Briefly describe the methods and findings of one of the two empirical studies of COPPS provided in the chapter

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

One empirical study (by Connell et al.) sought to determine whether or not a well-implemented, defined, and comprehensive community policing initiative would have an impact on local crime rates. Officers and first-line supervisors who were selected for the initiative "bought into" community policing and were involved in its implementation. Furthermore, every officer in the study was given certain responsibilities, such as meeting with citizens, business owners, and schools. Three crime rate categories studied – violent, property, and drug crimes – were measured as the crimes known to the police. Crime reports were the dependent measures instead of calls for service or arrests. Researchers used three separate dependent variables or dependent series: a violent crimes series, a property crimes series, and a drug series. Using sophisticated statistical techniques, Connell et al., found that for each of the three categories, there was a significant difference between the pre-intervention and the post-intervention means in the intervention site. In other words, the findings suggested that community policing does have the capacity to affect serious crime rates. The intervention resulted in an abrupt and permanent decline in the level of violent and property crimes in the treatment site, though not in the comparison sites. Connell et al., felt the success of this program may have been due to the comprehensive approach of the program and the fact that it reflected the tenets of community policing. Finally, the model was not implemented in the entire department; rather, it was limited to a single unit. Connell et al., believed that it is probably easier to implement a comprehensive strategy and maintain standards within a unit rather than an entire department.

A study (by Worrall et al.) sought to examine whether or not funding by the federal Office of Community Oriented Services (COPS) had reduced crime; they examined a six-year time frame during which the COPS Office awarded 30,000 grants to more than 12,000 agencies and funded the hiring of more than 105,000 new police officers. The dependent variables in these analyses were the rates per 100,000 people of seven index crimes (excluding arson). Expecting to find an inverse relationship between COPS grants and crime, and that the spending of $8 billion in taxpayer dollars would be found to have significantly reduced crime, their findings suggested otherwise. COPS spending had little to no effect on crime and thus, in their words, tended to "fly in the face" of other similar studies. They believed the reason for this finding was clear: the average grants for hiring – the largest type of COPS grant – averaged only $407,515.70, a mere one half of 1 percent of the typical police budget. The researchers concluded that federal funding for local law enforcement may not be the best way to go, that merely throwing money at the crime problem, simply hiring more police officers, does not seem to help reduce crime to a significant extent.