Patrol Methods exam

Police Support for Community Problem-Solving and Broken Windows Policing

Michael J. Jenkins1

Received: 12 March 2015 /Accepted: 18 June 2015 / Published online: 3 July 2015 # Southern Criminal Justice Association 2015

Abstract This paper explores overall police officer acceptance of tactics and tenets of broken windows and community problem-solving policing. It assesses differential support for each by police officer characteristics (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender, rank, education level, years of service, and assignment). This study presents the findings of a survey of 227 sworn police personnel from two urban police departments. Univariate analyses reveal the levels of support that police have for certain police tactics and tenets of broken windows and community problem-solving policing. Regression analyses examine the relationship between key officer characteristics and support for these tactics and tenets as measured by respondents’ agreement with various items and indices. Findings include support for community problem-solving (and also a reliance on traditional policing methods); a lag in investigators’ acceptance of community problem-solving; and differences by officer race/ethnicity, education, rank, and assign- ment in indices related to broken windows and rapid response policing. The differential acceptance of broken windows and rapid response tactics by race/ethnicity suggests interesting implications for future studies of race/ethnicity and broken windows polic- ing. The greater acceptance of certain tactics by patrol officers supports current moves toward innovating in police investigations’ bureaus.

Keywords Broken windows policing . Latino police officers . Community problem- solving policing . Police perceptions

Introduction

By many accounts and on various fronts the police profession is changing—from an era defined by a community-problem-orientation to a BNew,^ BIntelligence-led,^ or BHomeland Security^ era (Oliver, 2005; Stephens, 2005; Treverton, Wollman, Wilke,

Am J Crim Just (2016) 41:220–235 DOI 10.1007/s12103-015-9302-x

* Michael J. Jenkins [email protected]

1 University of Scranton, 800 Linden St., Scranton, PA 18510, USA

& Lai, 2011). Others, however, argue that the latest technological advances, budgetary constraints, and additional priorities (i.e., anti-terror, cybercrime) are simply new characterizations of the essential community problem-solving relationships between the police and citizens (Jenkins & DeCarlo, 2015).

One of the inarguable shifts in policing is the proportion of Latino police officers. The number of Latino (or Hispanic) police officers employed at the local level increased by 16 % from 2003 to 2007—with one in ten officers being Hispanic or Latino (Reaves, 2011). This apparent new era of policing, the rising numbers of Latino police officers (including the concurrent dearth of research on them [Martínez, 2007]), and the police profession’s continued reliance on both traditional and community problem-solving tactics (Telep & Lum, 2014) warrant an exploration of officers’ perceptions of the definitive police tactics and strategies presented herein. Special attention is paid to the relationship of race/ethnicity on various outcomes.

This study presents the findings of a survey of 227 sworn police personnel from two urban police departments—one located in the Mid-Atlantic region and the other a Midwest police department. Univariate analyses reveal the levels of support that police have for certain police tactics and for theoretical tenets of broken windows policing. Regression analyses examine the relationship between key officer characteristics and support for these various tactics and tenets.

The Current Strategy of Policing

The closeness with which police and citizens work together has varied over the years. For instance, indignation with the corrupting closeness of police, politi- cians, and the public during the Political era (in the latter half of the 19th century) sparked the drastic moves to Bget the politics out of the police and get the police out of politics^ during the Reform era (roughly the early 1900s to 1970) (Miller, 1977, p. 11). The police-community estrangement that symbol- ized this era came to a head in the 1960s as riots (and police inability to successfully combat crime and to work with the community) challenged the police to find new ways of relating to the community and encouraged the profession to welcome ethnic and racial minorities into their ranks.

Beginning in the 1960s, rising crime rates, the fear of crime, and emerging research on principal police tactics (i.e., random patrol, rapid response, and retroactive criminal investigations) resulted in a reappraisal of the profession. Police officials, responding to academic research (e.g., Trojanowicz, 1982; Kelling, 1981), recalled the value of conducting neighborhood foot patrols and began to see a reduction in citizen fear of crime as an end in itself. Police administrators learned to appreciate line officers’ broad use of discretion and began to question the primacy of the law enforcement function of police. The community problem-solving era, as it has come to be known, followed.

