Reinventing or Repackaging Public Services? The Case of Community-Oriented Policing.

If the sound bites of the reinventing government movement are ever to attain the status of sound scripture, they must first be operationalized in terms of specific services. These slogans call for a market-oriented, customer-driven government, owned by empowered communities and featuring decentralized services focused on preventing rather than on curing. These new initiatives are delivered by public organizations employing participative, team-oriented management systems and results-oriented evaluative criteria (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). Although community policing builds on previous innovations in policing, such as problem-oriented policing (Goldstein, 1990; 1979) and team policing (Schwartz and Clarren, 1977; Sherman et al., 1973) that predate the formal reinventing government movement, community policing has become recognized as the law enforcement manifestation of that movement (Turner and Wiatrowski, 1995). Like outcome-oriented, mission driven government, community policing has become a global phenomenon (Bayley, 1994a; Weatheritt, 1991) that reflects reinvention's market values and outcome-oriented management precepts.

In his capacity as chairman of the Task Force on Government Accomplishment and Accountability of the American Society for Public Administration, Raymond T. Olsen reviewed nearly 40 case studies of outcome management strategies in the public sector, and he concluded that the core management systems of the organizations pursuing these strategies were generally not being realigned to accommodate them (Olsen, 1997); that is, these management systems continue to reinforce a process of control rather than supporting a results-driven orientation.

This article examines the implementation of the community policing model by local law enforcement agencies in Florida. It focuses on the extent to which adoption has affected existing policies, procedures, and organizational structures. Local law enforcement service delivery systems have typically been housed in hierarchical bureaucracies featuring command-and-control management systems. Such systems would appear to be antithetical to the spirit and substance of community policing.

Community policing has suffered from conceptual confusion in both research and practice (Roberg and Kuykendall, 1993; Wycoff, 1991; Greene and Taylor, 1991). Community policing has been implemented in a wide variety of ways, manifesting differences in personnel, organizational structures, deployment schemes, patrol modes, operational functions, geographical scopes, and degree of involvement of citizens and coordination with external agencies (Bayley, 1994a; 1994b; Sadd and Grinc, 1994). However, despite this confusion, community policing is widely accepted by politicians and police professionals as an innovative way to deliver police services (Eck and Rosenbaum, 1994). As early as 1984, 143 police agencies surveyed nationally reported utilizing community policing (Trojanowicz and Harden, 1985). Forty-two percent of all police departments serving populations of over 50,000 recently reported that they had adopted some form of community policing (Trojanowicz, 1994).

For Bayley (1994a) the basic elements of community policing are: consultation with community groups regarding their security needs; command devolution so that those closest to the community can determine how to best respond to those needs; mobilization of agencies other than the police to assist in addressing those needs; and remedying the conditions that generate crime and insecurity through focused problem solving. He and others (Moore, 1994; Eck and Rosenbaum, 1994) are comfortable with the ambiguity that surrounds the concept, but Wycoff (1991) suggests that it may now be a barrier to effective communication about police practices. Walker (1992) notes that community policing may be victimized by its popularity and rapid expansion inasmuch as proper planning and implementation appear to be lacking. Moore calls for "a survey of the field of policing to determine to what extent community policing is moving from rhetorical to operational levels throughout the country" (298). Like the reinventing government movement in general, the question of whether the community policing model represents a lasting innovation is very much an open one.

Issues in Community Policing

Community policing calls for a new breed of police officer (Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux, 1990) operationalizing a new professionalism based on democratic values such as participation and openness, rather than on technological values rooted in substantive expertise (Skolnick and Fyfe, 1995). The community policing officer negotiates and designs policing for particular areas (Bayley, 1994a), and these policing strategies are directed to proactive prevention rather than reactive detection (Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux, 1990). One issue that emerges here is whether these attitudinal and behavioral changes at the police officer level will be supported by structural changes in the police organization. Conventional wisdom in organization theory holds that an organization's structure should be designed to optimize the functioning of its operational technology. However, it is possible that the "911" emergency response function will continue to drive the structure of the police organization, and the community policing model will be forced to find its place within the hierarchical military model that has traditionally housed this reactive function. The maintenance of a dual proactive/reactive patrol capacity would certainly strain the resources of most agencies.

In order to successfully implement their community policing programs, most researchers contend that police organizations must adopt an "organic" organizational structure, a participatory management style, new reward structures, new training programs and selection criteria, and new control systems (Roberg, 1994; Kelling and Moore, 1991). Skolnick and Fyfe (1995) identify a decentralized command structure as an essential element of community policing. For Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux (1990), community policing entails the formal enrichment or enlargement of the job of patrol officer, and increasing the autonomy of the patrol officer calls for the enlargement of citizen participation as oversight to prevent potential abuses. Hence, the community policing model makes a host of demands on the hierarchical, military model, which has been largely closed to public participation. This may be the reason that in 1994, Moore could report that "in practice, no department has yet fully implemented community policing as an overall philosophy" (290).

