Policing in Transition: Creating a Culture of Community Policing

• NCJ Number: 181043
• Author(s): Richard L. Wood; Amelia Rouse; Mariah C. Davis
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 63 pages
• Publication Series: NIJ Research Report
• Grant Number(s): 96-IJ-CX-0068
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)

Annotation

This report summarizes the state of policing in the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) from January 1996 through August 1998.

Abstract

The report is a case study of the organizational dynamics within a medium-sized, urban police department seeking to implement community oriented policing, and of the views of agency employees as they adjust to that effort. Through a discussion of police and civilian subcultures in the APD, the report addresses the successes and difficulties of a transition period involving major organizational changes. The report also presents strategies for optimizing organizational and community strengths. Most officers believed that community policing had made no difference in how they did their jobs and the majority of officers appeared to continue doing their work in ways essentially identical to how they had always done it, or at least in ways bearing no clear, systematic relationship to the priorities of community policing. This was so for a variety of reasons, including the normal difficulties of changing large organizations, lack of clarity regarding what changes were expected of officers, the heavy volume of calls for service, resistance to change among some supervisors and officers and difficulties with the communications system for keeping officers physically present in their beats. Table, figures, references