week 3

What is an Annotated Bibliography? What exactly is an annotated bibliography? It is a document that contains the reference of the source and an annotation (summary/review/overview) of the content. Here are two entries from an annotated bibliography regarding a study on community policing:

Brainard, L. A., & Derrick-Mills, T. (2011). Electronic commons, community policing, and communication. Administrative Theory & Praxis, 33(3), 383-410. http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/ATP1084-1806330304

The authors in this article investigated the effort by all the districts that comprise the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department (DC MPD), except district six, to facilitate an electronic common in which residents and police department personnel could work together, via online discussion groups, to address crime and safety issues. Using a mixed methods case study approach, they analyzed the threads originating between July 2005 and December 2007 to answer two research questions: Do the online discussion groups fulfill the spirit of an electronic commons? What is the nature of the online relationship between the police and the community? The reading and reviewing of the online discussions between the represented sample of the DC MPD and the residents was the method used to collect data. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the percentages and ratios between the DC MPD and the residents, while in-depth comparative analysis was employed to analyze the discussion threads qualitatively. The findings indicated both success and failure in terms of forming and sustaining an electronic common, therefore the conclusion was that social media can be an effective tool for law enforcement, but further development and research needs to be accomplished.

Chemak, S., & Weiss. A. (2006). Community policing in the news media. Police Quarterly, 9(2), 135–160. doi:10.1177/1098611105281630

A post office mailed qualitative questionnaire survey was forwarded to 239 police stations within cities with populations of 100,000 or more as well as the media organizations of those cities. A similar survey was mailed to the newspaper with the largest circulation and the top two television stations within the same cities as the police stations. Based on the responses, two police departments with apparent positive relations with the media and two police departments with negative relations with the media were identified for in- depth comparative analysis. The authors stated the findings of their study pertaining to efforts of law enforcement agencies to promote community policing were that while community policing efforts were occurring, limited mention of these efforts were recognized by the media. The results indicated that although police departments and media personnel concurred that they have a very good working relationship, there are many opportunities to encourage community policing, but most police departments make only minimal effort to do so.