Community Policing: The Middle Manager’s Perspective

Community policing has evolved as the new organizational orthodoxy of policing. Volumes have been written on the subject by academics and research scholars. However, the voices of those who are charged with the reorganization of their departments and the implementation of community policing have been relatively silent. This article presents data drawn from the content analysis of the written views of community policing held by a select sample of middle managers from across the country. The respondents were attending the administrative officers course at the Southern Police Institute at the University of Louisville. During the course of their studies, they read current anthologies on community policing research. These findings identify and discuss a number of problems that they have encountered in the implementation of community policing. As such, they represent a practitioner’s assessment of community policing.