Community Policing: Misunderstanding and Misapplication Following Police Shootings

Community Policing: Literature Review

Community policing enjoys a vast and rich literature that bases the calls for community policing as a two-fold response to address: (a) larger political and social issues that engender or promulgate high crime and (b) the use of officer discretion that is, or is perceived to be, racially/status biased toward certain groups. This aspect of the literature will be discussed first to help define the desired role of community policing. Following this discussion will be the articulation of what defines community policing and how community policing has been incorporated. Although the literature is vast, it makes clear the theoretical limitations of community policing as it has been applied as a case-by-case concept often taking elements and discarding others into already existing programs or programmatic ideals.

Community policing is at its heart about narratives of individuals and their political and social struggles. The inability to address a part or all of the problems and social ills in a cohesive manner, especially among intellectuals, opens the door for fiction (in this sense, public consciousness or popular culture) to influence public policy prescriptions (McCurdy, 1995). McCurdy (1995) identifies how fiction and imagination can shape, especially when intellectuals disagree, public policies, and how they are carried out. What he depicts as fiction and imagination does not mean that the narratives are untrue but rather makes clear that they are an amalgamation of individual stories and, as such, act as a collective “imagined” view, rather than statistical data or verified individual accounts. This understanding helps us understand the role of community policing in linking social and political struggles to crime control. As Lyons (1999a) identifies, “without a sense of the concrete social relationships that constitute communities with these capacities, calls for a return to community are significantly less constrained and become merely rhetorical” (p. 16). The definition of community is critical as the relationship of the state and informal social control capacities can alter the focus and intent of community policing, which is discussed later. The settled notion of community policing links crime control to other social and political struggles. Rather than define a community it seeks to amalgamate social and political struggles, which would otherwise be addressed by functionally separate state agents, into a coherent address of crime. Scheider (2013) identifies that community policing sought to move from reactive to proactive policing by addressing two fundamental aspects of policing: (a) the police can rarely solve long-term, serious public safety problems alone and (b) the fundamental unit of police business should be “problems” rather than merely a response to crimes as discrete sets of “incidents” (p. 153).

Beyond addressing larger social and political struggles, community policing also sought to address racially/status-biased policing by offering a means to address and alter the use of officer discretion. In the case of racial/status bias, the citizen–agent narrative identifies that because all government agents are afforded some level of discretion in performing their duties differences in applying policy develop between and among communities (Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003; Maynard-Moody & Portillo, 2010; Sharp, 2012). As Maynard-Moody and Musheno (2003) identify, agents’ evaluations of individuals continually run up against policy, rules, and regulations to benefit some and

others are excluded from help and social benefits or, worse, are maligned and abused by front-line workers in the system in which they work. Authorized or prohibited, legitimate or illegitimate, helpful or destructive, street-level cultural judgments are an irreducible element in governing the modern state. (p. 5)

Psychology plays a large role in explaining the myriad of types of bias that can occur: “implicit and explicit bias, race-crime stereotypes, intragroup bias, ingroup favoritism, stereotype threat, and dehumanization in policing interactions” (Kahn & Martin, 2020, p. 1). Community policing sought to employ proactive measures of embedding police officers within a community, developing mutual bonds of trust and respect (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997). By placing officers closely with local community leaders and activities, a two-way communication and de-escalation of crime could be attained. Furthermore, the proximity enables residents of high-crime areas to better hold officers accountable and thus guide their use of discretion (Meares, 2002). Although this also was a point of contention as it aligned the interests of law enforcement with community interests, a process that could compromise individual criminal–procedural rights.

Having established the role of community policing in addressing (a) larger political and social issues that engender or promulgate high crime and (b) the use of officer discretion that is or is perceived to be racially/status biased toward certain groups, we now turn to what defines community policing and how community policing has been incorporated. Community policing is defined by its practice, as it lacks any unifying theoretical base or application, rather it is viewed as individualized community-oriented policing reforms adopted in piecemeal and implemented sporadically throughout the 1980s and to the present (Fielding, 2002; Lyons, 1999a, 1999b; Sharp, 2012). It can at best be understood as an attempt to build a community consensus about appropriate behavior that becomes self-reinforcing over time, thus discretion is guided by the community as to what “acts” actually need to be enforced (Fielding, 2002). Sharp (2012) identifies that community policing practices employ three aspects: problem solving, citizen involvement, and decentralization. Problem-solving is developed from the work of Wilson and Kelling (1982) and their theory of Broken Windows. The theory being that crime was inexorably linked to other social/racial problems that were plaguing a community. Hence, broken windows being tied to the large amount of abandoned or dilapidated housing and the social stigma that accompanied that area, rather then indicating a need for more vigorous enforcement of vandalism crimes by the police. Citizen involvement indicates a need to incorporate community leaders and residents into law enforcement and vice versa. As residents and community leaders can better assess and prioritize problems within a community and, hence, direct limited policing forces to areas of most benefit. Finally, decentralization focuses the attention on front-line officer discretion in applying the law, as Sharp (2012) notes: “only if street-level police officers have the incentives, training, and flexibility to follow through on community-oriented, crime prevention–focused activities can problem solving and partnerships with the community be realized” (p. 78). By the middle of the 1990s, community policing efforts could be realized in the application of 12 specific programs/practices across all major policing agencies, these include

