Community Policing and Police Leadership (From Policing and Community Partnerships, P 163-176, 2000, Dennis J. Stevens, ed., -- See NCJ-194083)

• NCJ Number: 194093
• Author(s): Dennis J. Stevens
• Date Published: 2002
• Length: 14 pages
• Publication Format: Book Chapter
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This survey tests police leadership with regard to community policing.

Abstract

In the year 2000, 97 police executives who hold the command rank of lieutenant and above, from 18 police agencies across the United States were asked about their managerial practices. The goals of this survey were to determine which set of leadership characteristics police supervisors would expect an “excellent police leader” to demonstrate most often, and to see how they would grade their own departmental community policing efforts. The leadership characteristics were organizational change, creative ability, toughness, trust subordinate, public trust, delegation of responsibility, police decision, taking action, communication, sharing command, visionary, integrity, and commitment. Survey results show that leadership among police supervisors has a long way to go relative to community policing initiatives. In most cases, the responses largely mirrored leadership characteristics typical of traditional policing strategies as opposed to community policing philosophy. The results were unexpected. One implication is that most police middle managers operate from an antiquated control, arrest, and command hierarchy with top-down dictates about deployment, tactical and use of force limits, and constituent conduct. Finding the balance between professional intervention for the purposes of prevention, crime escalation, and police responsibility is a complex task of commanders, their advisers, and policy makers. The traditional incident-driven police organization must alter policy, regulations, and expectations to fit within a contemporary framework of policing strategies. A recommendation is to adopt a managerial philosophy that advances foremost quality police service and customer satisfaction called Total Quality Management (TQM). TQM is consistent with community policing principles as a philosophy focusing on problem solving and control. Its core principles include addressing police personnel and residents, a constancy of purpose subscribed to by all employees, evaluations done on the basis of team accomplishments and comparisons, and emphasis on providing the best possible service the first time and not relying on inspections and reparations. 3 tables, 42 references