Community Leaders Attitudes Toward Law Enforcement

The purpose of this study is to determine community atitudes toward the police. Policemen are either ignorant of, or tend to misinterpret, public attitudes toward them as represented by various elements of the community, and police relations with certain segments of the community are a matter of the utmost social and political importance. Yet there has been little effort to collect attitude data from those people within the community who might be able to help in changing the relationship between the police and the community. In response to this the researcher determined a need for research into the attitudes of community leaders toward the police. On the basis of the analysis and findings for this research, it is concluded that: Attitudes of community leaders toward the police are affected by certain aspects of their personal and/or socio-economic status, and attitudes of community leaders toward the police are affect by their personal contacts with a policeman.

The purpose of the research was to compare characteristics and leadership attitudes of chief administrators of law enforcement agencies that have implemented community policing in rural North Carolina, and those who have not. A survey questionnaire was used to measure leadership attitudes and professional characteristics of chief law enforcement administrators in North Carolina. The study used data from a survey of chief administrators of rural law enforcement agencies in North Carolina to examine the correlates of community policing and to determine if there are differences between agencies using community policing and not using it. It was expected that there would be common leadership attitudes among chief administrators of rural law enforcement agencies that have implemented community policing and that there would be common characteristics of their departments. It was further expected that there would be common leadership attitudes among chief administrators of rural law enforcement agencies that have not implemented community policing and that those departments would have common characteristics. It was also expected that departments with and without community policing grants would differ in the leadership attitudes of their chief administrators and the characteristics of the departments. The study concluded that there were strong and striking differences between rural law enforcement agencies that have implemented community policing and those that had not. It also indicated that there were differences among the chief administrators who had implemented community policing. These chief law enforcement administrators scored higher on the Employee-orientation, Differentiation, and LEAD scores than those of departments without a COP grant. Further findings revealed differences in chief administrators having a baccalaureate degree, and having attended a management training course. Those administrators were more likely to have a COP grant. The test of time will reveal i.

Keywords: law enforcement leadership, community policing leadership.

This report looks at police-minority group relations with recommendations for future program improvement. Since unrealistic expectations often accompany police-community relations programs such programs can not be considered the solution to society's ill. At best, they can be expected to ameliorate the distrust and fear between antagonistic groups. Public attitudes about police conduct. The handling of citizens complaints, police field activities, police training, and internal racial discrimination within police agencies are examined as component social interactions and reactions of police-community relations.

Proactive policing, as a strategic approach used by police agencies to prevent crime, is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. It developed from a crisis in confidence in policing that began to emerge in the 1960s because of social unrest, rising crime rates, and growing skepticism regarding the effectiveness of standard approaches to policing. In response, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, innovative police practices and policies that took a more proactive approach began to develop. This report uses the term "proactive policing" to refer to all policing strategies that have as one of their goals the prevention or reduction of crime and disorder and that are not reactive in terms of focusing primarily on uncovering ongoing crime or on investigating or responding to crimes once they have occurred. Proactive policing is distinguished from the everyday decisions of police officers to be proactive in specific situations and instead refers to a strategic decision by police agencies to use proactive police responses in a programmatic way to reduce crime. Today, proactive policing strategies are used widely in the United States. They are not isolated programs used by a select group of agencies but rather a set of ideas that have spread across the landscape of policing. Proactive Policing reviews the evidence and discusses the data and methodological gaps on: (1) the effects of different forms of proactive policing on crime; (2) whether they are applied in a discriminatory manner; (3) whether they are being used in a legal fashion; and (4) community reaction. This report offers a comprehensive evaluation of proactive policing that includes not only its crime prevention impacts but also its broader implications for justice and U.S. communities.

