A major issue facing modern policing is how to operate effectively in light of the ever increasing ethnic diversity of our population. History has demonstrated that most police issues, ranging from personnel to excessive use of force, are linked closely to the challenges that result from the increasing ethnic diversity found in our cities and suburbs. The difficult challenge of policing in rapidly changing multiethnic communities has resulted in riots triggered by conflict between police officers and members of ethnic communities, including those in Los Angeles and Miami (Alpert and Dunham 1992; Porter and Dunn 1984).
Leaders of metropolitan areas with less ethnic diversity than Los Angeles and Miami may think that these types of problems do not concern them. However, these ethnically diverse cosmopolitan areas are prototypes of the American urban scene. In most communities, ethnicity seems to complicate police procedures and encounters between the police and the public. Progressive police administrators have been searching for solutions to the problems inherent in this type of potentially explosive interaction. Improved policies, training, enhanced supervision, and the decentralization of administrative duties are just some of the solutions that have been attempted.
However, it must be realized that information about potential clients, that is, members of the various ethnic groups, and their views toward police and policing is necessary to guide these solutions. Questions such as the following need to be answered by the police to help design an effective approach to policing: How do members of each ethnic community conceptualize the police? What are their cultural expectations? Which policing procedures will receive community support and the cooperation of the law-abiding residents and which will be rejected with noncooperation and perhaps violence?
The police, the other partner in the relationship, often come to view the ethnic community and its members as antagonistic to them and their role in the community. When the police feel that they have no citizen support in the area, they begin to focus more and more on the lack of citizen respect for the police, refusals to cooperate with the police, and antagonistic bystanders taunting police officers while an investigation or arrest is in process. This type of reciprocal mistrust can develop into a cycle that escalates into extreme conflict such as resulted in the Rodney King case in Los Angeles and the Diallo case in New York City.
Formal and Informal Social Control
To couch the multiethnic policing problem in sociological terms, it is one of disjuncture between formal and informal social control structures. Further, when all is said and done, it is the informal social control structure that revolves around intimate or primary relationships that has the greatest impact on social control. In fact, for the formal control structure (that is, the police and courts) to have any degree of effectiveness, it must be supported and given credibility by the informal structure.
When the intimate relationships of the primary groups are weakened, social control is gradually dissolved. The resulting indirect or secondary relationships have a much different effect on social control. As Park (1925, 26) noted almost eighty years ago:
It is characteristic of city life [in the absence of neighborhood cohesion] that all sorts of people meet and mingle together who never fully comprehend one another. The anarchist and the club man, the priest and the Levite, the actor and the missionary who touch elbows on the street still live in totally different worlds. So complete is the segregation of vocational classes that it is possible within the limits of the city to live in an isolation almost as complete as that of some remote rural community.
Park observed differences between social control based on mores and neighborhood cohesion and social control based on indirect and secondary relationships and positive law. The latter is much weaker and less capable of establishing order.
More recently, Greenberg and Rohe (1986, 79) have reviewed the empirical research on the relationship between informal control and crime. They concluded that emotional attachment to the neighborhood, perceived responsibility for the control over the neighborhood, and the expectation that oneself or one’s neighbors would intervene in a criminal event are associated with low crime rates. This evidence suggests a relationship between the informal control of a cohesive neighborhood and crime.
Informal social control in the residential context refers to the development, observance, and enforcement of local norms for appropriate public behavior (Green-berg and Rohe 1986, 80). It is the process by which individual behavior is influenced by a group and usually functions to maintain a minimum level of predictability in the behavior of group members and to promote the well-being of the group as a whole. Sampson et al. (1997) refer to this as ”collective efficacy,” or the collective capacity of residents to effectively supervise children and maintain public order.
Formal social control is based on written rules or laws and prescribed punishments for violating these rules and laws. The police and the courts are the institutions most directly charged with maintaining order under formal social controls. The means of formal social control are not very effective without the direct support of the informal means of control. The combination and the interaction of the two are central to establishing effective social control.
The stigma of a police car in one’s driveway, being handcuffed and placed in a police car in front of family members and long-time friends and neighbors, and the sting of gossip is feared much more in cohesive neighborhoods than the actual punishments of the formal system. Of course, maximum effectiveness of the control system requires that the norms and values of the informal system be consistent with those of the formal system. Wilson and Kelling (1982, 34) advocate this level of integration:
The essence of the police role in maintaining order is to reinforce the informal control mechanisms of the community itself. The police cannot, without committing extraordinary resources, provide a substitute for that informal control. On the other hand, to reinforce those natural forces, the police must accommodate them.
