Police

Quarterly
http://pqx.sagepub.com/

Extending the Police Role: Implications of Police Mediation as a Problem-Solving Tool

Michael E. Buerger, Anthony J. Petrosino and Carolyn Petrosino
Police Quarterly 1999 2: 125
DOI: 10.1177/109861119900200201
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://pqx.sagepub.com/content/2/2/125

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:
Police Executive Research Forum
Police Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences

Additional services and information for Police Quarterly can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://pqx.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://pqx.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Citations: http://pqx.sagepub.com/content/2/2/125.refs.html

>> Version of Record - Jun 1, 1999

What is This?

Downloaded from pqx.sagepub.com by alina ciabuca on October 20, 2013

Buerger et al. / EX TENDING PO

THE
LICE
PO LICE
QUAR
ROLE
TERLY (Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1999)

EXTENDING THE POLICE ROLE:

IMPLICATIONS OF POLICE MEDIATION
AS A PROBLEM-SOLVING TOOL
MICHAEL E. BUERGER
Northeastern University

ANTHONY J. PETROSINO
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
CAROLYN PETROSINO
Bridgewater State College

This article discusses ramifications of role shifts that occur when police officers with traditional law enforcement expectations are placed in community
policing assignments. Shifting from a control perspective to a partnership
role often requires officers to abandon confrontation, command, and coercion in favor of participation, promotion, and persuasion. Types of police
mediation arising in community policing are discussed relative to social
distance and legal obligations across a spectrum of disputes: domestics,
landlord-tenant, acquaintance/neighbor, frictions between neighborhoods
and attractive nuisances, and between place guardians and regulating bodies. The New York City Community Patrol Officer Program (CPOP) and the
Minneapolis Repeat Call Address Policing (RECAP) experiment provide
examples. Potential problems include burnout, tunnel vision, personalization, overidentification, overcommitment, and unanticipated consequences.

Police administrators seeking to maximize their agencies effectiveness

have adopted problem solving as one means to strengthen the communitys
ability to handle incivilities without constantly appealing for police assistance. Whether as a stand-alone project or as part of a community policing
initiative, police use problem-solving techniques to quell underlying problems that produce disorders. Problem solving changes the nature of the officers relationship with the disputants, however, and creates new demands
for which traditional police training does not prepare officers.
POLICE QUARTERLY Vol. 2 No. 2, June 1999
2000 Sage Publications, Inc.

125149

126

POLICE QUARTERLY (Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1999)

The move to community policing is well documented elsewhere (e.g.,

Greene & Mastrofski, 1988; Rosenbaum, 1994; Skolnick & Bayley, 1986;
Sparrow, Moore, & Kennedy, 1990; Trojanowicz & Bucqueroux, 1990).
The advantages to the community of the community policing partnership
are thought to be greater responsiveness of police agencies to citizendefined problems, increased police attention to order maintenance, and the
resulting reduced public perception of and fear of crime (Cordner, 1985;
McElroy, Cosgrove, & Sadd, 1990; Spelman & Eck, 1987; Trojanowicz,
Pollard, Colgan, & Harden, 1986). The advantages to the police are promoted as decentralized decision making that improves agency performance, greater job satisfaction for officers, improved citizen satisfaction
with the police, and a reduction in the police workload.
The common denominator of the wide variety of community policing
deployments is an attempt to break down the mutual anonymity of police
and citizen that traditional policing fosters and to encourage positive interactions in the hopes of dispelling the damaging stereotypes held on both
sides. Ultimately, the critical element is the engagement of the officers with
the community (the personal contact and respect), not the manner of
deployment. It is engagement and the resulting knowledge and increased
personal authority of the officer that facilitate effective police intervention
in long-standing disputes.
Community policing deployments extend the day-to-day activities, interactions, and expectations of officers well beyond what has been the norm
of traditional policing. Officers become involved in areas of life previously
ignored by the police and for which their training and experience have not
prepared them. For years, officers have known instinctively that the relative
anonymity of patrol work, coupled with just the facts, Maam detachment
and (when necessary) personal brusqueness and even ferocity, served to insulate them from some of the undesirable aspects of their jobs. Important
among those to-be-avoided conditions are as follows:
loss of anonymity, which many officers see as a threat to their families;
the potential for being unwillingly embroiled in chronic unresolvable disputes, either
as mediator or as the imagined champion of one side or another;
frequent interaction with the lonely and incapable souls who attach themselves to
anyone who will listen (or cannot get away) and are especially drawn to figures of
authority;
being confronted with questions they are unprepared to answer (particularly about accusations of police error or wrongdoing); and

Buerger et al. / EXTENDING THE POLICE ROLE

127

having to handle situations for which they are unprepared because the matters lie outside the narrow scope of existing police training.

The nature of the new assignments leave officers more at risk for all of these
negative possibilities.
Police accustomed to the traditional model have relied on the precepts of
control: confront, command, and coerce. Establishing and maintaining a
presence, an overwhelming authority, is central to the traditional police
mind-set and training. The new problem- and community-oriented models
neither eliminate nor downplay the importance of control in certain situations (e.g., Goldstein, 1977, 1990), but they insert officers into situations in
which control is at best irrelevant and at worst counterproductive. Community policing and the Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Assessment
(SARA) problem-solving model place the police in the very different world
of partnership, which requires them to participate, promote, and persuade.
In a control model, the police officer is the central figure in the event; in a
partnership model, the police are but one of many interested stakeholders.
Control situations allow officers to enter and intervene in ongoing events
or impose their presence for the purpose of investigation, with either general
or specific authority (Reiss, 1971). The police goal is the cessation of conduct which ought-not-to-be-happening-and-about-which-somethingought-to-be-done-NOW! (Bittner, 1985, p. 30), and their authority derives
either from a specific complaint or from the general police power to preserve the peace.
In partnership situations, the immediacy of the control situations may
not exist. Though past incidents certainly inform many neighborhood concerns, they provide no immediate mandate for police intervention. Often
citizens concerns are with conditions outside the scope of criminal law,
such as trash collection, maintenance of parks and vacant lots, and conditions of tenancy and the like, for which there is no formal police mandate.
The task for the police officer is to persuade someone to do something they
have not been doing and have little or no incentive to do. Although there
may be aggrieved or concerned parties, no one individual has a compelling
interest. The police authority lies in marshaling the collective will, creating
a moral mandate in the local area to achieve a locally desirable result.
Although the work to be accomplished often lies outside the police
authority, the police serve as the catalyst to bring interested parties together
and create a forum for action. In the process, police officers are put in a position of having to articulate plausi ble rationales, mediate between