Since that time, police departments across the country have made strides in adopting aspects of community problem-solving. The manifestations, magnitude, and mainte- nance of these moves vary across departments and over time. The conceptions that police personnel have of the strategy sometimes differ from researcher constructs. The current study will help to determine to what extent police today still buy into the

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various tactics and beliefs associated with the most recent, defining policing strategies. Three main movements characterize this era—community policing, problem-solving policing, and broken windows policing (apart from any contemporary arguments for moving the profession into a new era, as discussed in the Introduction). A brief explication of each follows.

Community Policing

Skogan (2006, p. 28) describes community policing as Ban organizational strategy that leaves setting priorities and the means of achieving them largely to residents and the police who serve in their neighborhoods…. [It] is a process rather than a product.^ It is a philosophy that undergirds all aspects of police operations, including how the department is organized, how police spend their time, how police measure their performance, and how police view their relationship with the people they serve. Skogan’s (1990) community policing principles include: a commitment to broadly focused, problem-oriented policing; organizational decentralization; informal, two- way channels of communication between police and citizens; police working with citizens to determine what are local problems and priorities; and a commitment to helping neighborhoods help themselves by organizing education efforts. Though little evidence supports the crime prevention benefits of community policing, research examines the ability of a community-oriented police department to improve their relationships with citizens and to assist them in community-based activities. Gill, Weisburd, Telep, Vitter, and Bennett (2014)) show that aspects commonly found in community policing (i.e., problem-solving and broken windows policing) have a more direct effect on the crime and disorder reduction outcomes of a police department These are discussed below.

Problem-Solving Policing

Research on the inefficacy of rapid response (Kansas City Police Department, 1977) and preventive patrol (Kelling, Pate, Dieckman, & Brown 1974), Wilson’s (1968) work on police discretion and the Bvarieties of police behavior,^ and Goldstein’s (1979) introduction of the idea of problem-solving mark the beginning of the community problem-solving era. It also commenced a shift in how police viewed their success and provided a channel for police and community collaboration. According to the problem- solving model, police should use the number of problems solved, not response times, in measuring the success of their work (Goldstein, 1979). Whereas community policing offers a wide range of broad philosophical tenets for organizing and administering police services and working with the community, problem-solving policing more narrowly focuses on the specific way police could work with the community to respond to problems and on the outcomes police should use in measuring their success. Broken windows policing is often part of a community oriented police department’s repertoire of tactics, stemming from their implementation of a problem-solving exercise (Reisig, 2010). Research, including a Campbell systematic review (Weisburd, Telep, Hinkle, & Eck, 2010), confirms the success of police problem-solving in a number of communi- ties and for a range of crimes and problems (Braga, Kennedy, Waring, & Piehl, 2004; Braga et al., 1999; Hope, 1994).

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Broken Windows Policing

Kelling and Wilson (1982) first presented their broken windows theory of neighbor- hood crime in 1982. Their theory explored the psychological and normative effects of neighborhood incivilities and disorder on criminal offending and the role that police could play in reconciling community norms to neighborhood order (Kelling and Wilson, 1982). Based on observations of police in the field, they urged police departments to return to what Kelling and Wilson argued was the historical responsibility of police: to maintain orderly communities. In their empirical testing of broken windows policing, Wagers, Sousa, and Kelling (2008) further assess the main tenets of broken windows (many of which are included in the questionnaire administered in the current study) and give a greater insight into the theory’s implications. They state:

1. Disorder and fear of crime are strongly linked; 2. Police negotiate rules of the street. BStreet people^ are involved in the negotiation

of those rules; 3. Different neighborhoods have different rules; 4. Untended disorder leads to the breakdown of community controls; 5. Areas where community controls break down are vulnerable to criminal invasion; 6. The essence of the police role in maintaining order is to reinforce the informal

control mechanisms of the community itself; 7. Problems arise not so much from individual disorderly persons as it does from the

congregation of large numbers of disorderly persons; and, 8. Different neighborhoods have different capacities to manage disorder. (p. 253)

Research on the effect of broken windows policing on crime often measures the policing tactic by numbers of misdemeanor arrests and citations, which, in some instances, neglects the informal ways police also deal with citizens who are acting disorderly (e.g., Kelling & Sousa, 2001; Shi, 2009; Kubrin, Messner, Deane, McGeever, & Stucky 2010). Nevertheless, many of these studies do in fact support the inverse relationship between proactively policing disorderly and misdemeanor offenses and rates of fear and crime. Others (Nolan, Conti, & McDevitt, 2004; Innes & Fielding, 2002; Sampson & Raudenbush, 2004) argue that crime and disorder are linked through a common cause and that constructs such as collective efficacy better explain the relationship between police attention to disorder and lowered crime rates. The results presented below will offer insight into the extent to which police both support and act out the basic underpinnings of the broken windows theory, including their perceptions of the relationship between crime and disorder.

