Problem-oriented Policing - Political Issues and Conflicts Between Actors

Political Issues and Conflicts Between Actors

In the last decade the problem-oriented approach has become a popular one among police administrators and high-ranking city officials. There are three main reasons for this: First, it works. Successes in problem solving are well documented in study after study. One anthology by Ronald Glensor, Mark Correia and Kenneth Peak suggest it represents a "new policing" however it is a new policing with varying degrees of success (Policing Communities: Understanding Crime and Solving Problems, Roxbury Publishing, 2000, page 1).

Second, it is an innovation readily accepted and approved by the public, which generally welcomes the opportunity to be heard and to become more involved.

Public favor translates into job security for administrators and elected officials. The third reason is the opportunity to collect substantial sums of money through federal grants. In 1995, a federal grant of $327 million from the U.S. Department of Justice was divided up among police departments implementing POP programs in the state of Arizona. The availability of federal grant money creates a real incentive for police agencies to use POP.

Because POP policy may require considerable organizational restructuring, administrators can justify applications for inordinately large funds.

Some rank-and-file officers, however, often do not share their administrators' enthusiasm. One of the reasons for this may be a lack of clarity with respect to organizational goals. Policing has from the beginning had a lack of clarity of organizational goals, and the introduction of POP does not always solve the problem. Consequently, rank and file officers assuming this lack of clarity concern will be resolved by POP and are disappointed when that is not done. Poorly defined or ambiguous goals can lead to stress and frustration. Another possible source of rank-and-file discontent is militant police unionism in which union leadership sees POP as an expansion of police duties and attempts to include these duties into collective bargaining.

A further sources of frustration by some officers is the conflict between the administration's community policing mandate and the continuing need to respond to calls for service.