Article Assistance

Article

Community-centred police professionalism: A template for reflective professionals and learning organisations with implications for the co-production of public safety and public order

Brian N Williams School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

Ralph S Brower and W Earle Klay Askew School of Public Administration and Policy, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

Abstract Earlier studies suggest that community policing requires a shift in the guiding philosophy and supporting organisational structure of law enforcement. This shift encompasses police professionalism and police professionalisation. The prevailing model invests ‘know-how’ in officers and rarely rewards ‘learn-how’ behaviour with citizens that facilitates community involvement and community change. Consequently, the traditional or ‘pure’ professional model has led to a distancing of the police from the community. When considering natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, and related challenges of post 9-11 America, the insular nature of the traditional professional model presents a tremendous obstacle to achieving the needed levels of community-police integration, collaboration and problem solving in the co-production of public safety, public order,

Corresponding author:

Brian N Williams, School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia, 204 Baldwin Hall, Athens,

GA 30602, USA.

Email: [email protected]

The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles

2016, Vol. 89(2) 151–173 ª The Author(s) 2016

Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0032258X16642449 pjx.sagepub.com

emergency management and homeland security. This paper explores the historical origins of this breach, sketches the nature of police professionalism in typical present-day law enforcement, and offers a template for a community-centred model of police pro- fessionalism that better aligns with the contemporary and future challenges facing local law enforcement agencies in the United States and other countries. From the community-centred template, the paper outlines key implications for individual police professionals, police organisations and agency-community relations in the co-production of public safety and public order.

Keywords Co-production, community policing, emergency management, homeland security, reflective police professional.

More and more decisions will be public decisions; the people they affect will insist on being

heard (Bennis, 1983).

Introduction

The introduction of Robert Peel’s Metropolitan Police Act in 1829 marked the emer-

gence of democratic policing as we know it. Yet 160 years later Sparrow et al. (1990)

suggested that policing is still in its infancy. If their characterisation is accurate, we

should not be surprised that many police agencies are experiencing growing pains.

Similar to a youngster without an older sibling or an adequate role model or guide,

police agencies have evolved with the various issues and challenges of society. Gains

have been made, but opportunities and threats are still present. One of the most critical

challenges for the profession is the creation of a coherent model of professionalism that

supports effective community policing and fully embraces collaborative problem sol-

ving. With the current realities of man-made and natural disasters and the need for

effective citizen–police engagement and partnership in emergency management and

homeland security, overcoming these challenges is of paramount importance.

Like policing, the meaning of police professionalism has evolved. Yet there is a

misunderstanding of the terms ‘professionalism’ and ‘professionalisation’ and what it

means to be a professional police officer in the postmodern era. The objective of this

paper is to identify the nature of the causes of this misunderstanding and to facilitate

communication in organisational change toward police professionalism, police profes-

sionalisation and community policing. Toward this end, the paper will provide insight

into three important questions: (1) How has professionalism evolved in policing?

(2) How does the traditional model of professionalism differ from the model that under-

lies and promotes community-police integration or community-oriented policing in the

co-production of public safety and public order? and (3) What model of professionalism

should guide the law enforcement community’s efforts to integrate citizens and service

providers in emergency management and homeland security efforts? We begin by cast-

ing the practical question of police professionalism in the historical context of New

Orleans and Hurricane Katrina.

152 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 89(2)

New Orleans and Katrina: Citizens and authorities in need of each other

It has been a decade since the disastrous storm of Hurricane Katrina. Many things went

wrong on the ground in New Orleans in the periods immediately before and after the

storm. Many citizens refused to believe the urgency of the evacuation order, others

refused to evacuate because they doubted the ability of law enforcement to protect their

belongings, and still others appropriately doubted authorities’ plans for dealing with their

family pets. Many others lacked the wherewithal, financial or otherwise, to be able to

leave. In the immediate aftermath of flooding it became clear that the authorities had

scarcely a clue about the whereabouts of the most vulnerable, especially the elderly and

medically frail, many of whom remained behind in lower socioeconomic neighbour-

hoods. To the casual observer it appeared that information for guiding the heroic efforts

of rescuers was largely dependent on phone calls from family members who had suc-

cessfully evacuated, trapped citizens with the foresight and ability to cut their way onto

rooftops and still others who attracted attention by shouting or shooting guns into the air.

The response to individual citizens’ survival needs appeared to take on a decidedly

haphazard character.

Research in the field of emergency and disaster management has consistently shown

that disaster vulnerability is strongly correlated with socioeconomic status, gender, age,

race and ethnicity (Eisenman et al., 2007; Laska and Morrow, 2006; Mileti, 1999). Poor

people are especially vulnerable because they lack political power to influence disaster

planning and mitigation activities, they live in lower-quality housing that is less resistant

to disasters and their neighbourhoods are less likely to have infrastructure that facilitates

easy evacuation and emergency communication. Few emergency management experts

were surprised by socioeconomic aspects of the Katrina disaster.

Professional planners stress the importance of public participation in planning for and

mitigating the effects of disasters (e.g. Schwab et al., 1998). Knowing that the most

socially vulnerable are unlikely to be actively involved in or able to influence the formal

planning process, however, we believe it is critical to find alternative mechanisms

through which to engage vulnerable citizens in protecting themselves from disasters.

Imagine, for example, how things might have turned out differently had the citizens of

lower socioeconomic regions of New Orleans had long-standing trusting and participa-

tory relationships with their city’s police officers. Citizens who have frequent, trusting

interactions with authorities are more likely to volunteer what they know about their

communities in times of disaster and more likely to share responsibility for communi-

cating the specific medical and other critical needs of their neighbours as a disaster

unfolds. Moreover, when local leaders in these communities have confidence in their

relations with policy makers and law enforcement authorities, they are more likely to

become personally involved in helping to communicate the urgency of an impending

emergency situation to those who are reluctant to evacuate.

Clearly law enforcement is only one among many functions in an effective emergency

response system, but the New Orleans experience suggests that it is a critical function.

We do not propose, therefore, that community-oriented policing is a silver bullet in the

arsenal of public leaders’ planning for disaster management. We do contend, however,

that little imagination is required to see how an effective community-oriented police

Williams et al. 153

agency might have mitigated many of the difficulties that befell the lower socioeconomic

victims in Katrina’s path. New Orleans’ experience with Katrina illuminates the many

ways that citizens, leaders and police agencies need each other.

We turn now to tracing the history of professionalism, especially police profession-

alism. We will return again in our conclusions to the implications of community-oriented

policing for protecting our most socioeconomically vulnerable citizens.

