; strong community support for the program or effort; and specialized training for officers and volunteers. The NLC's dissemination of information on the features of the successful community-policing efforts continues to be available through NLC's weekly newspaper, newsletters, publications, special reports, broadcast faxes, and its database of exemplary community-policing programs.