(1) fixed (i.e., nonrotational) assignment of officers to neighborhood beats; (2) use of storefront stations, which provide a more accessible, neighborhood-level institutional presence; (3) use of special task units for solving problems in target areas; (4) deployment of officers on foot, bike, or horse patrol; (5) use of unpaid, civilian volunteers; (6) neighborhood block watch programs; (7) business watch programs; (8) victim contact programs; (9) use of community newsletters; (10) block meetings between the agency and the community participants; (11) crime education for the public; and (12) citizen surveys to keep police informed about local problems. (Sharp, 2012, p. 81)

These programs/practices represent the bulk of community policing policies initiated; however, the literature depicts that of key consideration in community policing is the relationship of governance.

Governance is defined as “regimes, laws, rules, judicial decisions, and administrative practices that constrain, prescribe, and enable the provision of publicly supported goals and services” (Frederickson, 2004, p. 1). The theoretical implications carry significant weight in the assessment and understanding of both the ability to administer and the legitimacy of administration. As Hawdon (2008) illustrates, there currently is no consensus about why attitudes toward police vary by neighborhood. However, a possible explanation is that resident trust of police and perceptions of police legitimacy may depend on neighborhood levels of social capital. Hence, the ability of the police to ingratiate themselves into the community, as accepted members or through increased visibility, would allow for effectively using informal networks to diffuse crimes before they occur or solve the crimes that do occur (Hawdon & Ryan, 2003). The extent to which this aspect represents a reciprocal relationship between citizens and police has, however, been of continuing scrutiny. Far too often, the result of community involvement is domination of the procedures and the outcomes of neighborhood meetings by police officials. Controlling the agenda allows officials to deflect responsibility, control decision outcomes, and rewrite narratives (Gascon & Roussell, n.d.). Policing, in general, centers on the need to legitimate police action and thus plays a key part of the history of police reform.

Early policing focused on enforcing public order laws and public opinion-favored restrictions on the use of force (Potter, 2019). The limitation on force reflecting the corrupt nature of those in positions to use force and in the laws being asked to enforce. Laws which focused on controlling the poor, harassing labor organizers, and surveilling immigrants and freed slaves. The developments in public administration of progressivist state-centered administration (discussed later) was fully adopted by the 1950s. This adoption was led by O.W. Wilson who’s book Police Administration set the standard for professionalizing policing (Bopp, 1977). Police professionalization was viewed as a way to both improve police effectiveness and reform policing as an institution. Central to this initial reform was a greater focus on centralization of the police function, with an emphasis on military-style organization and discipline. Criticism of this reform resulted from the creation of vast police bureaucracies that were isolated from the public and defensive in the face of criticism. This aspect only increased as a process, that Harring (1981) termed Taylorization. It sought to remove social work aspects from police work. Social work being viewed as apathetic to efficient crime-fighting. Taylorization was epitomized in the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, where large sums of federal money were made available for rather cosmetic police-community relations programs. These programs were devised media photo-ops seeking to improve the image of the police. Community policing, along with attempts at restorative justice and rehabilitation reform efforts, developed from the successive criticism of these two reforms in the 1980s. However, community policing was somewhat sidelined, as it arose in a time when science and technology allowed for greater citizen surveillance, new policing techniques, and technologies. Potter (2019, p. 3) arguing that “from the beginning American policing has been intimately tied not to the problem of crime, but to exigencies and demands of the American political-economy.” This leading to the current emphasis on militarization as witnessed by the spread of SWAT teams and other paramilitary squads, as well as, in gathering databases of information and in increasing network capacity. The current questioned legitimacy of policing, with demands for defunding and community policing rests upon the ability to address the demands of governance. This aspect and its implications are discussed in the following section.