Professionalism, professionalisation and the attributes of professions

The concepts of professionalism and professionalisation have evolved in parallel with

the emergence of complex organisations and educational institutions that prepare people

to work in them. These concepts are often used interchangeably, but they are not syno-

nyms. Professionalism refers to ‘the conduct, aims, or qualities that characterize . . . a

profession’ (Merriam-Webster 1995: 930). This definition hinges, therefore, on the

distinction between occupations and professions. Wilbert Moore (1970) suggested that

professions are highly specialised occupations in which specialisation is based on a

‘substantive field of knowledge that the specialist professes to command’ and a ‘tech-

nique of production or application of knowledge over which the specialist claims mas-

tery’ (1970: 56). Professionalisation, on the other hand, is a process (our emphasis) that

can be seen to occur at several levels of analysis. For an occupational field professio-

nalisation is understood as the process whereby the field develops methods of ‘instru-

mental problem solving made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and

technique’ (Schön 1983: 21). This is the ostensible model of professionalisation to which

our analysis responds.

Traditionally, the term ‘profession’ or ‘professionalism’ implied a ‘monopoly of

judgment’ (Greenwood, 1957) or ‘monopolies of competence and bourgeois ideology’

(Larson, 1977), where in its ‘pure’ form, professions had exclusive occupational control

(Noordegraaf, 2007). They are able to gain status and effectiveness by establishing

themselves as distinctive groups within a stratified society and controlling the content

of knowledge that defines them as professionals (Noordegraaf, 2007). In theory, profes-

sionalism and professionalisation centre on how knowledge or skill is used by its owners

as leverage and social capital (Torstendahl, 1990). In practice, some professions create

exclusive shelters in the labour market and ultimately acquire their own status categories

in official classification systems (Brint, 1994).

Professional attributes and characteristics

Various attributes are associated with professions and professionals. They include:

knowledge through advanced training and education; testing, official certification, or

licensing that reflects the mastery of knowledge or professional training; a service

orientation or humanitarian approach in the application of this knowledge; discretion

and autonomy or freedom from lay control in carrying out this power or occupational

role; self regulation, peer evaluation, and normative values; a code of ethics regulating

conduct and relations with clients and colleagues; and organisational cultures that

154 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 89(2)

support the aforementioned attributes (Beckman, 1990; Blumer, 1966; Greenwood,

1957; Haug, 1973; Moore, 1970). Consequently, professions are recognised as knowl-

edge systems consisting of problem solvers who are deferred to and are wielders of

authority and autonomy as a result of their professionalism and professionalisation of

their occupational field (Beckman, 1990; Torstendahl, 1990). In conclusion,

Professionalization seeks to clothe a given area with standards of excellence, to establish

rules of conduct, to develop a sense of responsibility, to set criteria for recruitment and

training, to ensure a measure of protection for members, to establish collective control over

the area, and to elevate it to a position of dignity, and social standing in society (Blumer,

1966: xi).

A closer examination reveals that institutionalised professions typically arise in con-

junction with organisations configured as professional bureaucracies (Mintzberg, 1979).

Professions are supported in their dealings with clients by their partnership with bureau-

cracies in organisational work settings (Friedson, 1970). This has led to the emergence of

professional authority or ‘borderline’ authority which connects expert authority and

bureaucratic authority (Beckman, 1990). In other words, the authority vested in contem-

porary professions and professionals bridges professionalism and professionalisation.

This authority is both person- and institution-based. These characteristics are broadly

illustrated in an exploration of the evolution of police professionalism and police pro-

fessionalisation in the United States.

Evolution of police professionalism

America has witnessed the rapid emergence and development of a professionally trained

and organised police force within the last century. The developmental phases, from a

force of community amateurs to one of community officers, has spanned three eras of

policing and a shift in the methods of order maintenance and law enforcement.

Eras and shifts in methods of American policing

Political, reform and community eras. Kelling and Moore (1988) have described three eras

in the evolution of policing and its models of professionalism. They distinguish among

the political, reform and community paradigms of policing. According to the Kelling and

Moore (1988) discussion, the political paradigm, which was dominant from the 1840s to

the onset of the 20th century, reflects an era when the police derived power from those in

power: local politicians. During the reform era, dominant from the 1910s to the 1970s,

police derived their power and authority from the law and not from corrupt local poli-

ticians. The community paradigm is the emerging model of policing. Police powers in

this model are derived from the local community, particularly neighbourhoods and

citizens or clients of police. These eras or paradigms correlate with the shift in the

methods or approaches to American policing services and, theoretically, corresponds

with Barnard (1938) and Simon (1947) in their zones of acceptance and indifference.

Barnard’s (1938) zone of indifference, or a subordinate’s unquestioning acceptance of

Williams et al. 155

authority, is akin to Simon’s (1947) zone of acceptance. Both zones reflect that formal

organisations are made up of informal groups. These informal groups evolve to become

the formal organisation, and the group’s beliefs and values establish the organisational

culture and determine, to a large extent, formal acceptance of authority.

Shifts in methods of American policing. The primary function or mission of police organisa-

tions is the maintenance of public order and public safety. Approaches that achieve these

ends have shifted with the evolution of American society, development and maturation

of police departments, and advances in technology. An argument can be made that, at the

inception of the American police agency, the mission or function of police agencies was

to serve primarily the power elites (Kelling and Moore, 1988). This approach empha-

sised maintaining the status quo. In parallel with the shift from the political to the reform

paradigm, the mission was extended to the larger society as a result of its legal

foundation.

However, as Williams and Murphy (1990) have noted, the application of the mission

was neither comprehensive nor inclusive of all communities or populations within

American society. With advances in technology, particularly the car, information net-

working, communications, mobile computers, and other technologies, the maintenance

of public order and public safety became more organisationally decentralised, with more

discretion invested in street-level officers. Within this model, individual officers possess

substantial knowledge, even though the legitimacy to act continues to be grounded in the

organisation.

Currently, the approach to maintaining public safety and public order centres on

crime control and a reduction in the fear of crime. This approach is more organisationally

centred, despite the fact that the majority of police agencies profess to embrace the

community policing philosophy.1 For the most part, the transition in paradigms of poli-

cing from the political to the reform model correlates with the evolution of police

professionalism models. In our view, however, although support for the community

paradigm of policing continues to grow, a guiding model of community-centred police

professionalism has not yet emerged.

Evolution of police professionalism

Community amateurs. American policing is rooted in English heritage (Deakin, 1988;

Price, 1977; Reith, 1975). The emergence of London’s Metropolitan Police Force helped

to usher in a more modern concept of policing in the United States. Much like the English

Act for Improving the Police In and Near the Metropolis, the primary functions of

American police agencies were order maintenance and public safety. Toward these ends,

American police departments of the mid-1800s, especially in urban centres, like the

watchmen of the Metropolitan Police Force, used a collection of centralised ‘community

amateurs’. This strategy differed from the pre-existing decentralised, ward-based units of

watches prior to Peel’s innovation. In particular, it ushered in the concept of centralisa-

tion of command for beat patrols, which some have argued was the most significant

organisational feature of Peel’s innovation (Price, 1977). With the American acceptance

and adoption of Peel’s innovation and the departure from the more free standing and

156 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 89(2)

community-based and sanctioned model of policing, these factors helped to introduce a

new model of policing which was more quasi-military, organisationally based, organi-

sationally centred and professional.