128

POLICE QUARTERLY (Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1999)

conflicting interests (in a venue where the officers cannot overwhelm those
interests by asserting their own), field and respond to yeah, but . . . objections and requests for exemption, keep tempers under control without
resorting to threat of arrest, keep discussion focused on outcomes rather
than tangential issues, and occasionally take the heat for not having done
more on their own initiative.
The problem applies equally to slumlords and to reputable citizens
whose lives are already committed to other pursuits. The police have no fundamental authority to compel participation, and to accomplish their goal,
the police must apply techniques for which command-and-control training
does not prepare them. Although some officers have an individual knack for
coalition building, jawboning, arm twisting, or just plain bedazzling people
into taking on undesirable duties, the skill rests far more in the individuals
than in anything the occupation does to prepare them.
Although police administrators tend to speak of these new horizons as
though they were job enhancement (based on the positive experiences of a
few officers who were self-selected for the work), the words extension and
enhancement are not synonyms. Job enhancement occurs only if the officers can find satisfaction in accomplishment, but the nature, expectations,
and possibilities of police involvement in long-term disputes are still basically unknown territory. Success is neither automatic nor unequivocal, and
raising unrealistic expectations by overselling possible results can be
deadly to new programs that feed on volunteer efforts. The success of the
police endeavors and the affirmation that creates job enhancement depend
heavily on the ability of the police to mediate between parties either in
active dispute or with conflicting interests.

POLICE MEDIATION
Websters definition of mediation is intervention or friendly intercession, usually by consent or invitation, for settling differences between persons, nations, etc. (Webster, 1979, p. 1117). True mediation is a third-party
intervention between two more or less empowered parties who are
embroiled in a dispute they have been unable to resolve themselves. Each
has some power over the others situation, even if that power manifests itself
in negative or destructive ways; each can do something to facilitate resolution of the situation.
In most cases, a mediator has no formal power but possesses a degree of
moral authority to which each side will defer. The mediators job is to listen

Buerger et al. / EXTENDING THE POLICE ROLE

129

to both sides (sometimes hearing the undertext rather than the surface
words), recognize and develop areas of common interest, and move the parties toward a compromise situation that each party can live with, the classic
win-win situation.
Police mediation, as we use the term, represents a broader range of activities, not all of which are benign. It includes brokering and petitioningessentially acting as an advocate on behalf of those who have no
poweras well as arbitration, a condition in which the third party does have
power and can influence if not compel the choices available to the principals. Police mediation is distinguished from formal mediation by the necessity of working in situations where consent and invitation to mediate have
not been extended. The police mediate and persuade in incidents as well, but
the mediating role is accepted as an alternative to more coercive measures.
The shadow of coercion tinges the common ground reached in short-term
mediation (Bittner, 1970). Enforced mediation may produce far different
long-term results than voluntary mediation in that one or both sides may
remain dissatisfied and seek to break the imposed constraints at some future
time.
Police mediation is distinguished from traditional police work by the
need to deal persuasively with two actors rather than just one, usually in
quasi-legal arenas where criminal law is irrelevant and the usual tools of law
enforcement are of questionable legitimacy or marginal value. Although
time-honored techniques such as blue lies and police placebos (Klockars,
1991) may be used as a tactic against one or both of the principal parties, the
essence of police mediation still requires finding or creating a middle
ground acceptable to both principals.
Another form of police mediation really consists of holding regulatory or
other coercive forces at bay, while working toward a goal that the regulatory
forces do not consider primary (but which are important to the police). This
usually means trying to convince the targets of regulationbars, tenement
owners, and so forthto take semivoluntary actions to make the imminent
coercion unnecessary (if action taken under threat of coercion can be
deemed voluntary to any degree).
There are five main arenas in which police mediation takes place. Each
category varies according to the degree of social distance between the disputants (Black, 1991) and the legal obligations that define the relationship:
1. Mediation of conflicts between cohabitating persons or individuals with kinship ties,
usually called domestics (low social distance, high legal obligations).

130

POLICE QUARTERLY (Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1999)

2. Mediation of conflicts between landlords and tenants, but now of a different character
than in the past (moderate social distance, moderate legal obligations).
3. Mediation of conflicts between acquaintances, including residential neighbors (low
social distance, low legal obligation).
4. Mediation of disputes between neighborhood residents and locations (commercial or
residential) deemed to be attractive nuisances, such as crack houses and shooting galleries; tippling houses and bars; porn shops, saunas, health spas, and massage-parlor prostitution fronts; fraternity houses; and so forth (high social distance, low legal obligation).
5. Mediation between guardians/owners and regulating bodies such as bars and liquor
commissions, subsidized housing sites, and their funding sources (high social dis tance, high legal obligation).

As employed in this context, short term and long term reflect the nature of
the disputing relationship or the potential for dispute, rather than the actual
commitment of the police officers time in seeking a resolution. Not every
dispute to which the police are called necessarily requires a detailed analysis or long-term intervention. Many are silly squabbles fueled by excess
consumption of alcohol and/or testosterone flashes, contextually bound and
unlikely to recur. They are, at worst, episodic disputes that cause temporary
disruptions of the public peace, not a serious threat to public safety or continuous disruption. The criminal justice system treats them as trivial, as do
police officers, and a nonarrest approach is adequate.
Disputes that arise from long-standing, almost endemic antagonisms can
consume large amounts of police resources in either mediation or in
answering repeat calls. As a rule, the underlying situations involve sustained interaction, either on the basis of living arrangements or familial ties
(domestics), close geographical proximity (neighborhood disputes), or
legal obligations (landlord-tenant disputes, licensed premises). They produce continuous conflict that may ebb and flow, but over time they produce
repeated disruptions of the public peace. At the surface level, the episodic
eruptions that come to police attention are all but indistinguishable from the
short-term disputes, and traditional incident-based patrol tends to respond
to them as short-term problems. One of the consequences of the new proactive stance of the police is to highlight some of those long-standing disputes and distinguish them from the short-term incidents.

