View Research by Author - Catherine Coles

Publications

The Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) has provided grants to promote community policing strategies through officer participation with community residents in crime control and prevention activities. This case study documents the experiences of the Colorado Springs, Colorado, police department as it moved toward community policing. The transition began with a deployment along a geographical model into three separate substations. The police department adopted community policy as an overall strategy and granted officers and supervisors the authority to design and implement problem-solving strategies, often involving other agencies, to reduce or eliminate long-term problems.

The Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) has provided grants to promote community policing strategies through officer participation with community residents in crime control and prevention activities. This case study documents the experience of the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, as it moved from a mission of "arrest and prosecute" to one of "respond to what the community needs." Described in some detail is the success of the police department with its first community-policing precinct. The fledgling precinct became a model for how the police department operated its future precincts.

The COPS program was designed to increase the scale of policing in America, and to change the predominant strategy of American policing from an emphasis on reactive law enforcement to an emphasis on proactive community problem-solving. To evaluate the progress of the program, the Urban Institute surveyed police departments and focused intensive scrutiny on a small number of departments to develop case studies. This report examines the organizational change in case-study departments and analyzes the impetus, leadership and process of the change, and the role of COPS grants in generating change.

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