Though researchers variously differentiate among community policing, broken windows policing, and problem-solving, these concepts are often implemented in conjunction with each other. Together, community policing and problem-solving po- licing make up the core of community problem-solving policing, of which broken windows policing plays a prominent part. This paper sheds light on the state of urban policing in the United States by showing the preferences police have regarding these practices (including those characteristics that help to explain any differences in the levels of support).

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Latinos in Policing

Race and ethnicity has influenced policing since its modern formation in the United States—determining who would become police officers, those to whom the police decided to offer service, and against whom police applied the law (Miller, 1977; Kelling & Moore, 1988). Efforts to better incorporate racial and ethnic minorities into the profession began in response to the 1967 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice. Today, Latinos make up the largest and fastest growing ethnic (numerical) minority population in the United States. Despite these increases in both the Latino police and Latino citizen populations, an Associate Press study of 1,400 police departments shows that since 1985 the number of police departments in which Latinos are disproportionately underrepresented (i.e., a majority Latino citizenry policed by a majority White police department) saw a nearly five-fold increase, surpassing the historically Black officer-citizen disparity (Sullivan & Gillum, 2014). For some departments (for example, the NYPD), however, even as their size shrinks their ranks continue to diversify (Guajardo, 2014).

& Despite the increase of Latinos in policing, most of the empirical literature on race/ ethnicity in policing focuses firstly on the community and secondly on police; it mainly examines differences between Whites and Blacks (or Non-whites) [see Pelfrey, 2004; Sun, 2003; Paoline, Myers, & Worden 2000; Skogan & Hartnett, 1997 for studies of police officers’ race defined dichotomously as White/Non- White]. Rarely are Latinos the focus of research on the racial or ethnic differences among police officers (Martínez 2007). In those studies that do include measure- ments of Latinos as separate from Blacks and Whites, Latinos generally fall in between Blacks and Whites.

Regarding the organizational aspects of policing, Stroshine and Brandl’s (2011) study of tokenism in policing find Latinos have more favorable views of their professional lives (i.e., experience less tokenism) than do Blacks, but less favorable views (i.e., experience more tokenism) than White police officers. The racial and ethnic differences in views of one’s working environment also hold against the homogenization that is intended to occur during academy training (Conti & Doreian, 2014). Latinos are also slightly less likely to trust the internal affair process when compared to their non-Latino counterparts (DeAngelis & Kupchic, 2009). In assessing one’s own job performance, however, Kakar (2003) finds no differences among Black, Hispanic, and White police officers.

There are also differences by race/ethnicity in police support for various tactics. In their study of police officers’ acceptance of a community orientation and the use of more resources for the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy program, Lurigio and Skogan (1994) find the most support among Black officers and the least support among White officers, with Hispanic police officers between both groups. As it relates to the use and acceptance of force, Hispanic police officers were less likely to use force than Blacks and Whites, but more likely to be accepting of the use of force (Chapman, 2012).

Studies that compare non-White and White officers find the former are more likely to support community policing and order-maintenance policing but hold mixed views on police selectivity (a measure of a zero-tolerance approach) (Paoline et al., 2000).

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Pelfrey (2004)) found non-Whites are more likely than Whites to support a community orientation and are less likely to engage in reactive police activities. A study of officers’ views regarding graffiti (often considered a form of physical disorder) shows non- White officers were less certain of their agreement that graffiti is a sign of disrespect to the neighborhood or that large fines should be levied against those caught making graffiti when compared to their White counterparts (Ross & Wright, 2014).