POLICE MEDIATION OF SHORT-TERM DISPUTES

The police have long been expected to use mediation in domestic disturbances and public quarrels. Cumming, Cumming, and Edell (1965) found

Buerger et al. / EXTENDING THE POLICE ROLE

131

that nearly 8% of all calls received at a metropolitan police complaint desk

for an 82-hour period were dispute related. Of the 5,668 police-citizen
encounters observed by Smith and Klein in 1977, 15% were interpersonal
disputes (Smith & Klein, 1984). Of 2,298 citizen-initiated encounters with
the police in Reisss (1971) three-city study, 20% were noncriminal civilian
disputes.
Short-term mediation has received considerable scholarly attention,
largely in the assessment of training programs designed to better equip the
police with verbal and other techniques in defusing citizen conflict (e.g.,
Bard & Zacker, 1976) and in examining the criteria that police employ when
invoking legal and extralegal sanctions (Reiss, 1971; Black, 1991). It is best
viewed as being part of their immediate-intervention practices (Goldstein,
1977), a tool to defuse conflict quickly in reaction to a citizens call for
service.
Finding a short-term solution to conflict is touted as an alternative to
arrest, but the police ability to find such a solution often rests on the coercive
nature of their role (Bittner, 1970). Because arrest remains an option for
resolving the conflict, short-term mediation often occurs in the shadow of
or else, the tacit or overt threat of arrest if a more amiable resolution is not
reached. Short-term police mediation thus takes place within the context of
the streets version of binding arbitration, the police officers ability to
impose a negative sanction on one or both parties. Indeed, some situations
can be terminated only through the credible threat or actual application of
coercive force.
The low-level, common-sense approach that the police take to most
problems is appropriate to the level of threat they represent to the body politic. In most cases, a simple look, this is really kind of [silly] from the officer, coupled with a suggestion of an avenue of resolution is enough to
resolve the quarrel. When testosterone surges have put egos on the line (or
when love-triangle anger comes close to the level of assault), the inherent
coerciveness of the police presence gives each party a way to back down
without losing face. Most such disputes probably do not require police
intervention, except for the irritation and concern they cause to others.
Arrest is reserved for the intransigent who fail the attitude test and those
whose conduct suggests that a simple warning would be insufficient to preserve the peace.
Although officers will always be involved in situations in which shortterm mediation is necessary, not every citizen conflict can be resolved on

132

POLICE QUARTERLY (Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1999)

the officers first visit. Some disputes remain active and unsettled, continuously engaging police resources to remedy the same situation in the same
place. Under traditional patrol deployment, there is no guarantee of consistent treatment. Organizational memory is fragmented, problem recognition
is difficult, and the lack of consistent assignment undercuts any organizational mandate for officers to take responsibility for results. As a consequence, long-standing problems are erroneously identified and treated as
though they were short-term squabbles. One domestic situation in Minneapolis generated seven separate calls for police assistance over the course of
a single weekend. Thirteen police cars responded to those seven calls, but no
police officer went to the address twice (Buerger, 1992, p. 308).
Handle the call and get clear for the next one is the operational mandate
out of necessity in traditional policing. Because most police officers are
assigned to motorized patrol units, the opportunity for resolving enduring
disputes is rare. It is primarily within the context of problem- and communityoriented policingwhere officers are designated responsibility for specific
areas of the community and solving its problemswhere long-term mediation can be accomplished.

POLICE MEDIATION OF
LONG-TERM DISPUTES
Police officers have engaged in longer term dispute resolutions for years,
but on an informal, ad hoc basis. Individual officers choose the cases where
they think they can have some impact, where there is a chance of success
(officers may pursue such opportunities on the basis of a perceived moral
worthiness on the part of the disputants involved, but that is as yet a littlestudied area). Such choices are made on the basis of the officers awareness
of her or his strengths and ability to influence people in a positive manner.
They represent a service ethic above and beyond the call of organizational
expectations. Little in the ethos of reactive patrol or in the corporate climate
of police agencies supports or rewards such actions. Although an officers
successful interventions may be acknowledged tacitly by her or his peers,
they generally are invisible to the formal reward structures of traditional
policing.
The community policing movement is creating an institutional context
where long-term mediation efforts are encouraged. Problem- and communityoriented officers are expected to broaden their mediation and dispute-

Buerger et al. / EXTENDING THE POLICE ROLE

133

resolution activities beyond the self-selected few to engage in the activity

(make the attempt), even in cases they might regard as inappropriate for
such intervention. This change has myriad implications for both officers
and agencies.

DIFFERENT DYNAMICS
One of the most important consequences presumed to result from the
community-oriented approach is increased social support for the police.
Although most of the community policing literature defines that support
broadlydocumented in anecdote-based promotional publications, neighborhood surveys, and occasionally, municipal budget decisionsthere is a
comparable impact at the individual level that is vital to the success of
long-term mediation efforts.
Reiss (1971) notes that patrol officers must establish their authority with
a new cast of characters every time they enter a new social scene. The nature
of reactive patrol tends to be one of constant assertion of authority, establishing the officers right to arbitrate the immediate decision over the preferences of one or more of the actors for private resolution. (One of the sources
of friction between the community and the police may be that officers come
to anticipate the need to assert their authority and come on too strong,
asserting it as they enter situations where deference is already present but
unrecognized.)
Community- and problem-oriented policing creates an extended time
frame in which the officers authority can be established in nonconfrontational settings. People with whom the officer has regular contact
come to regard the officers authority as personal (as Reiss, 1971, notes).
The interaction also gives the officer a better understanding of the lives of
the regulars. That, in turn, grants regulars more personal legitimacyin the
officers eyesthan a stranger who the officer must evaluate based on a limited set of acting-out behaviors, especially in the relatively anonymous reactive interactions.
This mutual recognition of authority and legitimacy obviates the usual
dramaturgy of establishing the officers legitimate authority to intervene
when the regulars are involved in conflict. Arguably, it also gives the officer
more information about the causes of the conflict (at least in some cases)
and a better hook with which to resolve the problem.