Policing: Governance and Legitimacy

Policing is inherently political, as the decisions on what to enforce, where to concentrate enforcement, how to go about enforcement, and who enforces all represent political decisions. In addition, these political decisions are especially important when considered in the scope of governance: who has the responsibility of maintaining social order and how do they legitimate their actions. Public administration has and continues to grapple with one underlying question: how to legitimate the use of coercive power by unelected officials. Representative democracy legitimates government action through the will of the people acting through their representatives and held accountable by regular elections. In many ways, the study of public administration can be understood as an attempt to answer this singular question. As this question relates to street-level bureaucrats, the address of this question centers on a number of developed theoretical paths, that tend to converge at the idea of governance.

The Misunderstood Reality: Implications of Calls to Defund or Reform Police

The previous section identified that community policing privileges the progressivist state-centered administration. Therefore, calls for community policing are politically focused on reform measures that assuage fears and solve problems but ultimately enhance state policing powers. Whether the coupling of calls for community policing with defunding the police reflect a shift to self-governance is highly suspect, given that the state has rarely relinquished or devolved its policing powers, choosing instead to self-limit or clarify a power. Rather, it could be seen as a purely political act to pressure police agencies to adhere to political reform measures or, possibly more aptly, to shift political responsibility for ramifications of police conduct from law-makers to police officers. This can be understood when looking at the reality of policing and efforts to reform policing without consideration of the important role of street-level discretion in legitimizing public policy/law. The reality of street-level policing is that current trends toward defunding or community policing seem to present a substantial burden and risk rather than present any substantive change. This view presents serious problems, especially at street level as it does not understand street-level actors; their motivations, their values, or the way they view and understand their use of authority. The result is that street-level actors and public administration at large, are subject to increasing reforms to fix externalities that impede implementation of law, yet the law public administrators are being asked to administer is rarely questioned as a source of implementation failure. Whether a policy can or should be implemented is rarely considered beyond its passage in a representative body, beyond structural or appropriation requirements.

The progressivist view of professional, apolitical, neutral, and procedural administration presents two problems: (a) it fails to understand street-level bureaucrats’ motivations, values, or the way they view and understand their use of authority. (b) As a result, it subjects street-level bureaucrats to an increasing number of reforms that fail to take into account the important role of discretion in legitimating the law.

To address the first problem each aspect of the progressivist view will be discussed in relation to how it misunderstands street-level bureaucracy. Professionalism, administrators having specialized knowledge and organizational capabilities/arrangements, creates a problem in street-level bureaucracy in two ways that result in the same outcome. First, street-level bureaucrats view their professionalism as giving them distinct knowledge or position to oversee agency activities; however, this tends to lead street-level bureaucrats to adopt an insular attitude toward outside perspectives (Bovens, 2006; Hupe et al., 2015; Jos, 1990; Lipsky, 1980; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003; Maynard-Moody & Portillo, 2010; Muir, 1977). Second, in the same vein, street-level bureaucrats tend to adopt a collective culture due to their view as a profession, again reinforcing a limited acceptance of viewpoints offered by those outside of their profession (Bovens, 2006; Hupe et al., 2015; Jos, 1990; Lipsky, 1980; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003; Maynard-Moody & Portillo, 2010; Muir, 1977). The political nature of street-level bureaucrats is well established (discretion as policymaking). Lipsky (1980) identified that street-level bureaucrats are inherent policymakers and how they apply the rules matters. “Street-level bureaucracy is two things: it is an effort to have policy implementation conform to general and abstract rules; and it is an effort to apply rules to specific and concrete cases” (Bannink et al., 2014; Hupe et al., 2015, p. 205).

Street-level bureaucrats do not simply implement given rules in cases that can be fully understood on the basis of these rules, but instead translate rules into client-level decisions, building upon information (not fully defined in the rule) on clients’ conditions and upon expertise (also not fully defined) on client treatment. (Bannink et al., 2014, p. 205)

Also of consideration is the extent to which differing political viewpoints affect street-level bureaucrats’ actions, especially when such viewpoints may call for limiting authority or cutting funding (Jos, 1990; Lipsky, 1980; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003; Muir, 1977; Simon, 1947). Neutral administration that street-level bureaucrats administer the law the same from person to person, also has been shown to be false. Numerous studies show that street-level bureaucrats prioritize service delivery and base this priority on a number of factors including their judgment on whether a person is deserving (Kaufman, 1922; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003; Muir, 1977; P. G. Scott, 1997). Finally, procedure is effective only so long as it is actually enforced at the street-level. Time constraints, political/public pressure, and financial restraints all play a role in rendering attention to procedure a matter of prioritization and value judgment (Bovens, 2006; Hill, 1976; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003; Muir, 1977; Pressman & Wildavsky, 1984). What is misunderstood in each of these ideals are individual motivations for becoming a public administrator, values in prioritizing service delivery, and the view and understanding of the use of authority granted.

