CJ 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 30: Rudy Giuliani, Community Policing, Police Brutality
Does Community Policing Prevent Crime?
A growing consensus within police circles is that community policing is the best strategy for
fighting crime in residential neighborhoods. This strategy is based on police community ‐
reciprocity—the police and public cooperate to prevent and to solve crimes. An important
premise of this approach is that police should fight crime locally rather than follow dictates from
Washington, D.C. Community policing often features decentralization of command through
substations to increase police‐citizen interaction. It also involves foot patrol so police can walk
and talk with citizens. New York City and other metropolitan areas incorporate into community
policing a zero tolerance attitude toward minor crimes and disorder to enhance feelings of
community safety.
Community policing does prevent crime
To prove the effectiveness of community policing, proponents point to testimonials from
police chiefs and mayors from various communities.
1. Many chiefs of police and mayors credit community policing with lowering crime
rates. They claim that community policing has restored order in neighborhoods
where once open air drug markets thrived and gangs hung out. New York City is ‐
a prime example. The zero tolerance policy, which has been given a showcase
in New York City, holds that no crime—not the breaking of a window, not the
jumping of a turnstile, not drinking in public—is too insignificant to capture the
swift, decisive attention of the police.
2. Arrest more petty offenders and make more arrests for petty offenses today,
goes the reasoning, and you will have fewer hard core criminals tomorrow. Under‐
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the NYPD returned to a policy of proactive policing,
frisking more than 45,000 suspects for guns and other weapons in 1997 and
1998. According to police officials, New Yorkers are getting results that range
from fewer panhandlers to fewer shootings and murders.
Community policing does not prevent crime
Critics of community policing attack this approach to crime fighting from different angles.‐
1. No one knows what community policing is, according to criminal justice professor
Carl Klockars. Even though a majority of police departments in America claim to
be doing community policing, the differences between the actual operations may
be significant. Community policing as it is organized in New York is different from
its practice in Chicago, Washington, and Philadelphia. The lack of precision in
defining community policing makes it impossible to say with any certainty that
community policing is causing crime rates to decrease.
2. The evidence from particular communities used to demonstrate that community
policing reduces crime is suspect. By appealing to anecdotal evidence to support
the claim that community policing reduces crime, proponents make a hasty
generalization on the basis of a very few and possibly unrepresentative cases.
3. The correlation between falling crime rates and the establishment of community
policing may be coincidental. The fact is that over the past few years crime has
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Document Summary
A growing consensus within police circles is that community policing is the best strategy for fighting crime in residential neighborhoods. This strategy is based on police community reciprocity the police and public cooperate to prevent and to solve crimes. An important premise of this approach is that police should fight crime locally rather than follow dictates from. Washington, d. c. community policing often features decentralization of command through substations to increase police citizen interaction. It also involves foot patrol so police can walk and talk with citizens. New york city and other metropolitan areas incorporate into community policing a zero tolerance attitude toward minor crimes and disorder to enhance feelings of community safety. To prove the effectiveness of community policing, proponents point to testimonials from police chiefs and mayors from various communities: many chiefs of police and mayors credit community policing with lowering crime rates.