Following Bitmer's (1970) classic analysis of the police function, Klockars (1991) suggests that community policing "is best understood as the latest in a fairly long tradition of circumlocutions whose purpose is to conceal, mystify, and legitimate police distribution of nonnegotiably coercive force" (240). These circumlocutions are necessary because the police function is inherently offensive but society must nevertheless reconcile itself to its necessity. Bitmer described the first three of these circumlocutions--the legalization, the militarization, and the professionalization of the police function. For Klockars, community policing is an attempt to clothe coercive force in the attractive weave of community, cooperation, and crime prevention; but "police can no more create community or solve problems of urban anomie than they can be legalized into agents of the court or depoliticized into pure professionals" (1991, 257). Other researchers question the very concept of "community" (Crank, 1994). Community policing focuses on maintaining order, and the political community defines public order; however, the necessary political consensus may prove to be elusive, particularly in the areas that are most afflicted with "disorder" (Mastrofski, 1991). Buerger (1994) suggests that community mobilization may also be difficult. He believes that the community policing model does not seek to "empower" communities but rather to enhance the police response to crime through intelligence gathering. A full partnership and true co-production of police services would entail some "civilianization" of police positions and an enhanced public oversight of police activities.

Formal evaluations of some manifestations of community policing have been undertaken (Rosenbaum, 1994; Greene and Mastrofski, 1991). These studies have yielded small positive effects or contradictory results, and they have been plagued by methodological problems, including weak implementations of the program (Bayley, 1994b; Greene and Taylor, 1991). The selection of criteria for evaluating these programs highlights some of the issues regarding the ambiguity of the community policing concept. Moore (1994) suggests that the reduction of the fear of victimization and increases in feelings of security have independent value apart from any actual reduction in crime rates. For Moore, community mobilization and the enhancement of community control are also valued ends in themselves. Shaw (1993) contends that community policing efforts should be evaluated on the extent to which they are successful in restructuring police organizations so that they may continue to be adaptive and innovative, and enhance the creative potential of their personnel. Greene and Taylor (1991) suggest more technical evaluation criteria that still reflect the spirit of community policing, such as the number of crimes committed by persons from outside the community.

Despite these real and potential problems, Wilkinson and Rosenbaum contend that "the fundamental question about community policing in the 1990s is not `should it be implemented?'--the concept is already extremely popular with policy makers--but rather 'how should it be implemented?'" (1994, 125). However, the model is clearly plagued by conceptual confusion, and it will be implemented in an organizational structure that may be antithetical to its basic precepts.

Issues in the Organization of Law Enforcement

The local police organization is treated in the literature as an example of what Meyer and Rowan (1983) called the "institutionalized organization." These are organizations employing ambiguous technologies in uncertain environments that produce outcomes that are difficult to appraise. Hence, issues of appropriate technology and structural adaptation to environmental change cannot be resolved on the basis of efficiency. In response to this uncertainty, "internal participants and external constituents alike call for institutionalized rules that promote trust and confidence in outputs and buffer organizations from failure" (Meyer and Rowan, 1983, 36). However, institutional rules inevitably come into conflict with whatever efficiency criteria may exist, because "the generalized rules of the institutional environment are often inappropriate to specific situations" (Meyer and Rowan, 1983, 37).

Meyer and Rowan (1983) identify four possible organizational responses to the dynamic tension created by the need to conform to "ceremonial" rules in order to maintain legitimacy and the need to resolve the uncertainties regarding day to day operations precipitated by that conformance. First, the organization can resist the incorporation of ceremonial rules, but it may then be unable to establish its legitimacy based on efficiency criteria. Second, it can maintain conformity by cutting off environmental relations, but this would be tantamount to acknowledging that the operational "myths" embodied in the institution's rules don't actually work. Third, the organization can acknowledge that its structure does not manifest an optimal response to the demands of its operational environment, but this would surely compromise its claims to legitimacy. Fourth, the organization can promise reforms in the future, but this may also weaken the case for current legitimacy. Alternatively, the organization can decouple its formal structures from its operational activities. "The assumption that formal structures are working is buffered from the inconsistencies and anomalies involved in technical activities" (Meyer and Rowan, 1983, 39). Rather than focusing on the coordination and control of operational activities on the basis of efficiency criteria, management becomes a largely ceremonial function focusing on elaborate displays of confidence, satisfaction, and good faith in the face of ambiguous goals.

In the police literature, the elements of the institutionalized organization are expressed as the "dual realities" of policing that precipitate the "bifurcation of authority" that characterizes the typical police organization (Brown, 1981), and the dichotomy between "management cops and street cops" that yields the "two cultures of policing" (Reuss-Ianni and Ianni, 1983; Reuss-Ianni, 1983). In his research, Caiden observed that "the top and bottom of the police department were two different worlds.... There was no central control, only an insistence on authority and a pervading sense of powerlessness" (1977, 15). The strategies of the institutionalized organization are clearly manifested in the community policing movement: the promise of future reform; the display of good faith and confidence; the promulgation of ambiguous goals and the implementation of uncertain technologies; the avoidance of evaluation on the basis of efficiency criteria in favor of "good faith" criteria; and the idea that …