Evolving Strategy of Policing: Case Studies of Strategic Change
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The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and prepared the following final report: Document Title: Evolving Strategy of Policing: Case Studies of Strategic Change Author(s): George L. Kelling ; Mary A. Wycoff Document No.: 198029 Date Received: December 2002 Award Number: 95-IJ-CX-0059 This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federally- funded grant final report available electronically in addition to traditional paper copies. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. Page 1 Prologue. Draft, not for circulation. 5/22/2001 e The Evolving Strategy of Policing: Case Studies of Strategic Change May 2001 George L. Kelling Mary Ann Wycoff Supported under Award # 95 zscy 0 5 9 fiom the National Institute of Justice, Ofice of Justice Programs, U. S. Department of Justice. Points ofview in this document are those ofthe authors and do not necessarily represent the official position ofthe U.S. Department of Justice. This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. Prologue. Draft, not for circulation. 5/22/2001 Page 2 PROLOGUE Orlando W. Wilson was the most important police leader of the 20thcentury. His thinking and writing singularly dominated policing from the 1940s through the 1970s. His mentor, August Vollmer, may achieve similar status in the future, since his practice, as against his later writings, was prescient of many of the late 20thcentury trends in policing. Vollmer’s patrol officers as “chiefs of their beats,” “college cops” (the majority of his officers were either college graduates or in college), and his “Friday crab club” meetings (meetings of off-duty officers to discuss their work with him and their peers) were the first stirrings of genuine professionalism in policing. What Vollmer practiced, however, was a road not taken by policing, at least until the 1980s with the development of community policing e 0. W. Wilson’s preeminence is based on his practical, creative, and original thinking and his ability to put that thinking into clear and precise writing. His texts on police administration and on planning became the standards of the field, used in generations of training, education, and civil service examinations. No other book on policing was as influential as Poke Administration in its various editions in shaping policing’s basic strategy. ’ During the era dominated by 0. W. Wilson and his colleaguesyroughly the 1920s through the 1970s, police departments shifted from being an integral part of urban political machines with a broad service mandate, to autonomous “professional” organizations narrowly focused on “serious” crime. Allied with the Progressives, reformers struggled to extricate policing at all levels from the influence of late 19‘h/early 20thcentury urban politics. In doing so, they developed a strategy of police that I See, for example, Orlando W. Wilson, Police Administration, 2”ded. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1963. This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. Prologue. Draft, not for circulation. 5/22/2001 Page 3 emphasized bureaucratic autonomy, efficiency, and internal accountability through command and control systems. The business of police was serious crime as defined by the Uniform Crime Reports (developed by Wilson’s colleagues under the auspices of the International Association of Chief of Police). The organizational structure and administrative processes of police departments were patterned after the classical models developed by Frederick Taylor, the great organizational theorist of the early 20thCentury. The methods for dealing with serious crime included criminal investigation, random preventive patrol by automobile, and rapid response to calls for service. 0. W. Wilson emerged as the primary architect of both the administrative/organizational and tactical elements of this strategy. His administrative texts, conceived and written during the 1940s and 1950s, remained basic police lore until well into the 1980s. Reformers had extraordinary confidence in this strategy. Many believed that the car and radio could eliminate urban crime completely.2 By means of police radio, headquarters can broadcast information instantly to every precinct station and every police auto. Orders can be given to descend upon the scene of the crime from various directions by police cars. The net is quickly formed and tightened. Often the criminal is caught at the scene of the crime: usually not far away. If he should get outside the net the chase may be taken up and directed by radio.3 This confidence remained until well into the 1960s. For reformers, hrther development of policing and its ability to deal with problems focused on resources and implementation: if only police were recruited, trained, supervised, and deployed properly, urban crime could be subdued. During the resources heyday of the late 1960s and early * Jonathan Rubinstein, City Police, New York, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, p. 20. Roscoe Kent, “Catching the Criminal by Police Radio,” The American City, vol. 45, November 1931, p. 106. This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. ,-“,, Prologue. Draft, not for circulation. 5/22/2001 Page 4 1970s, police chief after police chief testified to city councils that, given enough officers and proper adherence to reform principles, surging crime could be contained. Wilson’s writings led the way to command and control organizations, heavy emphasis on rules and regulations, preventive patrol by automobile, rapid response to calls for service, beat construction on the basis of “hazards,” and other such innovations that created the basis of what we refer to as the “reform” model of p~licing.~ Close reading of Wilson’s texts gives at least two impressions. First, one can find the origins of many of the excesses of the reform model: the failure to understand police discretion; the over-reliance on the automobile; the isolation of police in those automobiles; the remoteness of police from neighborhoods and communities; the narrow focus on felonies; and the emphasis on law enforcement as opposed to crime prevention. But one also gets a second impression: Wilson’s view of policing is much more complex than one would surmise if simply judged by how it was implemented throughout the US. For example: in the second edition of Police Adminisfration, Appendix B is “Administrative Checklist.”’ It is comprised of 301 questions “to facilitate an inventory of department organization detail and operational procedures.”6 Questions are to be answered with a yes or no; the implication being that a no justifies some change inside the organization under review. For example, the first question is: “Is there an We use reform, as opposed to “professional” even though police reformers dubbed it as such. During the 1920s, the term “scientific” was used to describe the emerging strategy, however, it later became widely known as the professional model. We are reluctant to use professional to describe Wilson’s model because it is a highly idiosyncratic use of the term. Clearly the police occupation, with its traditional focus on command and control and rules and regulations, was markedly different than the traditional professions: clergy, physicians, lawyers, and professors. Without going into detail, the most apt appellation would have been “bureaucratic.” 5 Orlando Winfield Wilson, Police Administration, 2ndEdition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1963, pp. 479- 493. hid, p. 479. This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. Prologue. Draft, not for circulation. 5/22/200 1 Page 5 organization chart of the department?” A no implies a need for one. Wilson’s confidence in this checklist was so great that when the American Bar Foundation asked him to consult on the famous American Bar Foundation survey (discussed below), he presented his checklist as the means by which police departments could be evaluated. The questions on the checklist are broken down into fourteen categories: Organization (Questions 1- 18), Planning (19-38), Inspections (20-67), Public Relations (68-1 13), Patrol (1 14-128). Detective Division (129-154), Youth Division (155-175), Traffic Division (156-249, Dispatching (246-255), Jail (256-266), Laboratory (267-271), Headquarters Building (272-280), Equipment (28 1-291), and District stations (292-301). If, for example, one reads the section on patrol, the reform model’s aversion to foot patrol