If the local values and customs of a neighborhood dictate that the police are outsiders and arrest is the imposition of unfair and biased rules on fellow residents, then the stigma of arrest is absent and the informal control system works against the formal system.
Informal social control is not present in every neighborhood; rather it is a variable that differs both in form and degree among neighborhoods. Many lack any degree of fundamental integration and thereby the means for an effective informal social control system. More specifically, the results of research on neighborhoods indicate that shared norms are less likely to develop in low-income neighborhoods that are heterogeneous with regard to ethnic composition, family type, or lifestyle than they are in low-income, culturally homogeneous neighborhoods or in middle-class neighborhoods (Sampson and Wilson 1995; Greenberg and Rohe 1986; Merry 1981). Residents of low-income heterogeneous neighborhoods tend to be more suspicious of each other, to perceive less commonality with other residents, and to feel less control over their neighborhood than do the residents of more homogeneous areas.
For example, many inner-city black neighborhoods lack a dominant cultural group. Even though the residents are all black, housing discrimination and other factors result in neighborhoods that vary considerably in the social values, lifestyle, and family type characteristic of its residents (Erbe 1975). As a result of this diversity, residents have little consensus on conceptions of appropriate public behavior, and informal social control within the neighborhood tends to be weak. In extreme cases, the conceptions of appropriate public behavior are in conflict among neighborhood residents.
The situation in predominately white, middle-class neighborhoods is much different. These neighborhoods tend to be more homogeneous due to self-selection resulting from the greater freedom of choice in locating a residence. Residents tend to self-select their location based upon similarities of other residents to their family type, lifestyle, and values. This process tends to group residents according to their basic underlying assumptions of appropriate public behavior and values. Therefore, informal social control tends to be much more developed in these types of neighborhoods than in low-income neighborhoods.
An Interactive Model
The neighborhood unit still is a social unit as well as an ecological category, even though neighborhoods have undergone considerable change in the past fifty years. These changes have resulted in considerable variation among neighborhoods in their degree of cohesiveness and the strength of their informal social control systems. It is still true that neighborhood context can provide an important source of integration into the larger society for its residents. In fact, cohesive neighborhoods provide alternative means for residents to respond to and adapt to the larger, more complex society. In addition, cohesive neighborhoods incorporate an important system of informal social control that can be crucial to establishing order and controlling crime, if it is integrated into the formal social control system involving the police and the courts. The key is the interaction between the formal social control system of the larger community and the informal control systems operating in the various neighborhoods.
One of the early functions of developing urban police forces was to establish social regulation to supplement law enforcement duties. This need developed when police effectiveness declined, as urbanization increased, and as communities became more cosmopolitan (Black 1980; Kelling 1985). In the most disorderly parts of American cities, the traditional police officer became an ”institution” who responded to a ”moral mandate” for informal social control in situations where individuals violated community or neighborhood norms and impinged on the personal and property rights of others. ”Street justice” was another name for this function (Sykes 1986). ”Street justice,” then, is a response to a community or neighborhood mandate that something be done about situations where formal institutions cannot or will not act for a variety of reasons. When this function became linked to ethnic and racial prejudice in the 1950s and 1960s, however, it ushered in decades of reform.
Skogan (1990) has analyzed indicators of neighborhood decline that lead to disorder. These include public drinking, corner gangs, street harassment, drugs, noisy neighbors, commercial sex, vandalism, dilapidation/abandonment, and rubbish. Other research has also revealed that neighborhoods are declining but that the community policing philosophy is still appropriate for many areas. Further, it is possible to create community spirit in those areas that never had any or that have lost it (Alpert and Dunham 1988).
The traditional model of policing, whether it is labeled ”street justice” or ”order maintenance,” represents a model of policing that integrates the informal control system of the local community with the formal control system of the police. The more recent model of policing, whether it is called ”law enforcement” or ”professional,” attempts policing with minimal integration between the formal control system of the police and the informal control system of the local neighborhood.