Institutional professionals: Quasi-military model of policing – the birth of police professionalism. The early attempts to professionalise policing have been described as embracing more

rhetoric than a substantive reality. Price (1977), in her analysis of select police depart-

ments in the Northeast following the civil war, argued that the organisational strategies

of centralisation, preventive patrol, and developing a force consisting of brute strength

failed to embody the essence of professionalism. The police departments in her analysis

were long on professionalism via extrinsic rhetoric – the need for more wages, more

equipment, improved prestige and respect from the citizens, and enlarging the number of

officers – yet short on a more substantive model of professionalization.

Deakin (1988) and others have argued that the class struggle caused by immigration

and migration, industrialisation and political corruption at the municipal level of the

1890s helped to bring about progressive reform. This reform movement affected munic-

ipal policing and helped to foster the advent of a more substantive model of police

professionalism. With the American acceptance and adoption of Peel’s innovation and

the departure of the more-free standing, community-based and sanctioned model of

policing, these factors helped to introduce a new model of policing which was more

quasi-military, organisationally based, organisationally centred and professional. Munic-

ipal police departments were an extension of City Hall. Consequently, they operated

under ‘state’ or local authority, authority that was replete with political corruption. To

decrease the likelihood of corruption and insulate the police from politics (via City Hall

and the local patrolling areas) and instil much-needed discipline, a systematic scheme,

inclusive of a more apparent organisational hierarchy, was developed and implemented.

This structural arrangement was an attempt to ensure and enhance accountability and

control up and down the chain of command. The guiding paradigm for this scheme was

the pervasive military model and its elements of administrative efficiency that had been

articulated by Emory Upton (1904). Upton, in his efforts to professionalise the United

States Army in the late 1800s, advocated for professional education and a professiona-

lised hierarchy that was insulated from outside decisions in an effort to ensure that

military decision be deferred by civilians to those military professionals (Stillman,

1998; Upton, 1904). The essence of Upton’s model was shared by the leadership of

August Vollmer, Orlando W Wilson, and others and serves as the guiding framework for

contemporary police professionalism.

August Vollmer has been described as the original architect of the new model of

police professionalism (Deakin, 1988; Price, 1977; Sparrow et al., 1990). His archetype

embraced the military model, with its focus on administrative efficiency, but also a

perspective of crime fighting coupled with community service and community uplift.

Vollmer’s most notable contribution to police professionalism was his emphasis on

‘mainstreaming’ police professionalism with the basic attributes of advanced knowledge

and training. Consequently, Vollmer developed a police academy, actively recruited

college-educated men, and embraced scientific training and technology (e.g. fingerprint-

ing). OW Wilson, a protégé of Vollmer, embraced the same professional values as his

Williams et al. 157

mentor (Deakin, 1988; Price, 1977). The difference between these two, however, was

their approach to crime fighting. Wilson instituted a crime-fighting model of policing at

the expense of community and social service. This new conception contributed to the

further professionalisation of the police and distancing of officers from the community.

In particular, Wilson’s modification helped to construct a more generic framework of

professionalism. Wilson’s model was an extension of its precursor and emphasised

education and advanced training, in addition to expert and bureaucratic authority and

autonomy that is centred and constrained within the organisation or institution without

much regard to the larger community. The model of the institutional professional held by

Vollmer and Wilson was shared by other professionals in the service sector, including

social work (Flexner, 1915) and education.

Even though Vollmer, Wilson and others were instrumental in the development of the

professional model of policing, other factors aided its advancement. The International

Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) organised police officers, reinforced the dichot-

omy between politics and police administration through its codes of conduct and law

enforcement, established a national system of criminal identification, developed the

uniform crime reporting system, established publishing outlets to disseminate and

advance the concepts and techniques of police professionalism and eventually estab-

lished a training arm for members of the association (Deakin, 1988). Scientific, techno-

logical and organisational advancements also helped to entrench the profession-centred

model of professionalism. The shift from foot to motorised patrols brought about by the

advent of cars, coupled with the introduction of air conditioning, radio and electronic

communications, laptop computers, forensic science, specialised police units, including

paramilitary police units and other innovations has resulted in widening the gap between

the police and the local citizenry (Kraska and Cubellis, 1997). These factors reinforce the

quasi-military or bureaucratic-military model of the police professional and its requisites

of advanced training, peer review, bureaucratic and expert authority, and autonomy from

the community. Unfortunately, this model of professionalism is antithetical to the model

of community-centred policing (Ericson and Carriere, 1994; Kraska and Cubellis, 1997).

Community-oriented policing and community-centred police professionalism

Community policing is emblematic of the coproduction/public governance movement

embraced by postmodern society. Furthermore, like many public service arrangements,

it reflects the post-bureaucratic era of government in its attempts to make government

‘us’ by using citizens as partners in the delivery or provision of public safety and public

order (King and Stivers 1998; Koven, 1992). This approach to safety and order main-

tenance views citizens as active partners of public governance (Trojanowicz and Buc-

queroux, 1994). Yet the prevailing model of police professionalism that guides the law

enforcement community does not reinforce this view. In particular, little substantial

change has occurred in OW Wilson’s model of police professionalism that stresses

education, advanced training, expert and bureaucratic authority, and discretion/auton-

omy vested within officers who are centred and constrained within the confines of police

organisations. Likewise, little substantial change has occurred in the practice of

158 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 89(2)

American policing, even when considering the high percentage of departments who

profess to operate based upon the community policing philosophy (Annan, 1995; US

Department of Justice, 2015). The research of Zhao, Lovrich and Robinson (2001), Allen

(2002), Adams (2002) and others highlights the bureaucratic resistance and impediments

to organisational change as regards operationalising and actualising community policing.

These findings reflect the quasi-military, bureaucratic model of police professionalism

as one that is neither community-based nor community-oriented and support a thesis

offered by Noordegraaf (2007): that ‘pure professionals’ resist the notion that outsiders

have knowledge that these professionals don’t have and are a value-added commodity.

As such, this model presents real challenges in the co-production of public safety, public

order, emergency management and homeland security.

Community policing and communitarian theory

Community policing is based upon a fundamental premise that police departments and

communities (or citizens) have mutual rights and responsibilities associated with the

maintenance of public safety and public order (Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux, 1994). The

premise and theoretical framework of community policing are inherently communitarian

and express the central thesis of communitarian theory – with rights come responsibil-

ities (Etzioni,1993; Galston, 1991; Ostrom, 1993; Selznick, 1992). Like communitarian-

ism, community policing seeks to empower citizens and underwrite norms of behaviour

that enhance the effective functioning of democracy in local neighbourhoods. Both

approaches seek to look beyond broken windows to address the more pertinent issues

of broken families and broken communities (Wilson and Kelling, 1982).