The Current Study

This study extends the literature on the community problem-solving strategy and its primary tactic (i.e., broken windows policing) and adds to past research on the views of minority police officers by examining police officers’ perceptions of the practices and beliefs underlying the most recent iteration of broken windows policing within the community problem-solving strategy. Past research has explored citizens’ and police officers’ views of disorder (Gau & Pratt, 2008; Hinkle & Yang, 2014; Sampson & Raudenbush, 2004) and of the effectiveness of police intervention in preventing disorderly conditions (Braga & Bond, 2008; Corman & Mocan, 2005; Kelling & Sousa, 2001). Despite this past research (and anecdotal evidence suggesting police agree with the tenets and practices of broken windows policing) little research exists to determine whether police actually believe in the basic tenets of broken windows policing or whether beliefs about the theory vary based on officer characteristics. Understanding how officers may differ in their beliefs regarding the strategy, tactic, and theory studied here will offer useful insight for police leaders and communities that desire to implement changes related to each and will offer empirical evidence of the common assumption regarding officers’ interpretation of the broken windows theory.

Methodology

Data

A face-to-face or electronic survey instrument was administered to 227 sworn person- nel in two urban police departments—one located in the Mid-Atlantic region with just over 1,300 sworn personnel and the other a Midwestern police department with just under 1950 sworn personnel. The departments’ community problem-solving activities included: creating neighborhood policing plans; surveying the community to gauge their perceptions of police service; implementing more data-driven processes (e.g., CompStat, Intelligence centers, crime-mapping); moving away from rapid response to calls for service as a measurement of police efficacy; and instituting differential responses to 9-1-1 calls. Examples of the departments’ implementation of broken windows policing included: an acknowledgement that they were to endeavor to enhance the quality of life of their citizens and to reduce fear; creating a program for giving summonses for quality of life infractions, in lieu of an arrest; and measuring patrol officers’ field interrogation and quality of life offense activity and the levels of disorder in a neighborhood.

Respondents were asked to assign a level of importance or agreement to beliefs, tactics, and understandings commonly discussed in research of community problem-

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solving and broken windows policing as they relate to their police departments’ missions. The survey was administered using already established avenues (for example, on the internet at Surveymonkey.com and at roll-calls) and as part of a larger analysis of the departments’ innovation. The survey content (intended to measure respondents’ views of their police departments’ missions) borrows from the tenets of broken windows policing offered by Wagers, Sousa, and Kelling (2008) and other commonly cited practices in the community problem-solving literature. The remaining closed- ended, ordinal-level questions help to determine the extent to which sworn personnel agree with or view as important to their police department’s mission specific assump- tions and tactics relevant to the study of broken windows policing within a community problem-solving strategy.

Despite the cooperation of the police departments and the researcher’s best efforts (e.g., attending all three shifts’ roll calls for five consecutive days), the response rates for this survey are not ideal. Theoretically, all sworn personnel had access to the survey in either paper format or via a link to an online survey. In one department, the link to the survey was sent to the work e-mail accounts of all sworn personnel and posted on both physical and virtual roll call boards in the department. Surveys in the other department were administered at various roll calls and sent to all sworn personnel above the rank of police officer. In all instances, respondents were reminded of their police executive’s support of the study. The samples’ respondents account for about 5 and 10 % of the sworn personnel in the two departments.

Apart from logistical challenges to administering a department-wide survey, researchers discuss the suspicions that police personnel may have about how such a survey may be used (Paoline, 2001). However, a concise statement regarding the purpose of the survey, an assurance the survey is completely confidential and anonymous, and the use of a focused survey tool (in some instances, administered online) help to allay these suspicions. Furthermore, although the researcher’s efforts to reach the lower levels of one of the departments by attending roll calls resulted in a greater response rate, one must consider the implications of the different collection methods on responses. For instance, police officers filling out paper surveys at the end of their roll calls (many times while standing in front of supervisor’s role call desk) may be less forthcoming than officers who had the option to fill out an online survey in the privacy of their own home. To respond to this potentiality, the researcher and police officer supervisors did give officers the option to take the paper survey with them and return it at the end of their shift. Along those same lines, though the online survey format can facilitate more honest responses, it may preclude more seasoned personnel who are not as comfortable giving information on a computer. For these reasons, one should use caution when interpreting the generalizability of the following results, which are nonetheless instructive.