134

POLICE QUARTERLY (Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1999)

EXTENDING THE POLICE ROLE: TWO VARIATIONS

The New York City Police Department (NYCPD) established the Community Patrol Officer Program (CPOP) in all 75 NYCPD precincts in 1985,
following a successful 1984 pilot program in a Brooklyn precinct (Farrell,
1984, 1986; McElroy et al., 1990; Weisburd & McElroy, 1988). CPOP
deployed foot patrol officers, usually 10 per precinct, to individual beat
areas of 15 to 20 blocks. Unlike traditional foot patrols, the community
patrol officers (CPOs) were trained and directed to work with the community to identify and solve crime and disorder problems. Each CPO was
expected to be a planner, a problem solver, an information link, and a community organizer, in addition to their normal police duties. Problem-solving
activities occurred during the course of regular beat patrol (Weisburd &
McElroy, 1988).
The Repeat Call Address Policing (RECAP) team in Minneapolis was
originally an experimental unit of four police officers and a sergeant.
Detached from 911 response, RECAP worked on individual addresses identified as the locations responsible for the greatest numbers of calls for police
service. Whereas CPOP and other programs dealt with problems identified
by community complaint or officer selection, RECAPs targets were selected
by computer rankings of police calls for service, therefore RECAP addresses
could contain multiple problems. Whereas CPOP officers were responsible
for a recognizable, contiguous beat, RECAP officers handled individual
addresses throughout the precinct and across the city of Minneapolis
(Buerger, 1992; Sherman, 1987; Sherman, Buerger, & Gartin, 1988;
Sherman, Gartin, & Buerger, 1989).
The experiences of the CPOP and RECAP officers illustrate both some
possibilities and the pitfalls that may be encountered by community police
officers when problem solving requires mediation of long-term disputes.
The following sections draw on the authors experiences with the CPOP
officers and the RECAP unit to illustrate some of the variation of such interventions by specialist officers in the new role assignments.

EXPERIENCES IN LONG-TERM MEDIATION

CONFLICTS BETWEEN COHABITATING PERSONS
Domestic conflicts rarely figure in the types of street disorder that proponents of community policing cite as fear producing, but handling domestic

Buerger et al. / EXTENDING THE POLICE ROLE

135

disputes constitutes a major portion of police activity (usually second only

to motor vehicle stops in the Minneapolis calls-for-service data). Most patrol
mediation in domestics is of the short-term variety, smoothing things over or
talking one or the other party into leaving (e.g., Reiss, 1971, pp. 20-21).
Although there have been attempts to improve police officer skills at
mediating such conflicts (Bard, 1970), the overwhelming response of the
police is to refer the victim and/or both participants to one or another counseling resource. If the victim or the principals fail to make use of the information, the police do not usually follow up. Indeed, victim failure to make
use of the available resources is frequently cited by patrol officers who think
that the police should not handle domestics on any basis other than noise
disturbances.
Domestics were a major problem at RECAP residential addresses, and
the longer relationship of the officers to the principals allowed better fol low-up. In some cases, the officers persistence was interpreted as caring,
which was enough to reassure the participants and encourage them to make
use of the available services. In other cases, the RECAP officers had to bring
extra resources to bear on behalf of the victim (including direct confrontation with the abuser) to resolve the situation (Buerger, 1992, pp. 153-155,
166-171, 174-176). Some cases proved resistant, including a handful that
were pathological in nature, involving frequent episodes of extreme, felonylevel violence (Buerger, 1992, pp. 145, 211-212).
The most frequent reason for resistance was the victims assertion that I
can handle my own life, essentially a denial of the officers authority to
intervene. Unlike the original incident where the participants conduct provides legitimation for police intervention, attempts at long-term mediation
required the officers to establish their authority to intervene. At the scene,
the power of arrest looms large enough to compel at least token submission
to police authority. In follow-up attempts (with no immediate probable
cause, the statutory after-the-event time period elapsed, and the possibility
of arrest almost nil), participants feel bold enough to deny police authority.
Over time, this proved frustrating to RECAP officers, who were unsure of
how to overcome the obstacle. Whether a CPO or a more consistently present beat officer could have brought about a different outcome is a matter of
speculation.
One CPOP officer, working the precincts wealthiest beat (with correspondingly mundane, noncriminal problems), was drawn into a dispute
between a single mother and her 12-year-old son. Although no situation was
serious enough to warrant arrest by responding patrol units, neighbors were

136

POLICE QUARTERLY (Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1999)

disturbed by the noise from the apartment when the disputes arose. The
mother suspected the boy was using crack cocaine, a charge the boy denied
until police found crack vials on his person when he was arrested as a
runaway.
This normally would have been the end of the officers involvement with
the case, but the CPO periodically checked with the mother, who expressed
frustration about being unable to place her son in an appropriate drug rehabilitation program. No local facilities or programs could accept him for
months. Drawing on contacts he had built over the years, the officer contacted upstate rehabilitation centers and soon placed the youngster in a
treatment program out of the city.
Although the overall resolution of the problem rested on the efficacy of
the boys treatment program and his personal response to it, this was a situation that could easily have fallen through the cracks of traditional system
responses. The CPO was intervening in a potentially tragic situation and
was mobilizing resources that were beyond the capacity of the participants
to mobilize.

LANDLORD-TENANT DISPUTES
Traditional police practice basically ignored disputes between landlord
and tenant, except when disputes boiled over into public conflict. Disputes
over payment of rent and upkeep of facilities are governed by civil law, and
in most jurisdictions, there were many institutional alternatives to police
mediation, including housing courts, tenant advocacy groups, landlord
organizations, and so forth. When police intervened in a landlord-tenant
conflict, it was frequently under the guise of another activity, such as a complaint of assault, a report of burglary as a locked-out tenant tried to gain
access to his or her property, or some third-party report of a fight or disturbance. Intervention was limited to short-term mediation, separating the parties, reminding them of the civil law alternatives, and (if necessary) threatening to arrest one or the other party for breach of peace violations if the
conflict continued. Police did not intervene in the basic relationship
between the two contracting parties.
Community policing has brought with it a new dynamic of third-party
policing (Buerger & Mazerolle, 1998). Police seek to bolster the informal
social controls of the community by policing through third parties, including expectations that landlords use written leases and enforce house rules
for tenant conduct. This creates a new burden on the business of seeking

