Policing Gangs in a Time of Community Policing

Abstract

Community policing is thought to break down the barriers separating the police from the public while inculcating police officers with a broader set of community service ideals. Organizationally, community policing is thought to shift police policymaking from a traditional bureaucracy to one emphasizing greater organizational-environmental interaction. Simultaneously, the shift to community policing is said to be accompanied by flattening of the police hierarchy and the development of coordinated service delivery with any number of public and private agencies that affect neighborhood safety. These are indeed profound changes should they continue to be implemented and shape the institution of policing. – Jack Greene, Community Policing in America, in Policies , Processes , and Decisions of the Criminal Justice System , Julie Horney, ed., 2000, 301 The rise and growth of police gang units parallels another important development in American law enforcement, the shift or attempted shift toward community policing. For much of the twentieth century police organizations in the United States were characterized as being highly legalistic, bureaucratic, and centralized (Kelling and Moore 1988). As a consequence, a technocratic culture spread throughout agencies, and police departments became much more functionally complex and specialized (Reiss 1992). As of late, however, police reformers have attempted to reverse the trend toward organizational complexity and have suggested that police agencies make fundamental changes to their organizational structure so that they are better able to incorporate many of the new demands being imposed on the police as part of community policing (i.e., greater citizen interaction, enhanced problem solving).