Salient incidents of officer misconduct, violence, and disrespect toward citizens threaten public safety and weaken the legitimacy of the police. With an eye toward improving police-community relations, law enforcement organizations employ multiple strategies to alter the approaches of line-level officers. Law enforcement organizations implement recruitment and retention strategies to better represent the demographics of communities they serve, body-worn cameras to improve accountability in police-civilian interactions, and early-intervention systems designed to identify problematic officers. Alternatively, some organizations implement community-focused reform efforts that shift the approach of police from an “us vs them” mentality to a co-productive, community-centered approach, which has been shown to improve citizen satisfaction with police. Despite efforts to improve police-community relations, law enforcement organizations have been unable to overcome decades of unequal service provision and repeated instances of officer misconduct. Some of these failures may be a product of the informal systems within policing that are charged with carrying out reform, highlighting a need to better understand how informal systems within policing inform the attitudes and approaches of line-level officers. Efforts to understand these effects exist in a limited but growing body of research investigating intra-organizational dynamics and the motivations or attitudes of line-level officers. This study builds on this work by examining the influence of servant leadership practices and work-unit climate on officer support for procedurally fair policing practices, officer willingness to report peer misconduct, and officer community citizenship behavior. There is evidence that leaders play a role in informing the attitudes of street-level bureaucrats (e.g., Wright and Pandey 2010; Keulemans and Groeneveld 2020); however, there are fewer examples of research investigating the influence of servant leadership in the public sector (e.g., Shim, Park, Kuem, and Kim 2020), and still fewer examining the effects of servant leadership on attitudes in law enforcement. Furthermore, while law enforcement organizations rely on accountability systems to improve performance, relatively little research has explored the effects of accountability climates on the climate within the organization or the attitudes and approaches of line-level officers. This dissertation addresses these gaps in the literature by addressing four key questions: (1) Are higher levels of servant leadership associated with line-level officer attitudes about community-focused approaches to policing? (2) What are the pathways through which servant leaders influence line-level officer attitudes about community-focused approaches to policing? (3) Do work-unit climates that consist of high pressure for officer activity weaken the effectiveness of servant leadership? And (4) Do work-unit climates that consist of high levels of internal political behavior weaken the effectiveness of servant leadership? To address the key questions in this dissertation, I collected original survey data from a large law enforcement organization. I analyze survey responses from enforcement personnel (response rate: 61%) across two surveys administered at two different time points. I anticipate that servant leadership behaviors from post commanders will be associated with higher perceptions of prosocial impact and work-unit identification, and that these psychological mechanisms will be associated with officer attitudes that prioritize the community. In addition, I anticipate that unit climates that remove officers from their impact on the community – in the forms of accountability pressure or political behavior within units – moderate the effect that effective servant leadership has on officer attitudes, rendering servant leaders less effective when facing these climates. Results of multilevel regression analysis suggest that servant leadership is significantly associated with higher prosocial impact and unit identification, and that these key psychological constructs are positively associated with support for community-focused approaches to policing. Additionally, the results of parallel mediation analysis and multilevel mediation analysis suggest that prosocial impact and unit identification mediate the relationship between servant leadership and key outcomes. The direct relationship between servant leadership and attitudinal outcomes is non-significant; however, servant leadership influences outcomes indirectly through influencing psychological constructs. Finally, the effects of servant leadership on outcomes are robust across different unit climates. Specifically, the results of moderated mediation analysis suggest that unit climates wherein officers perceive accountability pressure or political behavior in their units do not disrupt the effect that servant leaders have on officer attitudes through key mediators. However, the results show significant direct effects of pressure and political behavior on key mechanisms, echoing findings that unit climate has a strong influence on individual-level approaches of line-level officers. These findings make noteworthy contributions to public administration research and practice. This is one of the first studies to examine the effects of servant leadership in a law enforcement context, and the results inform our understanding of the attitudes and approaches of street-level bureaucrats, as well as efforts to repair police-community relations. In addition, these results inform our understanding of potential negative effects of climate stemming from performance management and accountability systems in law enforcement organizations, highlighting the importance of identifying alternative mechanisms that may motivate officers to prioritize the community.

The Madison, Wisconsin, Police Department undertook an effort to create a new organizational design to support community-oriented and problem-oriented policing. One-sixth of the department serving approximately one-sixth of the population was developed as an Experimental Police District (EPD). Community policing in Madison strived to implement quality leadership, a healthy workplace, improved service delivery, and community benefits. This evaluation had three objectives: document the process of developing the EPD, measure the internal effects of change, and measure the effects of change on the community. In addition to quality leadership, the internal effects focused on in the evaluation included employee input, working conditions, job-related attitudes, and officers' reactions to change. External effects included perceived police presence, frequency and quality of police-citizen contacts, problem-solving, perceptions of neighborhood conditions, levels of worry and fear, and actual victimization. The report found that the successful implementation of a participatory management approach improved employees' attitudes toward the department, decentralized operations, and reduced citizens' fears of crime and increased their belief that police were working for the benefit of the community.