The result of the misunderstanding of street-level bureaucrats is a series of reform efforts in public administration, seeking either to address or legitimate the issues with the progressivist ideal, discussed above. These reforms primarily focus on the finding that trust in government goes down with poor public administration. They fail to account for the finding that the reverse is unsupported in studies (Perry & Christensen, 2015). The resulting reform efforts themselves tend to become a major source of impediment to successful policy implementation, as they add ambiguity to already ambiguous statutes (Perry & Christensen, 2015). “The central problem of public administration is ambiguity in the laws that public administrators must carry out, especially policy that crosses jurisdictions, agencies, or expands government” (Bertelli et al., 2006 p. 1). The resulting of these reform efforts is a focus on administrative discretion. In New Public Administration, this was an appeal to increase managerial discretion. In Governance, it has been an appeal to increase discretion to govern. Discretion is a powerful legitimatizing force recognized in street-level bureaucracy (Bovens, 2006; Hupe et al., 2015; Lipsky, 1980; Muir, 1977; Maynard-Moody & Portillo, 2010); however, the focus on discretion alone is a problem without considering authority. It is the authority granted and the authority used by statute that should be of key consideration. The ability of public administrators to implement legislation depends not only on the capacity and discretion of public administrators but more importantly on the law. statutes give authority but discretion provides legitimacy. Hence, how authority is used matters and that is dependent on biases, politics, and priorities. Policy and legislation ill-suited to the daily interactions of street-level bureaucrats provides authority but discretion in this case can have negative consequences. Professionalism and procedural addresses empower the state, but the fear is that street-level bureaucrats will opt to fail to administer the law or be more, not less, antagonistic in their application.

The interaction between citizens, street-level bureaucrats, and policymakers is explored in various theories, including citizen-agent theory, state-agent theory, and principal-agent theory. What all these theories seek to describe/understand is the differential outcomes that emerge from policy to implementation. Within these theories are two major focuses: (a) how policy is actually applied by street-level bureaucrats and (b) the extent to which policy guides or constrains street-level bureaucrats decision-making.

Various research demonstrates that differential outcomes (different client treatment) by street-level bureaucrats is to be expected. Some citizens will receive extraordinary help and services, some what is required/allowed by rules/procedures, and some will be excluded from social benefits (Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003). Workers’ views of fairness and appropriate action carry more weight than law, policy, and rules (Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003). This state of affairs is unavoidable as Maynard–Moody, Steven Musheno, and Michael Musheno (Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003) identify:

The proliferation of rules—often contradictory rules—requires matching the case to the rule or procedure, and this process requires discretion. H. George Fredrickson reminds us that discretion is inherent in all acts of administration because every application of the law involves further elaboration of that law. Thus, like putty, discretion can be squeezed by oversight and rules but never eliminated; it will shift and reemerge in some other form in some other place. (p. 10)

Street-level bureaucrats exist in an environment of limited resources with loose guidance and constraint. The “system” to which they are attached is seen as something to partition from the actual day-to-day demands (Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003). Their day-to-day interactions and evaluations of fairness in applying the rules and regulations to citizens overshadow that their particularistic and pragmatic judgments have profound consequences for individuals, the state, and the social order. Yet, the ability to democratically control these judgments are limited especially when they conflict with the judgments of street-level bureaucrats.

Rules and regulations are seen as a burden to overcome, especially when implemented in opposition to street-level bureaucrats views of the day-to-day realities. When street-level discretion is viewed as incompatible with democratic governance, the usual response is to attempt to tether it to increased political supervision and/or by elaborating rules and procedures.