The interactive model calls for policing strategies that integrate formal procedures and practices with the informal social control system operating within the various neighborhoods. To reach maximum effectiveness, police discretion and strategies must be organized within the established norms of public behavior in the neighborhood. Policies must be developed with an understanding that the neighborhood has established alternative ways that residents adapt to and cope within the larger social system, including the police and the laws they enforce.
Community-Oriented Policing
There has been a resurgence of interest in this policing strategy and a recent increase in the number of programs that have been initiated in agencies around the country. This interest may be more a function of the failure of the ”law-enforcement” or ”professional” models discussed earlier than an increase in support for this type of policing. Regardless of the reasons, significant attention and resources are being allocated to community-oriented policing.
The purpose of the model is to place a greater emphasis on nonadversarial problem solving in lieu of traditional strategies that conflict with normative structures in the neighborhood. Nonadversarial policing is achieved through the development of specific tasks and policing strategies, which are based upon a combination of law enforcement requirements, community needs, and techniques of problem solving. The question still remains: How can the police gain a greater understanding of the unique characteristics of specific communities so that a bond will form?
Geographic Focus of Police Responsibility
Most departments stress the need for police officers to return to the old meaning of ”beat officer.” That is, to emphasize ”the geographic basis of officer assignment and responsibility by shifting the fundamental unit of patrol accountability from time of day to place” (Cordner 2005, 406). Officers need to learn about the residents and business people in their neighborhoods and to see them and be seen in situations that are not always defined as negative or at best neutral.
To reduce isolation, officers must first be assigned to community beats for an extended period, supervised by command staff. This move toward stability will increase the identification of an officer with the residents, geography, politics, and other issues of a given neighborhood. Second, there must be the traditional police-community relations meetings or citizens’ advisory groups. Even when these two elements are operating, successful community policing requires proper training, feedback mechanisms, and an institutionalized reward system.
Neighborhood Training
Neighborhood training can effectively inform the officers as to what they can expect from the residents, physical surroundings, or other influences. This in-service training introduces officers to community characteristics while working the streets under supervision (in a way similar to a field training officer). Clear differences divide officers and citizens concerning preferred styles of policing. To match style of policing with community needs, knowledge of community values and beliefs as well as the attitudes and priorities of police officers must be part of the training mix.
The needs of the community can be determined by periodic social surveys that, if linked to census data and local planning information, can inform officials of the changing nature of a given neighborhood. While it is relatively easy to identify what constitutes negative behavior, it is difficult to ascertain exemplary behavior. A blue-ribbon committee studying the Miami Police Department came to a similar conclusion. In its final report (Overtown Blue Ribbon Committee 1983, 199), it noted
It is our conclusion that a minor organizational change can have a major impact on community relations and on the interrelationships between citizens and police. We believe that confidence in the police will be enhanced if the police measure and make more visible the activities they perform. Moreover, police work is usually rewarded by the gratitude an officer receives from those who he or she helps. Status in the department, promotions, raises, commendations, etc., rest largely on his or her crime-fighting activities, the number of arrests, crimes he or she solves, etc. As a result, the patrol officer may regard service calls as a necessary evil.
Both the crime fighting and the service function of the police need to be evaluated on the institutional and individual levels. First, an ongoing study of victimization can provide police with data on how well their agency provides services. Second, a random survey of consumers of police services can provide administrators and planners with feedback on their services and the officers who provide them. traditional promotions, merit increases, and ”officer-of-the-month” recognition. Traditionally, these rewards have been based on aggressive actions that have led to an arrest(s), the capture of a dangerous felon, or some other heroic activity. These criteria for rewarding police officers are important and serve to encourage similar actions from others. Yet other types of police behavior deserve recognition, such as exemplary service to the community and the diffusion and reduction of violence. The actions of an officer who avoids a shooting or talks a suspect into custody may not be known to his or her superiors, and when they are, the officer may be labeled a ”chicken” or one who cannot provide needed backup to fellow officers. This type of nonaggressive behavior—consistent with neighborhood norms—deserves attention and reinforcement.
Toward an Interactive Model
The model will work most effectively in homogeneous neighborhoods and in areas where police administrators have strong control of their officers. It is important that police officers work for the community, not merely to impress their supervisors. Some cities will find it quite reasonable to divide police jurisdictions to facilitate the proposed model, as many geographic locations attract or limit certain groups of people. Other cities may find their demographic mix too complex for this type of policing. Regardless of the administrative level of commitment, patrol officers are in the best position to understand the varied and changing needs of the community.