Buerger et al. / EXTENDING THE POLICE ROLE

137

profit by renting living space, especially for absentee owners of inner-city

properties. In some cases, police use the coercive threat of regulatory
inspections against landlords to create a powerful new threatthat of civil
evictionagainst tenants who create problems for the police (especially
through drug trafficking) but who manage to evade sanction under the criminal law.
Although described here in the most cursory form, third-party policing is
far more complex than traditional policing and less under the direct control
of the police themselves. To achieve their goals in an area formally governed by civil law, police must participate in a variety of negotiated arrangements in which command, control, and coercion have no place. Instead of
dealing with individuals on the fringes of society or in personal crisis, police
officers must meet with established businesspersons and pillars of the community (suits, in police parlance) on the latters home turf.
One problem in which RECAP served an intermediary role was that of
mixed populations in formerly senior-citizens-only high-rises run by the
Minneapolis Community Development Agency (MCDA), the public housing corporation/trust. The Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD) provided major capital financing for the high-rises and, on the basis
of that relationship, demanded that a declining occupancy rate be halted,
under threat of termination of funding. MCDA administrators responded to
that mandate by housing disabled citizens in the senior citizens high-rises
under a perceived doctrine of equal access without regard to age, derived
from a series of court decisions in other jurisdictions. Under ordinary conditions, disability would seem to be a proper criterion of eligibility for public
housing. Unfortunately, the operational definition of the disabled included
both mental illness and alcoholism. The result was that senior citizens suddenly found themselves cheek by jowl with increasing numbers of younger
persons, some physically disabled but others physically strong and disabled
only by dint of their being in thrall to the grape. Still others were physically
healthy but mentally impaired, occasionally given to bizarre behavior that
was threatening to the seniors, with their diminished capacity to defend
themselves if attacked and their greater vulnerability to injury.
Citing those conditions, RECAP first attempted to persuade the MCDA
administration to repeal its decision and separate public housing clients by
age. The MCDA responded by saying that separate was a synonym for segregate, repugnant to the law regardless of its admittedly unfortunate consequences, and they declined to change the policy. Tenant organizations had
no power, and there seemed to be little recourse. RECAP documented the

138

POLICE QUARTERLY (Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1999)

problems and rising concerns of the elderly tenants and pushed behind the
scenes. They even attempted (unsuccessfully) to meet with HUD officials in
Washington.
Ultimately, it was a change of administrations in the MCDA that brought
about a solution. A new director, willing to risk the lawsuits anticipated with
the separation of the age groups, reestablished seniors-only buildings on a
voluntary basis. The RECAP unit supported the effort with publicity, framing the justification for the move both in terms of increased disorder at the
mixed-population buildings (as evidenced in the 911 calls for police service) and increased fear of crime on the part of the seniors.

CONFLICTS AMONG RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORS

Adults in a middle-class four-block CPOP community were agitated by
large groups of teenagers playing street hockey late into the night. When
confronted about the noise they were making, the hockey players remonstrated with the homeowners and conflict ensued, prompting calls to the
police. Motorized officers would break up the game and disperse the players, only to have it resume later or the next night. Homeowners began calling
the precinct commander to complain about the problem and the ineffectiveness of the police response.
When the CPO first attempted to persuade the youngsters to play somewhere else, they replied that there was no place else to go. The CPO then
arranged for a town meeting to mediate the dispute. Both sides were given a
chance to air their requests, with negotiations monitored by a political
leader of the community, and a solution agreeable to both sides was hammered out. The schoolyard was opened for evening hockey games, and the
keys to the schoolyard gate were kept by the parents, who monitored the
school to ensure that no vandalism took place (thus alleviating the school
administrators major concern over the use of the facility). No more games
were held on the public streets, the late night noise abated, and calls to the
precinct commander ceased.
A different solution to a comparable problem was pursued by two CPOP
officers with adjacent, similar beats in residential areas of White middleclass homeowners, with a small, dense shopping area. Narcotics were not
yet a problem in either beat, but other incivilities of urban life were frequent
sources of complaints by residents. Older residents were especially
annoyed by youngsters who congregated on street corners, playing radios or
engaging in loud horseplay. Area merchants were upset that the teenagers

Buerger et al. / EXTENDING THE POLICE ROLE

139

were hanging out in front of their stores and demanded that the youths be
chased away. The CPOs spent an inordinate amount of time asking children
to move off the corners or streets or to turn the radios down.
After several encounters, the CPOs inquired why the juveniles (most of
whom were 12 years old or younger) were hanging out so often after school.
The children complained that there were no recreational facilities for them:
Schools were locked up, playgrounds were inaccessible, and streets were
too busy with traffic. Their families could not afford the initiation fee for the
areas organized leagues, which cost up to $75 per child per year, not including equipment costs. As an alternative, the CPOs organized weekly softball
games; enough youths signed up to form a four-team league. A local merchant volunteered to pay insurance costs for the league, and a local youth
agency let the CPOs borrow their softball equipment. Kids who had hung
out on the street became absorbed with softball practice and league games.
When cold weather made softball impractical, the CPOs organized a flag
football league to provide a recreational outlet for the youngsters throughout the year.
Realistically, the CPOs could devote only 1 day per week to the league,
which left 6 other days when the kids had no other outlet but to hang out in
their usual haunts. A few of the Rapid Motor Patrol (RMP) officers ridiculed
the CPOs for not doing real police work, and one community leader argued
that the officers should be on patrol rather than shepherding the league. Nevertheless, the athletic leagues helped to lessen the number of calls to the precinct, provided some relief to elderly residents, and became an excellent
distraction for bored children in a limited environment.

MEDIATING DISPUTES BETWEEN NEIGHBORHOOD

RESIDENTS AND LOCATIONS
In a handful of cases (Buerger, 1992, pp. 91-94, 103-109, 110-114,
334-337), RECAP officers essentially mediated between residential shelter
facilities and incensed neighbors who objected to the behavior of the facilities residents and guests. The threat of license revocation was always in the
background, which was the civil-law equivalent of arrest power. Paradoxically, RECAP officers were frequently advocates for the shelter facilities,
negotiating changes in operating procedures in exchange for support
against attempts to shut the facilities down.
As a true third party, RECAP represented increased police presence and
attention, which was sufficient to allay the neighbors feelings of neglect.