Analyses

Univariate analyses will reveal the levels of support that police have for certain police tactics and for theoretical tenets of broken windows policing. Regression analyses will examine the relationship between support for these tactics and tenets (as measured by

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levels of importance or agreement for each item) and respondent race/ethnicity (dummy coded with White as the reference category and Black and Latino as the remaining categories), while controlling for the following characteristics: gender, education, rank, years of service, and assignment (i.e., patrol or investigations).

Results

The sample characteristics follow: 50 % White; 24 % Hispanic/Latino; 21 % Black; 85 % male; 50 % had at least an associate’s degree, 53 % were patrol officers; 70 % had more than 10 years of service to the department; and 67 % were in patrol. This compares to a general police population that, Reaves (2010) reports, is typically 75 % White, 87 % male, and 67 % at the rank of patrol, and, as Carter and Sapp (1990) estimate, hold an associate’s degree at the rate of 23–65 %. In these regards, then, the sample included here reflects the makeup of the general police profession on these important variables.

Table 1 reveals levels of support for tactics associated with a community problem- solving strategy (including for comparison purposes some tactics that are more in line with a Reform strategy, such as rapid response to calls for service and automobile patrol). The response options were not at all important, somewhat important, and very important. The top six elements indicate overwhelming support for tactics of the community problem-solving strategy, including the Compstat and crime-mapping innovations. The 7th and 8th items (which round off those items receiving above average support in this analysis) signal activities popular in the earlier, Reform strategy, and rank higher in support than other community problem-solving tactics. Near the bottom of the list are increasing the number of arrests and citations, having a police department that is racially and ethnically representative of the community they serve, and less traditional modes of patrol (i.e., foot, bicycle, and Segway).

Among those items in Table 1 seeing the greatest deviation between Latinos and either White or Black respondents are: police officers maintain responsibility over a limited geographic area, the department represents the racial or ethnic makeup of the community, and the Compstat process. These first two suggest Latinos are more inclined to support a tactic and a policy that encourage community policing and place importance on diversity in the police ranks. Listing Compstat as very important implies that Latino police value this common feature of community problem-solving more so than their White and Black counterparts.

Table 2 presents the levels of agreement regarding tenets, attitudes, and practices related to broken windows policing. Response options were collapsed into disagree, neutral, and agree (from a series that also included strongly disagree and strongly agree categories). Items corresponding to the relationship between disorder and crime receive the largest proportion of agreement. The next two highest levels of support speak to the respondents’ belief that different neighborhoods have different definitions of what is considered disorderly behavior and that neighborhoods vary in their capacity to manage disorder. Table 2 also shows that officers believe their police department acts in multiple ways to respond to the perceived connections between disorder, social control, and crime. Items related to detectives’ roles in responding to disorder and establishing relationships with citizens in their area receive the lowest level of support from respondents.

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Latino police personnel in this sample deviated most from Black and White respondents in their agreement with items related to detectives and police officers establishing relationships with many citizens in their areas as well as their police department’s role in maintaining orderly neighborhoods—which, Latinos more over- whelmingly agree, have both different capacities to manage disorder and different rules for determining what is considered civil behavior.

Five outcome indices (listed in Table 3) consisting of conceptually-related combi- nations that regularly appear in the literature on broken windows and community problem-solving policing and a single Reform era measurement are regressed on officer race/ethnicity, education, years of service, rank, gender, and current assignment. Rapid response to calls for service is included as a measure of a Reform era policing strategy. The numbered items in Table 3 correspond to those listed in the Tables 1 and 2. For purposes of the additive measures, some of the items are reverse coded (for example, the item police are too busy to issue QOL summonses). Indices that include multiple types of measurement are standardized using their Z-scores and by re-coding three- category-response questions to match the responses of the five-category-response Likert questions (i.e., from 1, 2, 3 to 1, 3, 5). All of the indices included in the analyses had a Cronbach’s alpha of at least 0.7, suggesting an acceptable level of internal consistency among the items included in each. Tolerance and variance inflation factor statistics did not detect multi-collinearity among the included variables.

