Police officers’ role orientations. Endorsement of community policing, order maintenance, and traditional law enforcement

• Published date: 10 October 2019
• Pages: 944-959
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/PIJPSM-04-2019-0044
• Date: 10 October 2019
• Author: Jacinta M. Gau,Nicholas D. Paul
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management,Policing,Criminal justice,Juvenile/youth crime,Police studies,Health & social care,Criminology & forensic psychology,Criminology & criminal justice

Police officers’role orientations

Endorsement of community policing, order

maintenance, and traditional law enforcement

Jacinta M. Gau and Nicholas D. Paul

Department of Criminal Justice,

University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA

Abstract

Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine police officers’attitudes toward community policing and

order maintenance, as well as the facets of the work environment that impact those attitudes.

Design/methodology/approach –Survey data come from a sample of officers in a mid-sized police

department. Ordinary least squares regression modeling is used to examine community-policing, order-

maintenance and law-enforcement role orientations.

Findings –Officers endorse community partnerships, but are less enthusiastic about order maintenance.

They also display mid-level support for traditional law enforcement. Work–environment variables have

inconsistent impacts across the three role orientations.

Research limitations/implications –This was a survey of attitudes in one department. Future research

should examine officers’involvement in community-policing and order-maintenance activities and any

impediments to such activities.

Practical implications –The findings have implications for police leaders seeking to implement

community policing and ensure street-level officers are carrying out partnership and order-maintenance

activities. In particular, top management must foster a positive work environment and personally model

commitment to policing innovations.

Originality/value –This paper adds to the currently sparse body of literature on officer attitudes toward

community policing and order maintenance, and incorporates traditional law-enforcement attitudes as a point

of contrast. This paper advances the scholarly understanding of police officers’role orientations.

Keywords Community policing, Order maintenance, Law enforcement, Role orientations, Officer attitudes

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

Since the 1980s, police agencies nationwide have operated under the auspices of community

policing. Nearly all departments serving large, urban populations embed community

policing in their mission statements, as do majorities of departments in mid-sized and small

jurisdictions. Most large and mid-sized departments also maintain problem-solving

partnerships with local organizations (Reaves, 2015).

In spite of the prevalence of stated commitment to community policing and its closely

related counterparts (problem solving and order maintenance), there is little evidence as to

whether street-level officers themselves buy into the philosophy and practice of community

partnerships, problem solving and a focus on low-level disorder. In the midst of the

community-policing heyday of the 1990s, Lurigio and Skogan (1994, pp. 315-316) observed

that “the transition to community policing is frequently a battle for the hearts and minds of

police officers.”It is not clear whether that battle was ever won.

The present paper aims to address this gap in the research. Using survey data from

officers in a mid-sized city department, we examine officers’endorsement of community

policing, order maintenance and traditional law enforcement. Descriptive statistics gauge

the overall temperature of officers’attitudes toward each role orientation. Regression models

Policing: An International Journal

Vol. 42 No. 5, 2019

pp. 944-959

© Emerald PublishingLimited

1363-951X

DOI 10.1108/PIJPSM-04-2019-0044

Received 1 April 2019

Revised 20 May 2019

Accepted 19 August 2019

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/1363-951X.htm

This paper forms part of a special section on “Social Police Work and Police Social Work: 100 years

after August Vollmer’s speech”.

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containing variables tapping into facets of the work environment speak to whether these

different aspects of the police job influence officers’role orientations. The results have

implications for police leaders seeking to instill their officers with a greater commitment to

engaging with citizens and promoting quality of life.

Community policing: a brief history

Community policing began as a reaction to the deficits of the professional model that

dominated policing throughout the early-to-latter decades of the twentieth century. The

Civil Rights Movement and accompanying protests and riots, the Stonewall Riots, and

clashes between police and college students and Vietnam War protestors exposed painful

divides between the police and the citizenry ( for reviews, see Gau, 2019; Paoline et al., 2016).

Police were out of touch.

At the same time, disorder was spreading through urban centers. Although it is difficult

to say whether urban blight caused middle-class (mostly white) citizens to flee to the

suburbs or whether, conversely, “white flight”(and black flight) caused urban blight

(see Massey and Denton, 1993), the two forces co-occurred and reinforced one another.

Previously an attraction to visitors, city centers turned into places to avoid. Public spaces

are safe and economically viable when they are used for multiple purposes ( Jacobs, 1961).

As prosocial activities decline, the social fabric of the community erodes until it can no

longer fend off disorder and crime. Such was the state of urban and mid-sized cities in the

1960s, a situation that worsened in ensuing decades.

The role of police in society was redefined during this period. Reformers both external

(e.g. academics) and internal (e.g. chiefs) to the occupation advanced new visions of police in

which officers attuned themselves to community needs and pushed back against disorder.

Fear of crime (Lewis and Salem, 1986) and disorder or incivilities (Wilson and Kelling, 1982)

rose to the top of community reformers’agendas.

Community policing was derailed somewhat by the terrorist attacks of September 11,

2001, after which policing in the USA veered sharply toward intelligence-based approaches

(see Ratcliffe, 2016). Militarization had been proliferating across departments since the

1990s (Kraska, 2007; Kraska and Kappeler, 1997), seemingly at odds with the simultaneous

spread of community policing. The post-9/11 emphasis on homeland security temporarily

solidified the vision of police less as public servants and more as domestic military officers.

This trend continued roughly until2014 when several successive instances of police useof

deadly force against unarmed black men touched off nationwide protests, flung thefledgling

Black Lives Matter movement into the spotlight and became the impetus for a national

discussion about police treatment of black Americans. Use of force is the flashpoint issue

underlying most of the critics’condemnations, but the discussion directly implicates

police–community relations on a broaderscale. Many departments respondedto the backlash

by (among other things)redoubling their commitment to communitypolicing (Weitzer, 2015).

Officers’support for community policing

At the outset of the community-policing movement, officers resisted the new ideology.

Having been trained and socialized into the professional era that prized reactivity, crime

fighting and detachment, older officers rejected community policing as “soft”and “not real

police work”(see Paoline et al., 2000). The rise of paramilitary policing that co-occurred with

the spread of community policing likely sent conflicting messages. Early research revealed

ambivalence. Greene’s (1989) analysis indicated that officers felt more positively about

interacting with the community when they had generally high levels of job satisfaction.

Lurigio and Skogan (1994) found support among officers for citizen participation in crime

control, but more-negative attitudes toward enforcement against low-level forms of crime

and disorder.

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