140

POLICE QUARTERLY (Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1999)

RECAP intervention created a brief hiatus of confrontation, a space in

which realistic steps could be taken to address the specific security and
order concerns of the neighbors rather than the amorphous symbolic threat
that problem addresses sometimes become. Although the symbolic issues
were reduced to manageable proportions, in each case, some specific issue
eluded resolution.
A mental health halfway house in a quiet residential neighborhood was a
source of concern for the neighbors because of prior rapes committed by
residents of the facility. The facility staff was also concerned as much of the
residents violent behavior was directed at them (including one rape), and
they were frustrated by the failure of the criminal justice community to hold
the residents to account for their acts. Staff wanted residents held accountable to the criminal law for their violent behavior, but they had been stymied
by the legal systems blanket application of a diminished-capacity dispensation. The RECAP officer acted as an intermediary, presenting to the city
attorneys office the staffs evidence for a policy change (a report from
an institutional psychologist who had secretly videotaped patients talking
with each other about how they had successfully manipulated their illness
to avoid being held accountable for intentional misdeeds) and working
through the Mental Health Roundtable advisory group to try to sway the
Hennepin County Court.
Ultimately, the endeavor failed. Although the city attorneys office
agreed to bring some flagrant cases forward, the Hennepin County bench
apparently preferred not to take on the burden of having to make decisions
in such a gray area. Unwilling to impose any normal sentence if there was
a mental health alternative available, even (perhaps especially) if the violation took place within the mental health system, they refused to go along
with the innovation (Buerger, 1992, pp. 75-77).

MEDIATION WITH REGULATING AGENCIES

One of the RECAP addresses was a small bar on the north side. Although
not a major consumer of police resources, it had a disproportionate share of
fight calls and other nonnoise disturbances. Discussions with the staff and
plainclothes observation of some typical nights revealed lax managerial
practices, but the owner was cooperative and personally interested in making the job of running the bar easier. She took the RECAP officers suggestions, and calls to the bar began to drop (her efforts were bolstered by

Buerger et al. / EXTENDING THE POLICE ROLE

141

individual consultation between the officer and some long-standing patrons

who were slow to understand that the rules had changed).
However, a reputation as a problem bar had already been established, and
when RECAP closed down two other extremely troubled bars through
harsher measures (Buerger, 1992, pp. 1-6, 133-139), other community leaders jumped on the bandwagon with their pet peeves. The council member
representing that ward asked for a precinct-based initiative similar to
RECAP. The bar owner was faced with a new series of threats of sanction
despite having cooperated with RECAP and despite the improved conditions of the recent history. She appealed to the RECAP officer, who had to
appeal to the council members office on behalf of the owner to preserve the
gains already made.
In another RECAP case, an officer made contact with the owner of an
apartment building in a state of change. The man had sold the building to a
partnership after owning it for several years but had just gotten the building
back when the partnership defaulted on the contract (Buerger, 1992, pp.
232-236). The interim owners had milked the property as a cash cow, taking
all the rental income as profit and allowing the physical plant to deteriorate.
When the property reverted to the prior owner, it was in worse physical
shape than when he sold it, inhabited by a more trouble-prone population,
and the subject of a stack of expensive repair orders from the city housing
inspector. Because the owner was making a good-faith effort to improve the
property, the RECAP officer appealed to both the district housing inspector
and the Office of Housing Inspections, securing a grace period for the owner
to structure the finances needed for the extensive improvement effort. The
alternative course would have meant the closure of the building for failing to
respond to the repair orders, with the subsequent loss of rent revenues for
the owner and the probable abandonment of the property as a financial
albatross.

CHANGES WROUGHT BY LONGER INTERACTIONS

According to the tenets of both community- and problem-oriented policing, police are charged with improving conditions and controlling conduct.
Structurally, their deployment should provide a longer term relationship
with all stakeholders, including the complainants, those complained about,
and those with only a generic interest. One putative benefit of extended
interaction is the ability to gather more information over time than is usually

142

POLICE QUARTERLY (Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1999)

available at the scene of an incident. Knowledge of the participants interests and motivations enable a community-oriented officer to read the situation better than the more isolated, reactive patrol officer can. Knowledge of
the officers personality and integrity may give participants greater trust in
the solutions proposed by the officer.
The traditional police role is coercive, and the history of policing demonstrates that there are clear limits on the effectiveness of coercion alone. Particularly in low-level disorder cases, the winning party in a coercive intervention is very often not the people involved in the dispute but the more
nebulous entity of the public, whose attenuated interest in the public peace
is preserved at the expense of the disputing parties (Reiss, 1971). Police can
quell conflict with overwhelming coercive force, but that approach has two
negative consequences: it leaves the original source of the conflict intact
(although not all such conflicts survive the eventual sobriety of the participants), and it often transfers or engenders anger toward the police. The new
community-oriented police role does not forsake coercion but regards it as
one tool among many. Using persuasion may allow an officer to find better
solutions for situations that coercion resolves only temporarily; it may lead
to solutions for problems that coercion has been unable to resolve at all.
The key to community-oriented policings success is the greater personalization of police-citizen interactions. All the players, including the temporary mediator (the police officer), are known in dimensions of their lives
that transcend the immediate friction that brings them together. Rather than
resort to the larger polity of the public peace, officers craft solutions tailored
to the legitimate needs of the principals to the dispute, hopefully leaving
everyone with enough investment in the solution to be satisfied.
Not every police intervention inevitably leads to a happy conclusion, and
there are still some areas of concern for long-term officer involvement. The
community policing literature tends to be upbeat, celebrating success in an
attempt to generate optimism and to convince both reluctant citizens and
resistant police officers to commit themselves to the new partnership. The
literature does not dwell on the intractable, insoluble problems that bedevil
officers of all stripe, but such situations certainly exist.
Negative outcomes are also known in traditional policing, of course (e.g.,
Mannings [1997] discussion of uncertainty and Muir [1977] passim), but
as the oriented policing styles systematically push the horizons of police
interactions in a democratic society, the potential for new variations grows
exponentially. Aside from the ever-present danger of corruption, there are
several potential dangers to extending the problem-solving role.