Officers’ support of broken windows tactics (F [7, 148]=4.147, p<.001, adj. R2=.124), belief in the tenets of the broken windows theory (F [7, 156]=2.089,

Table 1 The importance of community problem-solving tactics

Tactic % Reporting Tactic as Very Important

Breakdown by Race/ Ethnicity (%)

Black Latino White

1. Crime mapping 71.0 81.0 75.0 5.2

2. Community meetings to identify problems and solutions 69.1 66.7 84.8 60.4

3. Police officers maintain responsibility over a limited geographic area

59.9 64.3 63.8 57.0

4. Aggressive enforcement of QOL 58.1 61.0 72.3 51.0

5. Police collaborate with agencies to combat disorder 55.8 61.0 52.1 51.5

6. Compstat process 54.6 70.0 41.3 59.6

7. Patrols are done in car 53.7 59.5 59.6 44.0

8. Rapid response to calls for service 50.5 54.8 65.2 35.3

9. Increasing field interrogations 49.5 59.5 45.7 51.5

10. Detectives maintain responsibility over a limited geographic area

40.6 45.9 38.6 38.9

11. Increasing traffic violations 36.8 47.5 40.4 32.3

12. Patrols are done on foot, bicycle, or Segway 34.6 45.2 34.8 29.4

13. Department represents the racial/ethnic makeup of the community

34.4 36.6 50.0 25.0

14. Increasing arrests and citations 29.0 36.6 34.0 23.5

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p=048, adj. R2=0.045, and in rapid response to calls for service (F (7, 170)=4.225, p<.001, adj. R2=.113 produced significant associations. Officer characteristics were not significantly related to officers’ beliefs concerning police-community relationships, Compstat, or aggressive policing.

Table 2 Level of agreement with the tenets and tactics of broken windows policing

Tenet or Tactic % Agreeing or Strongly Agreeing

Breakdown by Race/ Ethnicity %

Black Latino White

15. Areas where community controls break down are vulnerable to criminal invasion

91.7 92.8 93.8 92.0

16. Untended disorder leads to a breakdown in community controls

90.7 81.0 91.5 96.0

17. Disorder and fear of crime are strongly linked 79.7 77.1 79.5 85.3

18. Different neighborhoods have different rules for what is considered civil (or orderly) behavior

73.4 78.6 62.2 78.4

19. Different neighborhoods have different capacities to manage disorder

73.1 85.4 63.6 78.0

20. QOL stops are effective ways of getting information about other problems

71.5 75.6 71.8 70.6

21. Police officers establish relationships with many citizens in their area

70.0 57.5 84.8 67.6

22. My PD helps make disorderly neighborhoods more orderly 68.2 64.3 81.3 67.6

23. My PD takes citizens’ perceptions of rising crime seriously 60.2 63.1 66.0 59.4

24. My PD’s maintains order by reinforcing informal social control mechanisms of the community

57.4 53.7 72.1 54.1

25. Officers should issue QOL summonses 56.8 69.1 71.7 47.1

26. Police officers share information with detectives regarding crimes, criminals, etc.

55.9 63.4 73.3 42.2

27. Detectives establish relationships with many citizens in their area

46.7 47.2 72.8 35.4

28. Detectives share information with police officers regarding crimes, criminals, etc.

45.8 53.7 60.9 35.3

29. Police officers are too busy for QOL summonses 23.1 23.1 13.1 22.6

Table 3 Indices included in the regression analyses

Index Items from Tables 1 and 2 that Form each Index

Broken windows tactics 4, 20, 22–26, 28, 29

Reform era 8

Tenets of broken windows theory 15–19

Aggressive policing 9, 11, 14

Compstat 1, 6

Police-community relationships 2, 3, 5, 10, 13, 21, 27

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Officer’s Latino ethnicity (t [151]=3.905, p<.001), assignment (whether the respon- dent has spent most of their time in the past 5 years in patrol operations or in an investigative division) (t [151]=−2.551, p=.012), rank (t [151]=1.978, p=.050), and education (t [151]=−2.078. p=.039) were significantly related to officers’ beliefs regarding broken windows policing tactics. Identifying as Latino is associated with a 0.493 unit increase in the level of support for broken windows policing tactics. The officer’s assignment in investigations (instead of in patrol) reduces one’s positive perceptions of said tactics by 0.231. As one’s rank increases so too does their support for broken windows tactics, by 0.106 units. Education decreased one’s support for such tactics by 0.086.

