NCJ Number
93582
Date Published
Unknown
Length
39 pages
Annotation
Study results suggest that for most citizens aggressive police patrol has almost no effect on citizens' evaluation of police or on crime-reporting behavior.
Abstract
The effects of four neighborhood-level measures of an aggressive patrol style on citizens' evaluations of police and propensities to report crimes were examined. Analysis assumes that both citizens' reporting of victimizations and their satisfaction with police services depend on five sets of factors: police services to the neighborhood; individual attributes, attitudes, and experience with police; and neighborhood social characteristics. Higher rates of aggressive patrol did not appear to produce more negative evaluations of police. With the exception of suspicion stops, which had a positive sign, none of the measures of proactivity reached statistical significance. Suspicion stops were positively related to evaluations of police, but the magnitude of the coefficient was so small as to be substantively unimportant. For clients, attitudes about local government, perceptions of police, and experiences with local police were the factors most strongly related to evaluations of police performance. The most important single factor generating a negative evaluation of police performance was an unsatisfactory experience with police. It had the largest direct and the largest total effect. Aggressive patrol was not associated with the failure to repot crimes. Suspicion stops, which may generate somewhat more positive evaluations of police, had their most pronounced positive effect among young black men. These findings challenge conventional wisdom regarding the side effects of suspicion stops. A total of 37 references are supplied. Study data are appended.