Buerger et al. / EXTENDING THE POLICE ROLE

143

POTENTIAL PROBLEMS
Burnout. Most of the glowing reports about the new community-oriented
role draw upon relatively short periods of time, during which a halo effect
descends over the activities of a new program. Increased interaction with
people can be a wearing experience, however, particularly after the easy
victories have been accomplished and the difficult and intractable cases
remain. Like social and medical workers, police officers can become burned
out from overexposure to an intense array of human needs. Police departments have learned how to assist officers involved in traumatic incidents,
but the infrastructure for supporting officers through the frustration of
intensive long-term situations does not yet exist. Burnout can also occur
when promising solutions fail because of lack of resources or because the
lip-service commitment of others is not realized. The police literature contains a growing number of references to this burnout phenomenon (Buerger,
1993a, 1993b; Guyot, 1991; Schwartz & Clarren, 1977 ), and it is a plausible negative consequence for the new role.
Tunnel vision. One potential pitfall of both problem- and communityoriented policing strategies is a failure to see other alternatives. This is particularly true in situations where one of the disputants withholds information vital to the resolution effort, manipulating disclosure in an attempt to
use the officers authority to sway the resolution of the matter in the disputants favor (Buerger, 1993b). In similar fashion, tunnel vision may affect an
officers definition of the problem itself, blinding him or her to information
sources that might lead to a rediagnosis of the problem and perhaps to new
approaches to problem resolution. As in incident-based policing, positive
supervision can help overcome tunnel vision; in long-term situations, there
is greater likelihood that such oversight will be brought to bear.
Personalization. Becoming an interested party to the dispute can be
deadly to its resolution because it introduces an extraneous variableoften
the officers egointo the process. In reactive policing, this usually takes
the form of one of the primary participants failing to show proper deference
to the officer, committing the informal felony of contempt of cop. The literature is fairly silent on longer term variations, although the authors direct
observations suggest that in a nonreactive assignment, personalization of an
issue leads as much to avoidance as to confrontation (Buerger, 1993b). This
is particularly true when dealing with third parties, nominal respectables,

144

POLICE QUARTERLY (Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1999)

against whom the usual coercive measures cannot be employed and who
have at their disposal an array of political resources that may be brought to
bear against the police as a countermeasure. In addition, more aggressive
personalization might certainly lead to abuses of authority associated with
short-term reactive contacts, resulting in a diminishing of the officers informal authority in the community at large.
Overidentification. Inordinate empathy with one or another party to a
dispute, for positive as well as negative reasons, may diminish an officers
effectiveness by creating a specific kind of tunnel vision. Effectiveness in
long-term problem solving is dependent on all parties recognizing the officers balanced judgment and his or her authority. For instance, had the
CPOP officer refused to apply needed coercion against the addicted teen agers acting-out behavior, based on a recognition of the need for drug treatment to correct the underlying problem, it could have undermined the officer in the eyes of the community bearing the brunt of the boys predation.
During RECAP, officers initially tended to overidentify with landlords
descriptions of their difficulties, which were couched in personal terms that
evoked sympathy of officers who were defining their work as supportive.
When the unit commander pointed out that landlords were engaged in a
profit-driven, corporate business that in many cases was distinct from their
personal financial situations, the officers realized the difference and took on
a tougher stance toward uncooperative landlords and slumlords (Buerger,
1993b).
Overcommitment. Overcommitting to a problem and not seeing that it is a
no-win situation can cripple officer effectiveness. This condition can arise
as an outgrowth of personalization, but it may also stem from an intense
desire to right a conspicuous and offensive wrong. The rule of law and the
dictates of municipal finances throw different but equally forbidding obstacles in the way of promising solutions. Even when the resources are available, human nature often leads to well-laid plans going astray. It is possible
for officers to become bogged down in no-win situations, turning them into
grudge matches, even when there are no resources and no clear ideas about
how to go about correcting the problem.
Unintended consequences. Taking on new challenges with a can-do attitude enjoys great cachet in the mythology of American achievement, but
such endeavors also run the risk of discovering new pitfalls. Problem-

Buerger et al. / EXTENDING THE POLICE ROLE

145

oriented policing, with its emphasis on developing new and better sources
of information about problems, is particularly vulnerable to backlash on
this score. Difficulties may result from faulty analysis if officers pursue
intuitively logical solutions to problems they erroneously or incompletely
understand. Law enforcement solutions may backfire when applied to problems that are essentially social in nature and vice versa. When working in
ethnically diverse communities, the need to do something about a particular
problem may outstrip the natural learning curve about cultural frameworks,
thus well-intentioned efforts either miss the mark or cause inadvertent
offense. Officers may be deceived by the climate of community support and
engage in activities that offend community sensibilities. A corollary danger
is that community support will embolden officers to pursue unlawful tactics
in pursuit of a desirable goal (Klockars, 1991; Sutton, 1991). Overuse of
marginal or controversial tactics may lead to a backlash that creates a legal
ban on the tactics.

DISCUSSION
The problems outlined above mostly occur at the level of the individual
officer(s) involved, but they have ramifications for the entire organization.
Because the police essentially began expanding their role in haphazard
fashion in an effort to contribute ex nihilo some substantive definition to the
philosophy of community policing, little forethought and practically no
systematic evaluation of the consequences has yet been undertaken. At the
present time, evaluating the effectiveness of problem-solving efforts is
almost exclusively anecdotal in nature, based largely on short-term results.
The elements that identify situations amenable to successful intervention
have not yet been determined, nor have the elements of adequate and inadequate performance for officers (both in terms of attempts and outcomes).
Police have not yet determined how to distinguish no-win situations or
develop ways to successfully disengage from them. The opportunities for
meaningful interventions are not equally distributed, nor are the difficulties
of identified problems. Both can affect the nature of performance evaluations. All of these elements still need to be developed, lest overreach lead to
the failure of unrealistic expectations and the abandonment of a promising
new tool for policing.
Training in problem-oriented policing has tended to revolve around the
dissemination of anecdotes and case studies, assuming (or hoping) that the
lessons gleaned are both certain and generalizable. It is not yet clear that the

146

POLICE QUARTERLY (Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1999)

anecdotal examples are comprehensive or present all the information necessary for understanding the full dynamics of the situation. It is also not clear
that the analysis of the situations (usually done by the case officers, especially those published in the practitioner literature) is comprehensive or
unbiased. Much more work is needed to consolidate the published canon of
problem-solving case studies for the purposes of study and further analysis.
Police organizations need to establish clear guidelines for target selection, and bolster them with mechanisms for midcourse evaluation of resistant problems. More importantly, mechanisms for disengaging from intractable problems must be established. Supervisory training is needed to help
supervisors and managers build on formal training curricula, adapting
classroom lessons to conditions on the street and in the community. In addition, supervisors and managers need training in how to intervene in situations where roadblocks lead to the development of burnout, personalization,
tunnel vision, or overcommitment. The consequences of not doing so can be
severe, both for officers and for the agency, which is politically vulnerable
to any backlash over mistakes.
Extending the police role is a natural and desirable consequence of community- and problem-oriented endeavors. It has the potential to increase the
versatility and effectiveness of the police establishment and to enhance
career satisfaction for individual officers. To reach its full potential and
avoid the possible snares and travails outlined above, the police must recognize the full range of possibilities (not just the public relations slogans) and
begin the task of establishing and supporting the expanded nature of police
work. Police must guard against uncritical adoption of new techniques or
solutions based only on the optimistic projections of how they ought to
work. Careful planning and the ability to discern or project the ramifications
of new tactics will be needed to guide the police in the uncharted waters of
their extended role.