To address these issues, the community policing and communitarian philosophies

assume that there is knowledge in the community that professional service providers do

not have. This assumption deviates markedly from the organisationally based, centred

and constrained model of professionalism that assumes substantive knowledge rests

within the organisation and is professionally prescribed. The community-oriented model

requires that community-oriented police be very well educated and trained in traditional

skills, but its expectations of the requisite knowledge for police are far more extensive.

Pronounced differences are apparent when comparing the organisationally centred and

community-centred models.

Differences in organisationally centred and community-centred models

The prevailing bureaucratic, quasi-military model of police professionalism and the

emerging community-centred model share several characteristics. Both require

advanced education, extensive training and certification, among other things. But they

also differ in specific ways. Their differences are most visible if one considers their

approaches to decision-making. For example, when considering where TV cameras

should be placed for monitoring streets in a local community, the organisationally based

and centred model of police professionalism is proactive and expects to be deferred to by

residents. In other words, the professionals within the organisation will ultimately make

the decision. In contrast, facing the same question, the community-centred model solicits

Williams et al. 159

input from community residents in problem solving, and in a coactive way, citizens and

officers engage in a shared decision-making process to identify the most suitable loca-

tion. This example clearly shows how the professional model decides what’s best for its

clients, while the community-centred model facilitates a more collaborative decision-

making process.

When we consider the assessment of training needs, the differences in these models

become more apparent. The perceptions of training needs differ among the various

actors who are central to community policing success – law enforcement executives

and supervisors, community policing officers and community residents (Williams,

1998, 1999). In an organisationally based, centred and constrained model of profes-

sionalism only those designated as professionals by the organisation are in a position to

assess the adequacy of training. This model cherishes the notion of professional offi-

cers as free-standing problem solvers who possess individual and bureaucratic author-

ity and exercise considerable street-level discretion. In a community-centred model,

citizens (community residents of all ages), community policing officers and police

administrators should be equal partners in creating the content and assessing the

adequacy of training. This model seeks to return to the pre-organisationally-

constrained model so that the police agency can more effectively sustain the mainte-

nance of order and become integrated with the community in collaboratively managing

emergencies and securing the safety of the homeland.

A ‘reflective’ model of professionalism for community-centred policing

The new community-centred model of police professionalism, similar to Goldstein’s

(1990, 2003) framework of problem-oriented policing requires a shift in addressing the

problems facing communities away from the management level of police departments

towards the beat level officer, in addition to redefining the organisational boundaries of

police departments and repositioning them into interorganisational networks within the

community. Thus the community police officer must network as a change agent within

his or her sector – a change agent who shares responsibility and expertise with others in

the community network. Consequently, these officers are no longer mere police officers;

rather, a new style of beat-level or ‘street-level bureaucrat’ (Lipsky, 1980) is called for,

one in keeping with the community-oriented government paradigm (King and Stivers,

1998). We offer a template for this new ‘hybridised’ professional form of Noordegraaf

(2007) – consisting of professionals who are reflective and are connected to those in

community and beyond the police organisation – and elaborate its implications for

individual officers, police organisations and communities.

A prototype for individual reflection and discovery

Our prototype challenges the traditional assumption that the highest level of expertise

that can be brought to bear on community or street-level predicaments is necessarily

handed down from the institutions that train and credential professionals.2 In the

160 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 89(2)

traditional approach, a three-component hierarchy of professional knowledge (Schein,

1973: 43) is presumed to operate:

1. An underlying discipline or basic science component upon which the practice

rests or from which it is developed.

2. An applied science or ‘engineering’ component from which many of the day-to-

day diagnostic procedures and problem-solutions are derived.

3. A skills and attitudinal component that concerns the actual performance of

services to the client, using the underlying basic and applied knowledge.

As Donald Schön (1983) has illustrated, however, practitioners frequently confront

everyday predicaments that do not fit the codified knowledge and guidelines that their

professional training has given them. What the reflective practitioner does in those

circumstances is to frame the unfamiliar situation as an approximate mental schema,

and then engage in a form of practical experimentation to find an acceptable solution to

the unfamiliar problem. Schön (1983) refers to this active approach to problem solving as

‘reflection-in-action’.

There are two principal limits to using this reflective problem-solving approach in

professional practice, however. The first is the widespread but usually unexpressed fear

that practitioners ‘risk paralysis of action if they reflect’ rather than act from their

professional repertoire (1983: 265). In fact, this fear proves to be unfounded, as evidence

reveals that practitioners reflect and experiment all the time – with no major ill

consequences.

The second limitation is what Schön (1983: 265) refers to as the ‘self-reinforcing

systems of ‘‘knowing-in-practice’’ that inhibit individual and organizational learning’.

Elsewhere Schön and his colleague Chris Argyris have referred to this pattern as ‘single-

loop learning’ (e.g. Argyris and Schön, 1978). This is a pattern of behaviour brought on

by our individual tendencies to adjust unfamiliar stimuli in our environments to fit the

cognitive frameworks (or schemata) already present in our minds rather than adjust our

cognitive frameworks to align them with discrepant information in the environment

(Kahneman et al., 1982). Thus the practitioner’s overwhelming tendency is to interpret

the evidence from his or her reflective experimentation only in terms of his or her

prevailing repertoire of professional training. This often leads to superstitious learning:

that is, the practitioner incorrectly attributes ensuing consequences to actions he or she

has taken.

The missing ingredient in the experimentation process is captured in what Argyris and

Schön (1978) refer to as ‘double-loop learning’. In double-loop learning the practitioner

actively solicits feedback on his or her actions and on the resulting consequences from

other observers and participants who are not embedded in the same repertoire of pro-

fessional skills and routines. Double-loop learning, we believe, must become a central

component in a community-based model of police professionalism. The key is for police

professionals to move their private reflection-in-action to public reflection-in-action, in

which they reveal the premises of their own thinking and intentions to community

co-participants while actively seeking to learn the premises and intentions of their

community counterparts.

Williams et al. 161

Police professionals who engage in these double-loop feedback activities will neces-

sarily confront complications. For example, how does the professional reveal his or her

assumptions and intentions to community participants without revealing privileged

police information or violating the civil liberties of suspected, and especially falsely-

suspected, individuals? Moreover, what happens to the ideal practices of reflective

double-loop learning when a police professional must respond immediately to a life-

threatening situation? Clearly the reflective model of community-oriented professional-

ism must provide officers with a set of on-off switches that help them define whether

presenting situations require an emergency response from their professional repertoire as

opposed to permitting a reflective, feedback-seeking mode of interaction. But identify-

ing these limits of the community-reflection model is, like the individual model of

reflection and experimentation, dependent on a process of collective experimentation.