Despite these efforts, realists lament that the edifice of democratic control cannot, in the end, really limit street-level discretion. More worrisome is the observation that efforts to control discretion merely push it further underground, thereby weakening control and accountability. (Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003, p. 14)

Street-level bureaucrats define their work in terms of relationships more than rules. Their work is rule-saturated but not rule bound and the extent to which they are willing to work harder, increase personal danger, and be less successful to achieve differential outcomes they view as fair reflects the primacy of social interaction (Lipsky, 1980; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003; Wilkins & Wenger, 2014). As Bannink et al. (2014) identify:

High complexity of tasks and the task environment create a high degree of discretion for individual street-level bureaucrats and blocks the effectiveness of rule-based and, to some extent, incentive-based governance mechanisms. Where control incentives are strong, however, political and organizational managers tend to apply rule- based or incentive-based control mechanisms anyway, even if task characteristics block the effectiveness of these controls. This normally leads to tension and relatively strong unintended effects with respect to case treatment and/or employee well-being. (p. 223)

When formal controls are perceived as coercive, they can generate resistance and dysfunctional effects. However, self-determination theory does propose that increased street-level participation in the development of rules can overcome some of this shortfall. In this sense of formal controls on street-level bureaucrats, policy (rules, procedures, regulations) can be seen as a hindrance to overcome, a guide only in so far as the policy meets street-level determinations of fairness, but not as a means of controlling street-level discretion (Bannink et al., 2014; Bovens, 2006; Doo-Rae, 2008; Kaufman, 1922; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003; Meier & O’Toole, 2006; Muir, 1977; Wilkins & Wenger, 2014; Wilson & Kelling, 1982). The resulting determination of the realities of calls to defund or reform the police are that officers will be placed more at odds with executing their authority, less attuned to democratic control, and, possibly, more apt to exercise excessive action.

Conclusion Public Administrators Confined: The Problem of Law, Policy, and Leadership

Those supporting the call for defunding and community policing may misunderstand the implications on the legitimacy of law enforcement. As demonstrated, community policing, in its supported form, seeks to empower state policing efforts by tapping into latent social control mechanisms within communities. It rarely seeks to devolve police powers or limit/impede the state or police officers in the use of those powers. Calls to defund the police should be seen as possibly the most inappropriate action, given the implications of the first findings. As defunding could be viewed as a coercive means to force police officials and officers to abide by politically imposed reforms (rules, procedures, and restrictions). As shown, in the previous section, this can serve to pit officers against political figures and deepen officer resistance to following or adhering to any proposed reform efforts. It also will likely have the unintended consequence of putting officers in a position to be hesitant to use de-escalation methods, instead favoring avoidance until a situation becomes dangerous. In addition, it will likely damage relationships between officers and the community they serve, creating more negative encounters adding to the deleterious consequences of perceived fairness associated with discretion. Although the calls for defunding and community policing may aid the political power of those who can capitalize on being seen as a crusader for justice, it may fail to address the issues that led to police shootings in the first place. More likely, it could serve to exacerbate the problems already in place and create new problems as officers react to coercive reform efforts.

Policy and politics can have negative repercussions on the ability of police officers to do their job and their willingness to place themselves in harm’s way. If the repercussions of action are dismissal and persecution/prosecution, what are the lessons learned from calls to defund or go to community policing? The argument of this article is that calls to defund the police or enact community policing are misplaced. Serving, most likely, as a means of politically obfuscating the duty of the state to address the underlying social/racial problems within a polity. This is not to say that community policing has no real benefits. Quite the opposite is true as a cornerstone of community policing is reforming how police are evaluated, funded, and promoted. Too often, the easiest metrics (arrests, tickets, and visible action) are used while harder to gage metrics (positive outcomes, trust, and community engagement) are ignored. But, community policing, at least in its accepted notion, empowers state policing power, not communities’ ability to practice self-government. It also has been and currently is practiced throughout large metropolitan police departments. Real and lasting change will most likely not come from a focus on altering enforcement. Rather, what is required is the political leadership to address the larger questions of governance. Although coercive state power is required to ensure law and order, the legitimate use of coercive powers depends on protecting from its abuse. Muir (1977) identifies that proximity to human suffering and a legal emphasis on liberty are the two greatest deterrents to abuse:

Coercion is the instrument of equality and the enemy of liberty. In times when the demands of equality seem more imperative than the protection of liberty, the limits on coercion imposed in the name of freedom are eroded. At such times political figures are left bereft of those legal and social taboos which once justified them in pursuing limited or moderate goals. (p. 281)

The impetus to act, by political leaders, may have led to calls to defund the police and for community policing to satisfy short-term constituent demands. However, what is needed is not short-term lip service. Leadership, perseverance, and objectivity are required to recognize that the problem does not lie with those administering the law, but on the law being administered. Legitimate police action is best perceived when the laws being administered are viewed as legitimate. Substantive change in policing must come from changes in the law that provide the staying power for reform to overcome bureaucratic retrenchment to change and in our view of governance, specifically in what should be enforced and the role of government in maintaining order, to ensure that these reflect the realities of policing.