The Organizational Correlates of Terrorism Response Preparedness in Local Police Departments

Abstract

Since the development of homeland security, scholars have debated the relationship between community-oriented policing and homeland security innovations in local police departments. Most of the literature that assesses this relationship has been “conjecture or anecdotal,” and few studies have systematically measured these impacts. Few studies have examined the influence that organizational structures and administrative factors have on terrorism response preparedness among local law enforcement agencies. To fill these gaps, this study evaluates a national sample of local police agencies drawn from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2003 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) Survey. Results show that community policing efforts are positively correlated with terrorism preparedness efforts. Results also show that a number of organizational factors including organization size, budget per capita, and functional differentiation were positively correlated with terrorism preparedness, whereas formalization and spatial differentiation were negatively correlated.