Officer’s rank (t [163]=2.330, p=.021) and assignment (t [163]=−2.583, p=.011) are significantly related to officers’ beliefs regarding the broken windows theory. Support for the theory increases by 0.639 as one’s rank increases. The officer’s assignment in investigations reduces one’s acceptance of the theory’s tenets by 1.117 standard deviations. An officer identifying as either Latino or Black also increased their perception that their department supports the traditional rapid response approach to meeting citizens’ needs (t [172]=3.597, p<.001, B=.514; t [172]=2.655, p=.009, B=.380, respectively) (Table 4).

Conclusions

This exploratory analysis of the acceptance of community problem-solving tactics and tenets associated with the broken windows theory revealed important findings regard- ing the current state of policing. The three main findings included: 1.) The respondents’ definite support for community problem-solving (but also their continued reliance on some traditional methods of policing); 2.) A lag in detectives’ and investigators’ acceptance of tactics part of community problem-solving; and 3.) Differences by officer race/ethnicity, education, rank, and assignment in certain indices related to broken windows policing tactics and tenets and a conspicuous Reform strategy tactic.

While there was decided support for tactics commonly associated with community problem-solving (including Compstat and mapping innovations), items receiving above average support in this sample also include two tactics that are synonymous to the prior era of policing when the Reform strategy was most prominent—patrol by automobile and rapid response to calls for service. The fact that community problem-solving patrol tactics (i.e., foot, bicycle, and Segway) gained less support than traditional methods of patrol further supported the notion that these departments have not fully entered the community problem-solving strategy. The finding that only 29 % of respondents reported as very important the item increasing the number of arrests and citations also indicated that these police departments value the high level of discretion that is characteristic of the community problem-solving strategy.

Despite 50 % of the survey reporting a non-White background, the item having a police department that is racially and ethnically representative of the community they serve received the second lowest percentage of very important responses. Latinos had the highest proportion of support for this item, with 50 % stating that it was very important. This finding is interesting in light of recent events in the Michael Brown- Ferguson Police Department and the Eric Garner-NYPD incidents, in which some

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pointed to the lack of diversity in police departments as setting the stage for the homicides of Brown and Garner to occur. It may suggest that contemporary calls to diversify police ranks in response to these negative interactions may be off-base in the Black communities in which the events occurred, but such reforms may be viewed more approvingly in Latino communities.

The results from this study also showed support for tenets of the broken windows theory. Items corresponding to the relationship between disorder and crime received the largest proportion of agreement—effectively revealing respondents’ overwhelming support for the broken windows policing’s underlying assumption (i.e., disorder and fear of crime are strongly linked) and process (i.e., a breakdown in community controls leads to criminal invasion and disorder leads to a breakdown in community controls). The respondents also acknowledged their police departments’ nuanced role in

Table 4 Multiple regression results for broken windows tactics, broken windows theory, and rapid response

B SE B β

Broken windows tactics

Constant 3.522 0.253

Latino 0.493 0.126 0.321***

Black 0.085 0.130 0.053

Assignment −0.231 0.090 −0.196* Education −0.086 0.041 −0.180* Years of service 0.061 0.050 0.118

Rank 0.106 0.053 0.210*

Gender 0.021 0.128 0.013

Broken windows theory

Constant 20.651 1.215

Latino −0.837 0.600 −0.114 Black −0.487 0.625 −0.064 Assignment −1.117 0.432 −0.201* Education 0.126 0.175 0.058

Years of service −0.248 0.212 −0.104 Rank 0.639 0.274 0.208*

Gender 0.055 0.603 0.007

Rapid Response

Constant 2.377 0.278

Latino 0.514 0.143 0.277***

Black 0.380 0.143 0.201**

Assignment 0.102 0.107 0.070

Education −0.079 0.047 −0.134 Years of service 0.101 0.055 0.166

Rank −0.104 0.060 −0.172 Gender −0.252 0.144 −0.127

*=p<.05; **=p<.01; *** =p<.001

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responding to disorder—that neighborhoods vary in both what they consider disorderly behavior as well as their capacity to deal with disorderly conditions.

Evidence that the investigations side of the police organization has not fully adopted the practices of community problem-solving included a low percentage of very impor- tant responses to the item detectives maintain responsibility for a limited geographic area in Table 1 and low levels of agreement with statements in Table 2 regarding detectives establishing relationships with citizens and the collaborative efforts of patrol and detectives. Results from the multiple regression analyses also support this divide— respondents who spent most of the past 5 years in investigative positions scored lower on (i.e., showed less support) the broken windows tactics index (an important tactic in community problem-solving). Cordner and Biebel (2005) similarly found in their study of the San Diego Police Department that in practice problem-solving is almost exclu- sively the domain of patrol. Those in investigations were also less likely to support the tenets of the broken windows theory.