In most instances police agencies and communities will need to discover models that

work for their unique circumstances. Nonetheless, all police professionals and organisa-

tions can learn from collective experimentation with a reflective, double-loop learning

approach.

In summary, our model proposes three implications for the individual law enforce-

ment professional (see Table 1). First, we propose enhancing the officer’s ability to

‘reflect-in-action’, that is, to actively experiment with problem-solving dilemmas that

he or she encounters. This contrasts with the traditional approach in which the officer

discharges action in any problematic situation from a repertoire of scientifically discov-

ered, organisationally taught, crime-fighting routines.

Second, community-oriented professionals must engage in ‘double-loop learning’, in

which they actively seek feedback from other community participants and use it to

inform their understanding of a problem and adjust their actions in reflective problem-

solving. This contrasts with the traditional approach in which the officer’s understanding

of the consequences of actions he or she has taken is limited to assessing from the

vantage point of his or her own mental models.

Finally, community-oriented professionalism implies that police organisations must

promote and tolerate in their officers a spirit of discovery and an acceptance that

Table 1. Community professionalism: implications for individual officers.

Traditional professionalism Community-oriented professionalism

Source of action: Action discharged from science-based professional repertoire

Action generated from reflective problem-solving experimentation

Source of learning: Learning filtered through individual’s professional mental models (‘single-loop learning’)

Learning supplemented by feedback from community co-participants’ perspectives (‘double-loop learning’)

Source of knowledge: Solutions contained in professional knowledge base (‘know-how’)

Tolerance for discretion and discovery; solutions unknowable in advance (‘learn-how’)

162 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 89(2)

solutions to community-based problems cannot generally be known in advance. The

traditional approach attempts to equip officers with a thoroughly engrained repertoire

of routines designed to guide their actions in controlling whatever problems are encoun-

tered. Thus the community-oriented professional will need to shed his or her total trust in

‘know-how’ in favour of skills that open the potential to ‘learn-how’ from interactions

with community participants (Hall, 1996).

This new perspective may be viewed warily by many law enforcement executives,

who have reason to fear extending too much discretion to maverick officers in their

organisations. We submit, however, that executives who are willing to risk moving

outside the familiar paradigm can build a better-performing organisation by creating the

safety for and encouraging open dialogue in their organisations. In so doing they can

create explicit discussions about ethical behaviour and thereby foster a culture in which

responsibility for constraining egregious maverick behaviour is shared by all the orga-

nisation’s members. Senge (1990) and his associates (1994) have set forth a coherent set

of prescriptions for creating such a learning organisation; we draw on this perspective in

our subsequent discussion.

Organisations that facilitate communication and learning

We submit that there is a third limitation to the double-loop learning approach: Even if

we learn to seek feedback from double-loop learning, we may seek it on too limited a

model of the system. What is needed, we suspect, is an approach in which an entire

learning organisation seeks to become aware of the larger dynamic system of which it is

a part (Senge, 1990). The community-oriented approach to police professionalism must

address organisational level implications (see Table 2) as well as those related to the

individual professional.

Several seasoned participants in our field studies draw attention to the implications of

community policing for middle managers in police organisations. The community-

oriented model, they contend, erodes the role of captains and lieutenants, who play a

pivotal role in conveying information up and down the chain of command in the tradi-

tional model. Left to their traditional roles, these middle managers are prone to capitalise

on the information flowing through their positions as a source of power (Mechanic,

1962). We should expect them to resist their agencies’ efforts to implement the

community-oriented model, since the new model diminishes their instrumental influence

and importance. Moreover, even if they refrain from protest and obstruction, conflict will

Table 2. Community professionalism: implications for organisations.

Traditional professionalism Community-oriented professionalism

Role of middle managers: Middle managers control information flow Middle managers facilitate learning

Conflict management: Conflict suppressed, ignored or ameliorated Conflict as a source for learning

Organisation structure and control: Command and control hierarchy Learning organisation; systems thinking

Williams et al. 163

find them simply because they are situated midway between agency executives wanting

to impose top-down strategic control and front-line officers whose street-level realities

often do not fit the top-down directives. In fact, as we suggested earlier, the shift of

emphasis that is implied when community participants are increasingly involved in

street-level decisions can be expected to exacerbate the ambiguous predicaments that

unfold in the middle management ranks. We submit that the new professional model

must either create a new facilitative role for the middle ranks – or eliminate them

altogether. The latter alternative carries the additional liability that it diminishes promo-

tional opportunities for line officers. Regardless of whether an agency chooses to elim-

inate the ranks of middle management or build new middle management roles, however,

executives should anticipate that solutions will evolve through experimental initiatives

as their communities and agencies create unique, emergent approaches.

We encourage a proactive alternative in which the agency creates new structures for

communication processes. In particular, a new professional role for middle managers

might well involve melding the top-down expectations that originate in executives’

interactions with political leaders and the bottom-up wisdom that derives from street-

level activities. Although conflict arises from the meeting of top-down and bottom-up

processes, a community-oriented professionalism can anticipate it by empowering its

middle managers to facilitate learning from such conflict rather than suppressing, ignor-

ing, or merely ameliorating the conflict. Conflict often contains valuable news, and

tapping its potential constructively is consistent with creating organisations that truly

learn (Senge, 1990).

The changing professional model that we characterise necessarily bodes other unfor-

eseeable organisational changes in addition to conflict in the middle ranks. In this regard,

useful prescriptions have arisen to assist police leaders in restructuring their organisa-

tions to become more community-focused (e.g. Cordner, 1999; Kratcoski and Blair,

1995; Lasley et al., 1995; Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux, 1994; Wiatrowski, 1995). But

we contend that the changes must go beyond structural reconfiguration: What will be

needed in most settings are major changes in organisational culture, the processes by

which strategic alternatives are generated and the ways that different elements of the

organisation interact and share responsibility for the community consequences of the

agency’s actions.

Many management consultants and scholars offer useful prescriptions for improving

the internal processes – the decision-making, planning, budgeting, communication and

information, and motivation systems – and the external responsiveness of organisations

to their principal stakeholders. With few exceptions, however, these prescriptions target

narrow organisational domains, and leaders are left wanting a more comprehensive

approach for organisational change initiatives. Senge and associates (Senge, 1990; Senge

et al., 1994) offer a striking exception in a holistic approach grounded in system

dynamics.3 Their model proposes that an organisation build four basic disciplines:

personal mastery in its individual members, an openness to examining prevailing mental

models, a shared vision for the future that empowers members to work together, and

open dialogue that creates team learning. These four disciplines are then drawn together

using the fifth discipline, systems thinking, as the linchpin. The goal in becoming a

learning organisation is to move toward a heightened level of organisational

164 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 89(2)

self-awareness and understanding of the larger system dynamics in which the organisa-

tion is embedded. In so doing, the organisation’s members work together to identify and

stimulate critical leverage points in their dynamic system that generate change rather

than wait for performance crises that instigate punctuated, uncontrolled and unplanned

change.

