When we pull back the layers of government services, the most fundamental and indispensable virtues are public safety and social order. —Hon. David A. Hardy, Washoe County District Court, Reno, Nevada The police are the public and … the public are the police. —Sir Robert Peel, 1829 (Peak, p.3).

In Chapter One of Policing America: Challenges and Best Practices, you read that there were developments for the police during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Foot patrols became more popular, and many larger jurisdictions (such as Newark, New Jersey; Boston, Massachusetts; and Flint, Michigan) even began to require this form of patrol. In Newark, an evaluation led to the conclusions that officers on foot patrol were easily seen by residents, produced a significant increase in the level of satisfaction with police service, led to a significant reduction of perceived crime problems, and resulted in a significant increase in the perceived level of neighborhood safety.
 
Newark, New Jersey is not the only location in the United States where an evaluation was completed to measure citizen satisfaction with the police. Visit the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data. In the search box, click on the Related Literature radial and type “citizen satisfaction” or “evaluations” in the search field. Information related to other studies involving citizen satisfaction with the police will populate. Choose two additional studies/evaluations which have been conducted in the United States as a means to measure the citizen satisfaction with the police from the list.).
 

Citation

Wycoff, Mary Ann, and Wesley G. Skogan. Community Policing in Madison, Wisconsin: Evaluation of Implementation and Impact, 1987-1990. ICPSR06480-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1996. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06480.v1

The first article

Community Policing in Madison, Wisconsin: Evaluation of Implementation and Impact, 1987-1990 (ICPSR 6480)

Principal Investigator(s): Wycoff, Mary Ann, The Police Foundation; Skogan, Wesley G., Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University

Funding

This study was funded by:

• United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Unit of Observation:  Individuals.

  Universe:  Police officers in the Madison Police Department and residents of the city of Madison, Wisconsin.

  Methodology

  Study Purpose:  This study sought to evaluate efforts by the Madison, Wisconsin, Police Department to create a new organizational design (both structural and managerial) to support community-oriented and problem-oriented policing that would result in better, more responsive service to the community. The department's plan was a sequential one: internal organizational changes were necessary before the external goal of improved service could be accomplished. One-sixth of the organization serving approximately one-sixth of the community was used as a test site for the new approach. This Experimental Police District (EPD) was charged with implementing "quality policing," which emphasized quality of service delivery, quality of life in the community, and quality of life in the workplace. The first objective of the Madison Police Department was the implementation of three conditions: (1) quality leadership, emphasizing the role of managers as facilitators whose job was to improve systems, involve employees in decision-making, employ data-based problem-solving approaches, promote teamwork, encourage risk-taking and creativity, and give and receive feedback from employees, (2) a healthy work environment, treating employees as "internal customers" whose problems should be identified and resolved, and (3) physical decentralization, creating a small work group to improve conditions in the workplace and, at the same time, obtain closer physical proximity to citizens to get to know them and become aware of their problems. The researchers' task was to: (1) document the process of developing the Experimental Police District, (2) measure any attitude changes of the police personnel during the experimental period, and (3) measure the effects of change on the community.

  Study Design:  As the first part of the program evaluation, attitude changes among officers working in the EPD were compared with those of officers working in the rest of the police department. Written surveys were administered by the Project Director to small groups of personnel during normal working hours. Although the analysis was to be based on a panel design, efforts were made to survey all commissioned personnel during each survey administration period. Since the ultimate goal of the department was change across the entire organization, changes for the organization as a whole were also monitored. Part 1, Commissioned Personnel Data, Wave 1, contains responses from 269 commissioned personnel surveyed in December 1987 before the creation of the EPD. Part 2, Commissioned Personnel Data, Wave 2, consists of responses from 264 police officers who completed a Wave 2 survey in December 1988, and Part 3, Commissioned Personnel Data, Wave 3, supplies responses from 230 police officers who completed a Wave 3 survey in December 1989. As the second part of the program evaluation, attitude changes among residents served by the EPD were compared with those of residents in the rest of the city using a quasi-experimental design. These data are presented in Part 4, Residents Data, Waves 1 and 2. A few days prior to contact, letters from the Office of the Mayor were sent to the selected addresses. Interviewers who had been recruited, trained, and supervised by Police Foundation personnel carried a copy of that letter and presented photo identification cards at each residence. Selection of the respondents was made by the interviewers at the selected household, using a Kish selection table included in each questionnaire. Individuals under the age of 18 were not included in the household listing. Interviewers made a total of six attempts to interview the selected respondent in each household. All refusals in which the respondent was not hostile were reassigned to different interviewers. Twenty-five percent of all completed interviews were validated by recontacting the respondent to verify that the interview took place, that it had required the appropriate amount of the respondent's time, and that a few key questions were answered the same way during the validation call as in the original contact. Data for Wave 1 consist of personal interviews with a random sample of 1,166 Madison residents in February and March 1988, prior to the opening of the EPD station. Since 97.6 percent of the respondents provided their telephone numbers, the decision was made to conduct the Wave 2 survey by telephone. The telephone interviews were conducted by the Wisconsin Survey Research Lab at the University of Wisconsin in February and March 1990. In-person interviews were also attempted with about 70 percent of the Wave 1 respondents who did not provide telephone numbers. Of the 772 completed interviews for Wave 2, 45 interviews contained substantial mismatches between information provided in 1988 and 1990. These 45 respondents were removed from the panel, leaving an analysis panel of 727 respondents.