As noted above, studies of Latino police in the United States are scarce. While previous research has studied officers’ acceptance of various forms of community problem-solving, no study to date has examined officer support for the broken windows theory and none have included Latinos in their discussions of racial or ethnic differ- ences in the levels of support for community problem-solving tactics to the extent done here. The current study offered noteworthy differences between Latino and non-Latino police personnel support for broken windows and of the traditional tactic of rapid response to calls for service. Latino police officers scored higher (i.e., had more support for) both of these indices than their White counterparts. While Black police officers were also more supportive of these practices than White officers, the effect was only statistically significant in the Reform era model. In neither of the models were effects as great as the effect of being Latino.

Implications for Practice and Future Research

Though this study includes police personnel from only two police departments, the findings presented here suggest that their departments may not have fully realized the elements of a community problem-solving strategy or, at the least, that they continue to hold on to the long-disproven tactics of rapid response and automobile patrol. Based on this finding, the police practitioners and their citizenry should reflect on whether there is room within their police departments to improve the delivery of services in line with a community problem-solving strategy. In a time of budgetary constraints it is even more vital that police are involved in those activities that most efficiently and effec- tively meet the needs of their communities.

One way a department might consider adopting a more full community problem- solving strategy is to focus on the role of detectives in their organization’s mission. This follows Braga, Flynn, Kelling, and Cole (2011) suggestion that police practitioners envision ways of reforming criminal investigations to make them more respon- sible for community problem-solving-like activities and outcomes. The current study provides empirical support for this patrol-investigations divide and sug- gests that, by focusing all parts of their organization on community problem-solving, police executives might create greater buy-in for such changes from personnel throughout their organization.

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The current findings that a higher rank is associated with greater support of both the tenets and tactics of broken windows policing imply that police leaders who might want their departments to pay more attention to levels of physical and social disorder in the community should be mindful of the differential level of acceptance of people throughout the ranks of their department. It may be, as Jenkins and DeCarlo (2015) recently noted, that sustained change in a police department comes from the top-down, with chief’s getting buy-in from the upper levels of the department before attaining it from the lower levels.

Finally, as our police departments and communities continue to become more ethnically and racially diverse (with Latinos accounting for the largest percentage increase) it is incumbent upon practitioners and researchers to find ways to better incorporate and understand the specific needs, strengths, and experiences of this growing population so that police and citizens can better maintain healthy communi- ties. The finding that Latino police personnel are more likely to support broken windows policing tactics offers an important insight for communities where such practices have been criticized as being racially and ethnically-biased against Black and Latino citizens (such as in the recent New York Supreme Court case of Floyd v. New York, 2013).

The exploratory findings included here suggest when it comes to the tactics and tenets of broken windows policing Latino police officers are more inclined to view as important and to agree with those elements that have the police taking an active role in establishing relationships with citizens to maintain orderly communities and with those items that acknowledge the nuance of a neighborhood’s capacity to deal with disorder as well as how they define what is considered uncivil behavior. This is an important finding as police and communities refine broken windows policing within the context of increasing Latino police and citizen populations in US cities. It appears that police- citizen relationships might be of even more importance for Latinos. Future research might also consider testing why these differences might be, for example, by testing hypotheses related to social identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), double marginality (Alex, 1969), illusory correlation (Hamilton & Gifford, 1976), and the more recent theory of unconscious stereotyping (Smith & Alpert, 2007)—specifically as they relate to Latino police officers and citizens, as opposed to the more commonly studied Black and White subjects.

Acknowledgments The author thanks Drs. Maria Tcherni, Bryn Herrschaft, and the reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Funding This research was funded in part by grant number 420276 from the Bodman Foundation.

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Michael J. Jenkins is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Crimi- nology at the University of Scranton. His research interests include police organizational strategies, police leadership, and broken windows policing. He has recently co-authored a book titled BPolice Leaders in the New Community Problem-Solving Era^ (Carolina Academic Press, 2015).

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