This comprehensive prescription has most frequently taken root in private, for-profit

organisations. Indeed, many of the underlying ideas are antithetical to the command-and-

control authority systems that exist in traditional police organisations. In the short run, it

might seem prudent for law enforcement executives to avoid taking their agencies in this

risk-defying direction. On the other hand, failing to do so may be tempting fate if

executives are to take seriously the groundswell of citizen support for community-

spirited involvement in public safety and in processes of governance more generally

(King and Stivers, 1998). Police executives are left with two basic options: either

embrace this daring new vision or engage in a delaying, noncommittal strategy that pays

lip service to community-oriented policing, collects the available federal dollars, and

waits for the fad to pass. The former strategy is fraught with uncertainty; the latter defies

the potential for community empowerment to occur with or without their participation.

Empowered communities and community ‘outcomes’

Witham and Watson (1983) identified five key stakeholders that law enforcement exec-

utives must satisfy: the media, elected political officials, executives of other criminal

justice organisations, key subordinates and union officials, and community leaders from

the business, civic and religious sectors. Similarly, Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux (1994)

identified a ‘big six’, which elevated the business community to a role separate from

other community leaders. What is glaring is that these lists of stakeholders do not include

getting authority from people in places where it does not exist: lay citizens in neighbour-

hoods. Informed sources in our field studies contend that these stakeholder groups,

inclusive of lay citizens in neighbourhoods, communicate with each other, and that an

executive’s demise typically occurs when a coalition of the groups becomes dissatisfied

and unite to remove the executive. In essence, our informants share Barnard’s (1938)

thesis: earning acceptance of authority is a key executive function. It makes sense that an

executive must build support with these influential players – at the more formal political,

institutional and organisational levels, as well as from the more informal neighbourhood

level – for the agency’s community-oriented strategy.

The street-level professional in our model invites participation from local citizens

without regard to their political influence, and street-level decisions reached coopera-

tively with these citizens produce consequences that the officer communicates to his or

her organisation. And as citizens participate by giving voice to their concerns they

develop expectations for results. Moreover, neighbourhood groups that congeal around

shared public safety concerns take on a life of their own. While executives may continue

to answer to the same five or six stakeholder groups, street-level professionals will find

themselves increasingly dependent on a local network of citizens. In addition to the

expectations that local citizens impose on community-based officers, other pressures

are likely to radiate from organised neighbourhood groups to the elite networks occupied

Williams et al. 165

by other stakeholder groups. Police executives will do well to listen to their concerns as

communicated through community police officers rather than wait for their dissatisfac-

tion to register with the other elite stakeholder groups (see Table 3).

This change resonates with the new role we posited for middle managers. In their

traditional roles lieutenants, captains and majors derived their influence from controlling

– and sometimes impeding – the flow of information and buffering the disparate views of

street-level officers from those of executives. However, middle managers must now play

an expanded facilitative role in transmitting vital street-level, community-generated

information. Two examples from our previous fieldwork illustrate how this occurs.

During the administration of Chief Goliath Davis, the St Petersburg (FL) Police Depart-

ment implemented a model that stressed ‘Respect, Accountability, and Integrity’, in

which majors were designated as ‘chiefs within their districts’. This model was intended

to bring accountability into interactions with community participants and foster the new

expanded facilitative role for middle managers via their District CPO Sergeants and

frontline officers.

Similarly the former Chief of Police for Clearwater, Florida, Sid Klein, moved super-

vision from shift commanders out to geographic regions. As he observed, ‘the lieutenant

is like a regional chief’. Positive interactions and involvement with community groups,

such as the Salvation Army and domestic violence advocates, require this expanded

facilitative role for middle managers. It also requires the executive increasingly to rely

on middle managers for accurate information and sound community-accountable

decision-making. The middle manager must build the bridges that link the disparate

components of the agency with counterparts in the community.

Community-oriented officers working in this new professional stance may help to

empower groups of citizens whose voices are not as frequently heard in existing political

processes. Minority ethnic and racial groups and diverse age groups – especially youth

and senior citizens (Williams, 1998) – may become much more influential in building

community-based expectations for services and behaviour. Similarly, several observers

have noted a shift in which government’s role as a principal arbiter and enforcer of

behaviour is giving way to greater community self-governance (King and Stivers, 1998;

Table 3. Community professionalism: implications for the community.

Traditional professionalism Community-oriented professionalism

Process of accountability: Executive allegiance to key stakeholders Community expectations communicated

through street-level professionals Bases of governance:

Police agency and government as arbiters and enforcers of behaviour

Community self-governance; agency professionals as ‘facilitators’

Nature of goals: Crime-fighting ‘outputs’: arrests, response time, prosecutions

Community ‘outcomes’: public safety, quality of life, homeland security

166 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 89(2)

Newland, 1999). And since lower socioeconomic neighbourhoods will continue to

attract the greatest attention from community officers, the police professional’s partic-

ipation in those neighbourhoods should help to stimulate neighbourhood empowerment

directed to changing the circumstances of their residents’ lives. Thus community-

oriented police professionals will play a facilitative role in helping to stem the tide of

our society’s potential for social and economic schism between groups of ‘haves’ and

‘have-nots’.

Finally, we must consider how a new model of police professionalism might alter the

goals of law enforcement agencies. We imagine that street-level goals jointly defined by

citizens and the new police professionals have the potential to shift emphasis toward

public safety, absence of crime and higher quality of life and away from numbers of

arrests, speed of response, successful prosecutions and other ‘output’ measures that are

used in the traditional scheme to justify budgets and retain legitimacy among important

stakeholders. So the new professionalism moves more toward true community outcomes

instead of mere process outputs. And accountability shifts, however gradually, toward

satisfying neighbourhood citizens – and thus less directly the political decision-makers

who are economically, socially and geographically distant from the neighbourhoods that

are most affected by the police agency’s activities. This shift advances the concept of co-

production.

Implications for the co-production of public safety and public order

Co-production is associated with the approach where users as citizens or residents are

directly involved in assisting public agencies and their professional agents in developing,

implementing and delivering vital public services (Ostrom, 1996). Bovaird (2007) has

categorised nine types of service delivery arrangements that are evidenced in the rela-

tionship between professionals and users in the service design and delivery processes.