  Sample:  The EPD program site was not randomly selected, but was selected by the department, based on several indicators of need. Police officers were also not randomly assigned to work in the EPD, but were allowed to bid for assignments in the EPD. Households for the resident survey were randomly selected from the 1980 Census block statistics, excluding city blocks that consisted primarily of business areas or student housing.

  Data Source:

  self-enumerated questionnaires, personal interviews, and telephone interviews

  Description of Variables:  Police personnel provided their assessments on how successfully quality leadership had been implemented, the extent to which the officers felt they worked closely with and received feedback from other officers, the amount of their interaction with detectives, the amount of time available for problem-solving, ease of arranging schedules, safety of working conditions, satisfaction with working conditions, type of work they performed, their supervisors, commitment to the department, attitudes related to community policing and problem-solving, perception of their relationship with the community, police views of human nature, attitudes toward change, attitudes toward decentralization, and demographic information. Residents provided their perceptions of police presence, frequency of police-citizen contacts, quality of police-citizen contacts, estimates of the magnitude of various problems in their neighborhoods, evaluation of the problem-solving efforts of the police, perception of neighborhood conditions, levels of fear of crime, personal experience of victimization, knowledge of victimization of other residents, and demographic information.

  Response Rates:  For the police personnel surveys, 97 percent of the total commissioned personnel in the Madison Police Department participated in the employee survey in 1987, 97 percent participated in 1988, and 86 percent participated in 1989. Of the respondents to the Wave I survey, 14 had left the department by the time of the third survey. Two hundred and two persons participated in all three survey waves, resulting in a participation rate of 79 percent for the panel. Some personnel changes occurred after the first year of the evaluation period, resulting in an analysis panel equivalent to 61 percent of the total sworn personnel at any one of the three survey times. Participation rates are provided rather than response rates because at each survey period, a very small number of individuals came to the survey site and completed a survey identification form, but did not actually complete the survey. For the resident survey, the response rate in the EPD area was 77.8 percent and 75.1 percent for the rest of the city. The 772 interviews completed for Wave 2 resulted in a panel completion rate of 66.2 percent.

  Presence of Common Scales:  Several Likert-type scales were used.

  Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

• Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

  second article

  Project on Policing Neighborhoods in Indianapolis, Indiana, and St. Petersburg, Florida, 1996-1997 (ICPSR 3160)

  Principal Investigator(s): Mastrofski, Stephen D., George Mason University; Parks, Roger B., Indiana University; Worden, Robert E., University at Albany; Reiss, Albert J. Jr., Yale University

  Summary:

  The purpose of the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN) was to provide an in-depth description of how the police and the community interact with each other in a community policing (CP) environment. Research was conducted in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1996 and in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1997. Several research methods were employed: systematic observation of patrol officers (Parts 1-4) and patrol supervisors (Parts 5-14), in-person interviews with patrol officers (Part 15) and supervi... (more info)

  Citation for second article

  Citation

  Mastrofski, Stephen D., Roger B. Parks, Robert E. Worden, and Albert J. Jr. Reiss. Project on Policing Neighborhoods in Indianapolis, Indiana, and St. Petersburg, Florida, 1996-1997 [Computer File]. ICPSR03160-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political Social Research [distributor], 2007-06-01. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03160.v2

  ata Collection Notes:

  (1) The narrative descriptions of the ride-alongs are not available as part of this collection, (2) Following the "rule of ten" guidelines used by the POPN researchers, users of the data should make no attributions to an officer (or group of officers) with specified characteristics unless at least ten officers in the sample share the same characteristics.

  Methodology

  Study Purpose:  In the broadest sense, the purpose of the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN) was to provide an in-depth description of how the police and the community interact with each other in a community policing (CP) environment. Data were collected to facilitate studies on the following issues: (1) how patrol officers spend their time, (2) how officers use their authority to intervene in citizens' lives, (3) how problem citizens are controlled, (4) how civility and cooperation between police and public is obtained, (5) what officer characteristics are associated with high CP performance, (6) the role of first-line supervisors, (7) the context for street-level performance set by management, and (8) how patterns of policing vary among neighborhoods and the impact they have on neighborhood quality of life. For this study, "neighborhood" in operational terms meant the patrol beat. Indianapolis used the term "beat" and St. Petersburg used the term "community policing area" (CPA) to define the smallest geographical space to which an individual officer would be assigned patrol responsibilities.

