Abstract

This Independent Study examines the topic of community-oriented policing including the attitudes and perceptions of officers. The dependent variables for this study are as follows: changed attitudes toward community-oriented policing programs, attitudes toward the community-now, community attitude toward the police now, how knowledge of the community has been useful, and community involvement. These were tested against the following independent variables: coded age, race, rank, training levels, and education levels. It is important to note that the variables race and rank were excluded from measure due the inadequacy of the original data. This study was based on the data collected by Peter Kratcoski and Robert Blair in 1993. Permission was granted for the use of this data by Robert Blair. The data was gathered through the surveying of police officers including the use of a survey questionnaire (see Appendix). The results of hypotheses testing concludes that community-oriented policing does improve the attitude of the community toward the police and that the reciprocal also holds true. It has also been discovered that there is no significance between the training levels of officers and positive attitudes toward community-oriented policing programs when tested against age. However, when testing the attitudes of officers toward the community-now by training the results proved to be nearly statistically significant, the inverse of this test also proved to be nearly statistically significant. When testing how useful knowledge of the community had been by the variables training the results proved to be nearly statistically significant. However, when testing the usefuless of community knowledge by training levels of officers the results were insignificant. Community involvement proved to be insignificant in both cases when testing it by training levels and education levels. Further research is suggested which emphasizes applying the variables race and rank, randomly testing the opinions and perceptions of the community and to expand testing to communities that exceed 30,000 residents.

Advisor

Fitz Gibbon, Heather

Department

Sociology and Anthropology

Publication Date

1995

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

Available for download on Thursday, January 01, 2150

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© Copyright 1995 Jeffery Samaco