As illustrated in Table 4, there are a variety of ways in which professionals and

service users can work together to plan for and deliver public services. The traditional

mode of professional service delivery is located at one end of the spectrum (cell 1), while

self-organised community delivery in which users and communities design and deliver

their own services depicts the other end of the extreme (cell 9). The relationships in

between cells 2 and 8 represent different types of interactions that can occur between

service providers and users.

The contextual case in this manuscript, Hurricane Katrina, highlights a non-existent

role for users as citizens and residents and a very limited role for professionals as sole

planners and sole deliverers in the design of disaster planning and the delivery of disaster

mitigation. The disastrous consequences of this framework have been well documented

and offer major implications for the co-production of public safety and public order.

Opportunities are present to engage police officers and residents/citizens in both the

design and delivery of disaster planning and mitigation. This will require a shift in the

philosophies of professionals and users, both within police organisations and the broader

public, respectively, of an exclusive role for either entity. Community members from all

backgrounds and officers from all levels should be engaged in the co-creation of disaster

and mitigation plans and co-delivery of disaster services. This requires a shift in thinking

Williams et al. 167

from the more contemporary notion of power over to one that embraces Follett’s (1998)

historical notion of power with. This transformation in thinking, planning and acting on

the parts of professionals (in particular) and users can be accelerated and enhanced with

the emergence of a community-centred model of police professionalism, the develop-

ment of reflective professionals and the rise of learning organisations.

Conclusion

In keeping with the Latin phrase, respice, adspice, prospice, we have examined the

past, to understand better the present and to plan for the future. We have gone to some

length to emphasise differences between the community-oriented professional model

and the traditional model. We have been careful to acknowledge, however, that the

emergent model cannot fully replace traditional police expertise. Police professionals

will continue to depend on training institutions for science-based knowledge to guide

the many technical aspects of their work. Moreover, they will need to be prepared with

the skills and mental focus to be able to switch into emergency response when it is

called for.

We do propose, however, that training for community-oriented police professionals

requires a substantial infusion of skills involving practical experimentation, seeking of

feedback from community members’ perspectives, and trust in knowledge gained from

‘learn-how’ rather than exclusively from profession-based ‘know-how’. Furthermore,

we argue that the base of ‘know-how’ must become increasingly open to knowledge

gained from ‘learn-how’ experiences. Executives who embrace this model will need to

adjust their leadership styles and encourage dialogue that leads to team learning and

shared commitment to a common agency vision. Their agencies will gradually need to

gain a heightened self-awareness in order to become organisations that truly learn about

Table 4. Typology of professional-user relationships.

Service design

Professionals as sole planners

Professionals/users as co-planners

No professional input

Service delivery

Professionals as sole deliverers

1. Traditional professional service delivery

2. Professional service delivery, but user involvement in design

3. Professionals as sole deliverers

Professional/ users as co-delivers

4. User co-delivery of professionally designed services

5. Full co-production 6. User delivery of services with minimal professional involvement

Users as sole deliverers

7. User delivery of professionally designed services

8. User delivery of co-designed services

9. Self-organised community delivery

*Source: Adapted from Bovaird (2007) and Ryan (2012).

168 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 89(2)

and shape the dynamics of the systems of which they are a part rather than passively

react to crises that arise from it. The implications for mitigating the disproportionate

effects on lower socioeconomic communities from natural hazards and man-made

disasters are one among many conspicuous advantages of community-oriented police

professionalism.

Police executives who integrate this model of professionalism into their agencies will

learn to appreciate and consume the rich flow of information that community members

entrust to street-level professionals, rather than wait until crises undermine their tradi-

tional bases of support from elite stakeholders. Agencies that succeed in the new pro-

fessionalism will have to cast off their focus on the outputs of crime fighting – number of

arrests, quick response times, successful prosecutions – in favour of co-designing, co-

delivering and co-producing with their community counterparts the outcomes that really

matter – quality of life, the absence of crime and debilitating fear, community self-

governance, confidence in emergency management systems, and homeland security.

In essence, police executives must resist the temptation that is associated with ‘pure

professionals’ who have gained status and efficacy by strictly controlling the content of

knowledge that has served to define them – who fail to appreciate that ‘outsiders’ beyond

their profession have essential knowledge that the members of the profession might lack

(Noordegraaf, 2007). Consequently, they must accept the value added by ‘hybridised

professionals’ who are reflective practitioners that value, establish and leverage mean-

ingful connections that exist beyond the profession in order to understand better, mitigate

or solve the problems that their organisations face in ambiguous domains like local law

enforcement (Noordegraaf, 2007).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,

and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this

article.

Notes

1. In a national survey, Annan (1995) found that close to 80% of law enforcement agencies in the

United States had either implemented or considered implementing community policing. Simi-

larly, the most recent US Department of Justice (2015) Report on Local Police Departments

using 2013 data revealed that departments with a community policing component employed

88% of all local police officers, and 7 out of 10 departments, including 90% of those with

jurisdiction of 25,000 residents or more, had a mission statement that included a community

policing component.

2. For the discussion that follows we acknowledge our substantial intellectual debt to Donald

Schön’s (1983) often-cited but under-utilised model of practitioner ‘reflection-in-action’.

3. Although these ideas have been made accessible in the popular press, this is substantial work

grounded in a genuine academic pedigree rather than simplistic exhortation. For example,

Williams et al. 169

readers may wish to consult the extensive and comprehensive exercises that have been devel-

oped to make this prescription unfold (Senge et al., 1994).

References

Adams RE (2002) Implementing community-oriented policing: Organizational change and street

officer attitudes. Crime and Delinquency 48(3): 399–431.

Allen RYW (2002) Assessing the impediments to organizational change: A view of community

policing. Journal of Criminal Justice 30(6), 511–517.

Annan SO (1995) National Survey of Community Policing Strategies, 1992–1993. Washington,

DC: The Police Foundation.

Argyris C and Schön DA (1978) Organizational Learning. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,

Inc.

Barnard C (1938) The Functions of the Executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press.

Beckman S (1990) Professionalism: Borderline authority and autonomy in work. In: Torstendahl R

and Burrage M (eds) Professions in Theory and History. London: SAGE. 115–138.

Bennis WG (1983) The art of leadership. In: Srivastya S (ed.) The Executive Mind. San Francisco,

CA: Jossey-Bass, pp.15–25.

Blumer H (1966) Preface. In: Vollmer HM and Mills DL (eds) Professionalization. Englewood

Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, p.xi.

Bovaird T (2007) Beyond engagement and participation: User and community coproduction of

public services. Public Administration Review 67(5): 846–860.

Brint S (1994) In an Age of Experts: The Changing Role of Professionals in Politics and Public

Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Cordner G (1999) Community policing: Elements and effects. In: Gaines L and Cordner G (eds)

Policing Perspectives: An Anthology. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury, pp.137–149.

Deakin TJ (1988) Police Professionalism: The Renaissance of American Law Enforcement.

Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Eisenman D, Cordasco K, Asch S, Golden J and Gilk D (2007) Disaster planning and risk

communication with vulnerable communities: Lessons From Hurricane Katrina. American

Journal of Public Health 97(1): S109–S115.

Ericson R and Carriere K (1994) The fragmentation of criminology. In: Nelken D (ed.) The

Futures of Criminology. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE, pp.89–109.

Etzioni A (1993) The Spirit of Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Flexner A (1915) Is social work a profession? In: National Conference of Charities and

Corrections, Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections at the

Forty-second annual session held in Baltimore, Maryland, May 12–19, 1915. Chicago:

Hildmann.

Follett MP (1998) The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government.

University Park, PA: Penn State Press.

Friedson E (1970) Professional Dominance. New York: Atherton Press.

Galston WA (1991) Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtue, and Diversity in the Liberal State. New

York: Cambridge University Press.

Goldstein H (1990) Problem-Oriented Policing. New York: McGraw Hill.

170 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 89(2)

Goldstein H (2003) On further developing problem-oriented policing: The most critical need, the

major impediments, and a proposal. Crime Prevention Studies 15: 13–47.

Greenwood E (1957) Attributes of a profession. Social Work 2(3): 45–55.

Hall DT (1996) Protean careers of the 21st century. Academy of Management Executive 10: 8–16.

Haug MR (1973) Deprofessionalization: An alternative hypothesis for the future. In: Halmos P

(ed.) Professionalization and Social Change, The Sociological Review Monograph, 20.

Keele: University of Keele, pp.195–211.

Kahneman D, Slovic P and Tversky A (1982) Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Kelling GL and Moore MH (1988) The Evolving Strategy of Policing, Perspectives on Policing, 4.

Washington, DC: US Department of Justice.

King CS and Stivers C (1998) Government is Us: Public Administration in an Anti-Government

Era. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Koven SG (1992) Coproduction of law enforcement services: Benefits and implications. Urban

Affairs Review 27(3): 457–469.

Kraska PB and Cubellis LJ (1997) Militarizing Mayberry and beyond: Making sense of American

paramilitary policing. Justice Quarterly 14(4): 607–629.

Kratcoski P and Blair R (1995) Dynamics of community policing in small communities. In:

Kratcoski P and Dukes D (eds) Issues in Community Policing. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson

Publishing, pp.85–104.

Larson MS (1977) The Rise of Professionalism. Berkeley, CA: University of California.

Laska S and Morrow B (2006) Social vulnerabilities and Hurricane Katrina: An unnatural disaster

in New Orleans. Marine Technology Society Journal 40(4): 16–26.

Lasley JR, Vernon RL and Drery GM (1995) Operation Cul-de-Sac: LAPD’s ‘total community’

policing program. In: Kratcoski P and Dukes D (eds) Issues in Community Policing. Cincinnati,

OH: Anderson Publishing, pp.51–67.

Lipsky M (1980) Street-Level Bureaucracy. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Mechanic D (1962) Sources of power of lower participants in complex organizations.

Administrative Science Quarterly 7(3): 349–362.

Merriam-Webster (1995) Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 10th edn. Springfield, MA:

Merriam-Webster.

Mileti DS (1999) Disasters by design: A reassessment of natural hazards in the United States.

Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press.

Mintzberg H (1979) The Structuring of Organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Moore WE (1970) The Professions: Roles and Rules. New York: SAGE.

Newland CA (1999) Public administration’s struggle for civilizing connectedness. Paper presented

at the annual conference of the American Society for Public Administration, Orlando, Florida,

US, 9–14 April 1999.

Noordegraaf M (2007) From ‘pure’ to ‘hybrid’ professionalism: Present-day professionalism in

ambiguous public domains. Administration and Society 39(6): 761–785.

Ostrom E (1993) A communitarian approach to local governance. National Civic Review 82(3):

226–233.

Ostrom E (1996) Crossing the great divide: Co-production, synergy and development. World

Development 24(6): 1073–1087.

Price BR (1977) Police Professionalism. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

Williams et al. 171

Reith C (1975) The Blind Eye of History. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith.

Ryan B (2012) Co-production: Option or obligation? Australian Journal of Public Administration

71(3): 314–324.

Schein E (1973). Professional Education. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Schön DA (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York:

Basic Books.

Schwab J, Topping KC, Eadie CC, Deyle RE and Smith RA (1998) Planning for Post-Disaster

Recovery and Reconstruction. Washington, DC: American Planning Association.

Selznick P (1992) The Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and the Promise of Community.

Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Senge PM (1990) The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New

York: Currency Doubleday.

Senge PM, Kleiner A, Roberts C, Ross RB and Smith BJ (1994) The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook:

Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization. New York: Currency Doubleday.

Simon H (1947) Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Process in Administrative

Organization. New York: Macmillan.

Sparrow MK, Moore MH and Kennedy DM (1990) Beyond 911: A New Era for Policing. New

York: Basic Books.

Stillman R (1998) Creating the American State: The Moral Reformers and the Modern

Administrative World They Made. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.

Torstendahl R (1990) Introduction: Promotion and strategies of knowledge based groups.

In: Torstendahl R and Burrage M (eds) The Formation of Professions. London: SAGE,

pp.1–10.

Trojanowicz F and Bucqueroux B (1994) Community Policing: How to Get Started. Cincinnati,

OH: Anderson Publishing.

Upton E (1904) The Military Policy of the United States. Washington, DC: Government Printing

Office.

US Department of Justice (2015) Local Police Departments 2013. Washington, DC: Bureau of

Justice Statistics.

Wiatrowski MD (1995) Community policing in Delray Beach. In: Kratcoski P and Dukes D (eds)

Issues in Community Policing. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing, pp.69–83.

Williams BN (1998) Citizen perspectives on community policing: A case study in Athens,

Georgia. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Williams BN (1999) Perceptions of children and teenagers on community policing: Implications for

law enforcement leadership, training, and citizen evaluations. Police Quarterly 2(2): 150–173

Williams H and Murphy PV (1990) The Evolving Strategy of Police: A Minority View.

Perspectives on Policing 13. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice.

Wilson JQ and Kelling GL (1982) Broken windows. Atlantic monthly 249(3): 29–38.

Witham DC and Watson PJ (1983) The role of the law enforcement executive. Journal of Police

Science and Administration 11(1): 9–75.

Zhao J, Lovrich NP and Robinson TH (2001) Community policing: Is it changing the basic

functions of policing? Findings from a longitudinal study of 200þ municipal police agencies.

Journal of Criminal Justice 29(5): 365–377.

172 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 89(2)

Author biographies

Brian N Williams is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Administration and

Policy.

Ralph S Brower is an Associate Professor in the Askew School of Public Administration and

Policy.

W Earle Klay is a Professor in the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy.

Williams et al. 173