Reflect on what you have learned in this course and relate some of those ideas to the issues identified in the two quotes given in Journal Exercise 5.
In the second quote, Herman Goldstein talks about the inability of police managers to see beyond quantitative measures and determine whether the officers they deploy on the street each day actually make a difference. In other words, they have a historical tendency to get caught up in a numbers game–a very real risk in today’s shift toward data-driven policing.
With these issues in mind, review the accompanying photos in detail and comment on the “core competency” of patrol officers as described by Egon Bittner in “Florence Nightingale in Pursuit of Willie Sutton,” which is an assigned reading for this unit.
- Where does the idea of community policing fit within the emerging dominance of data-driven policing?
- How can police managers balance the political aspects of a community-based approach to policing in today’s fragmented society with the multitude of urgent demands placed on police agencies on a daily basis?
The Runaway, Norman Rockwell, 1958, The Norman Rockwell Museum of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. [Enlarge]
Officer and girl [Enlarge] President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. (1967). Officer and girl [photo image]. In The challenge of crime in a free society: A report by the President’s commission of law enforcement and administration of justice (p. 97). Reproduced with permission of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
An EPS patrol officer © Edmonton Police Service. Reproduced with permission.