  Study Design:  Research was conducted in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1996 and in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1997. Several research methods were employed: systematic observation of patrol officers (Parts 1-4) and patrol supervisors (Parts 5-14), in-person interviews with patrol officers (Part 15) and supervisors (Parts 16-17), and telephone surveys of residents in selected neighborhoods (Part 18). Field researchers accompanied their assigned officer during all activities and encounters with the public during the shift. Field researchers noted when various activities and encounters with the public occurred during these "ride-alongs," who was involved, and what happened. Back at the project offices, these field notes formed that basis for narrative descriptions of the events, and observers also coded numeric data on specific elements of the ride, events, and participants. Patrol observation data are provided at the ride level, the activity level, the encounter level, and the citizen level. Activity data focused on police activities that did not involve interaction with citizens. These typically include administrative duties, roll call, travel (en route to scene), general patrol, and personal activities, such as meals. Activity records are nested within rides. Encounter data contain events in which the officers interacted with citizens. Encounters are subclassified into full, brief, and casual encounters. Encounters are nested within rides. Citizen data describe the citizens involved in encounters with the police. Citizen records are nested within encounters. In addition to encounters with citizens, supervisors also engaged in encounters with patrol officers. Patrol officers and patrol supervisors in both Indianapolis and St. Petersburg were interviewed one-on-one in a private interviewing room during their regular work shifts. The patrol officer and supervisor interview instruments were similar, and interviews were normally completed in 20-25 minutes. Citizens in the POPN study beats were randomly selected for telephone surveys to determine their views about problems in their neighborhood and other community issues. Administrative records were used to create site identification data (Part 19) and data on staffing (Part 20). This data collection also includes data compiled from census records, aggregated to the beat level for each site (Part 21). Census data were also used to produce district populations for both sites (Part 22). Citizen data were aggregated to the encounter level to produce counts of various citizen role categories and characteristics and characteristics of the encounter between the patrol officer and citizens in the various encounters (Part 23).

  Sample:  Indianapolis and St. Petersburg were chosen according to specific criteria. A sampling plan of the neighborhoods in each city was designed to ensure variation in the service conditions of police, using socioeconomic features of neighborhoods as proxies for those conditions. Residents in the POPN study beats were randomly selected for the citizen survey.

  Data Source:

  observations, personal interviews, telephone interviews, administrative records, and data from the United States Census Bureau

  Description of Variables:  Ride-level data (Parts 1, 5, and 10) contain information about characteristics of the ride, including start and end times, officer identification, type of unit, and beat assignment. Activity data (Parts 2, 6, and 11) include type of activity, where and when the activity took place, who was present, and how the officer was notified. Encounter data (Parts 3, 7, and 12) contain descriptive information on encounters similar to the activity data (i.e., location, initiation of encounter). Citizen data (Parts 4, 8, and 13) provide citizen characteristics, citizen behavior, and police behavior toward citizens. Similarly, officer data from the supervisor observations (Parts 9 and 14) include characteristics of the supervising officer and the nature of the interaction between the officers. Both the patrol officer and supervisor interview data (Parts 15-17) include the officers' demographics, training and knowledge, experience, perceptions of their beats and organizational environment, and beliefs about the police role. The patrol officer data also provide the officers' perceptions of their supervisors while the supervisor data describe supervisors' perceptions of their subordinates, as well as their views about their roles, power, and priorities as supervisors. Data from surveyed citizens (Part 18) provide information about their neighborhoods, including years in the neighborhood, distance to various places in the neighborhood, neighborhood problems and effectiveness of police response to those problems, citizen knowledge of, or interactions with, the police, satisfaction with police services, and friends and relatives in the neighborhood. Citizen demographics and geographic and weight variables are also included. Site identification variables (Part 19) include ride and encounter numbers, site beat (site, district, and beat or community policing areas [CPA]), and sector. Staffing variables (Part 20) include district, shift, and staffing levels for various shifts. Census data (Part 21) include neighborhood, index of socioeconomic distress, total population, and total white population. District population variables (Part 22) include district and population of district. The aggregated citizen data (Part 23) provide the ride and encounter numbers, number of citizens in the encounter, counts of citizens by their various roles, and by sex, age, race, wealth, if known by the police, under the influence of alcohol or drugs, physically injured, had a weapon, or assaulted the police, counts by type of encounter, and counts of police and citizen actions during the encounter.

  Response Rates:  The response rate for the patrol officer surveys was 93 percent in Indianapolis and 98 percent in St. Petersburg. For the patrol supervisor surveys the response rate was 93 percent in Indianapolis and 100 percent in St. Petersburg. The response rate for the citizen surveys was 53 percent in Indianapolis and 42 percent in St. Petersburg.

  Second aeticle