The Philadelphia Police Report From A Police Department

This study tested the impact of increased foot patrol on crime in Newark between February 1978 and January 1979. The program included several requirements stipulated by its use of Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Program funds. Foot patrol officers were required to remain in uniform and on foot, except when traveling to and from their posts, or when assisting a motor patrol officer in an emergency or arrest situation. All officers were required to be visible on

The increasing concerns of rising crime rates and the national civil rights movement in the 1960s, led to an increased attention for research and policy development (Ray 2104). The country was demanding improved police-community relations; increase educations for officers; diversity in the ranks; and controls on police discrimination. Commnities felt alienated from the police force and demanded a solution (Ray 2014). In response to the growing concerns, research was conducted. Congress allocated monies producing two ciritcal studies: the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Study and the Rand Investigation Experiment. The evidence from these studies indicated police were not only limited in their ability to affect crime levels, but rarely responded

Hot spots policing revolves around the idea that crime is focused in small problem locales, and that crime can be more efficiently reduced if police concentrate their efforts on those smaller areas (Papachristos & Hureau, 2012). By stopping crime in smaller areas, it is easy to prevent it from growing in larger parts. Activities like patrolling high crime areas and presence of law enforcement officers in the area are performed will reduced crime (Hot spots policing, 2017, What is the focus of the intervention?). “When authors calculated the overall

The design of the Kanas City Preventative Patrol Experiment was to test the assumption that marked police units patrolling the streets can prevent individuals from committing crimes. Areas of the city were assigned either- no routine patrols the proper level of patrols and substantially increased patrols. “The concept of preventive patrol postulated the "self-evident truth" that the mere presence of the police or reasonable potential for their presence would deter criminals from committing offenses in the immediate geographic area of the patrol” (Deployment by analysis, 2000).

The Philadelphia Police Department is known to be one of the oldest police departments, dating back to 1854 when it was officially established by state law. The Philadelphia Police Department was initially created to prevent crime and detain criminals. After William Penn received the land known today as the city of Philadelphia, he wanted to assure there would be order within his land and thus appointed a sheriff. Starting as early as 1700, a Philadelphia ‘night watch’ was established to keep a watch throughout the city in order to be aware of any criminal activity going on throughout the night. In the early 1800s due to advancement in both watchmen numbers and payment capabilities, the watch was officially a twenty-four hour watch with hundreds

The Philadelphia Foot Patrol experiment was designed in response to a need to calculate which method of problem oriented policing are successful in deterring crime in hot spot during the summer months. We were able to conclude that after 3 months of intensive foot patrol in the treatment area prevented 90 various violent crimes in hot spots, because we have to take in effect the notion of

“Broken Windows” by Wilson and Kelling is a seminal work in the study of Criminal Justice. Starting off, the effectiveness and outcomes of implementing foot patrols was discussed. Foot patrols were found to not decrease crime, but did increase citizen’s favorable opinions on the police and perceived level of safety.

In 1982, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling presented an article that called for a change in police tactics to enhance neighborhood safety entitled simply “Broken Windows”. This article was hailed as the godsend that everyone was waiting for because at the time crime rates were extremely high and murder had peaked just two years prior to the release of this article. Wilson and Kelling declare that a return to “order-maintenance” police function is the key to providing safe neighborhoods (Kelling and Wilson 104). This is achieved through foot patrol officers that enact regulations for their patrol areas which keep individuals in their place and “strengthen the informal social control mechanisms of natural communities” (Kelling and Wilson

How did the Kansas City Patrol Study affect routine patrol all across the nation? It affected routine patrol in the fact that It made officers realize that traditional routine patrol in marked police cars did not appear to affect the level of crime. Nor did it affect the public’s feeling of security. The experiment demonstrated that urban police departments can successfully test patrol deployment strategies, and that they can manipulate patrol resources without jeopardizing public safety.

The research design proposed by the authors is to statistically compare the relation between the dependent variable “violent crime” and four explanatory variables: a measure of “broken windows” policing (misdemeanor offenses), a measure of demographics (young male enrolled in high school), a measure of drug use (hospital discharges for cocaine-related episodes) and a measure of economy (unemployment). They use data of seventy-six precincts of New York City from 1989 to 1998, obtained from a variety of official secondary sources.

Prior to the 1970’s, law enforcement agencies were completely unaware of how effective their methods of policing and patrolling truly were, if they were even effective at all. After questioning the efficiency of their methods for so long, the Kansas City Police Department decided to conduct an experiment on preventative patrol. This experiment focused on four main questions-- would the public notice, would visible police affect crime, would the citizens’ fear of crime diminish, and would police satisfaction change. Although preventative patrol has the aspects of a powerful policing method, this landmark experiment may have produced some interesting and thought provoking results on the topic.

“The average police response time not including the time between placing and answering calls in New York City was 9.1 minutes in 2012, compared to 6.9 minutes in 2007, an increase of 31 percent” (Bowen, 2012)(Kemp, 2013). The massive increase in response time is threatening the safety of the residents of New York City, and while the government is introducing new plans to help alleviate the problem, results have been largely unsatisfactory so far.

Violent crime becomes defined as homicide, aggravated assault, and robberies not occurring indoors, and events became weighted by year. In this way, more recent developments had greater relevance in the creation of the target locations for 2009, but summary values retained a portion of the long-term hotspot component. Two PPD Regional Operations Commanders identified 129 potential foot beats, and from these, 120 became selected for the experiment. Each area contained about 15 street intersections and 1.3 miles of roads. The foot beats were ranked by the weighted volume of violent crime and paired with a foot beat of a similar crime rate. One from each pair was randomly selected to be a target beat, while the other became a control (or comparison) area. There were 60 treatment areas and 60 control areas.

This particular study increases the incident hot spot function to include knowledge about offender residences that is relative to crime spots. The authors make a case that by analyzing the offender residence it will offers added level to current spatial methods in crime fighting efforts (Gore & Pattavina, 2004).

There are multiple approaches to engaging a police force with the community in order to most effectively prevent and respond to crime, and considering the relative strengths and weakness of each of these strategic models will demonstrate how models can impact the operation of daily policing practices and activities. The model under discussion here is called community oriented policing (COP), and focuses on building relationships and rapport between officers and the community in order to more effectively prevent crime. It is augmented by a model called problem solving policing (PSP), and depends upon rank-and-file officers identifying community problem areas through direct observation and analysis. Each model excels at slightly different things, and in practice most police agencies deploy a mix of models. By examining the Miami-Dade Police Department's handbook for school resource officers, it will be possible to view a COP/PSP policy in action in order to better understand how these models practically affect policing.