REFERENCES
Bard, M. (1970). Training police as specialists in family crisis intervention. Washington,
DC: Department of Justice.
Bard, M., & Zacker, J. (1976). How police handle explosive squabbles. New techniques let
police settle arguments without force. Psychology Today, 10, 15-21.
Bittner, E. (1970). The functions of the police in modern society: A review of background factors, current practices, and possible role models. Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Buerger et al. / EXTENDING THE POLICE ROLE

147

Bittner, E. (1985). In C. Klockars (Ed.), Law and Criminal Justice Series: Vol. 3. The idea of
police.Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Black, D. (1991). The social organization of arrest: Citizen discretion. In C. Klockars & S.
Mastrofski (Eds.), Thinking about police: Contemporary readings (pp. 334-352). New
York: McGraw-Hill.
Buerger, M. E. (1992). The crime prevention casebook: Securing high-crime locations.
Washington, DC: Crime Control Institute.
Buerger, M. E. (1993a). The challenge of reinventing police and community. In D. Weisburd &
C. Uchida (Eds.), Police innovation and control of the police: Problems of law, order, and
community (pp. 103-124). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Buerger, M. E. (1993b). Convincing the recalcitrant: Reexamining the Minneapolis RECAP
experiment. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms.
Buerger, M. E., & Mazerolle, L. G. (1998). Third-party policing: A theoretical analysis of an
emerging trend. Justice Quarterly, 15(2), 301-327.
Cordner, G. (1985). The Baltimore County Citizen Oriented Police Enforcement (COPE)
Project. Final Evaluation. New York: Florence V. Burden Foundation.
Cumming, E., Cumming, I., & Edell, L. (1965). Policeman as philosopher, guide and friend.
Social Problems, 12, 276-286.
Farrell, M. J. (1984). The community patrol officer program. (Interim Progress Report No.
1.). New York: Vera Institute of Justice.
Farrell, M. J. (1986). The community patrol officer program. (Interim Progress Report No.
2). New York: Vera Institute of Justice.
Goldstein, H. (1977). Policing a free society. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.
Goldstein, H. (1990). Problem-oriented policing. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Greene, J. R., & Mastrofski, S. D. (Eds.) (1988). Community policing: Rhetoric or reality?
New York: Praeger.
Guyot, D. (1991). Policing as though people matter. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Kelling, G. L. (1978). Police field services and crime: The presumed effects of a capacity.
Crime & Delinquency, 2, 173-184.
Klockars, C. (1991). (Eds.). (1991). Thinking about police: Contemporary readings (2nd
ed., pp. 424-432). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Klockars, C. B., & Mastrofski, S. D. (Eds.). (1991). Thinking about police: Contemporary
readings (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Manning, P. K. (1997). Police work: The social organization of policing (2nd ed.). Prospect
Heights, IL: Waveland.
McElroy, J. E., Cosgrove, C. A., & Sadd, S. (1990). CPOP: The research. An evaluative study
of the New York City community patrol officer programs. New York: Vera Institute of Justice.
Muir, W., Jr. (1977). Police: Streetcorner politicians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reiss, A. J. (1971). The police and the public. New Haven, CT: Yale.
Rosenbaum, D. P. (Ed.). (1994). The challenge of community policing: Testing the promises.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Schwartz, A. I., & Clarren, S. N. (1977). The Cincinnati Team Policing Experiment: A summary report. Washington, DC: Police Foundation.
Sherman, L. W. (1987). Repeat calls to police in Minneapolis. Washington, DC: Crime Control Institute.

148

POLICE QUARTERLY (Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1999)

Sherman, L. W., Buerger, M. E., Gartin, P. R., Emerson, A., Niebur, A., Goodmanson, D.,
Martens, D., Revor, S., Rumpza, D., Delle Erba, R., & Doi, D. (1988). Policing repeat
calls: The Minneapolis RECAP Experiment (Preliminary Report to the National Institute
of Justice). Washington, DC: Crime Control Institute.
Sherman, L. W., Buerger, M. E., Gartin, P. R., Emerson, A., Niebur, A., Goodmanson, D.,
Martens, D., Revor, S., Rumpza, D., Delle Erba, R., & Doi, D.. (1989). Repeat call
address policing: The Minneapolis RECAP Experiment (Final Report to the National
Institute of Justice). Washington, DC: Crime Control Institute.
Sherman, L. W., Gartin, P. R., & Buerger, M. E. (1989). Hot spots of predatory crime: Routine activities and the criminology of place. Criminology, 27(1), 27-55.Skolnick, J.H., &
Bayley, D. H. (1986). The new blue line. New York: Free Press.
Skolnick, J.H., & Bayley, D. H. (1986). The new blue line. New York: Free Press.
Smith, D. A., & Klein, J. R. (1984). Police control of interpersonal disputes. Social Problems, 31(4), 468-481.
Sparrow, M. K., Moore, M. H., & Kennedy, D. M. (1990). Beyond 911: A new era for policing. New York: Basic Books.
Spelman, W., & Eck, J. (1987). Problem-oriented policing. N.I.J. Research In Brief. Washington, DC: Department of Justice.
Sutton, L. P. (1991). Getting around the fourth amendment. In C. B. Klockars & S. D.
Mastrofski (Eds.), Thinking about police: Contemporary readings (2nd ed., pp. 433446). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Trojanowicz, R., & Bucqueroux, B. (1990). Community policing: A contemporary perspective. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson.
Trojanowicz, R., Pollard, B., Colgan, F., & Harden, H. (1986). Community policing programs: A twenty year view. East Lansing: Michigan State University.
Websters New World Unabridged Dictionary. (1979). Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.
Weisburd, D., & McElroy, J. E. (1988). Enacting the CPO role: Some findings from the New
York City Pilot Program in community policing. In J. Green & S. Mastrofski (Eds.),
Community policing: Rhetoric or reality? (pp. 89-101). New York: Praeger.
Wilson, J. Q., & Kelling, G. L. (1982, March). Broken windows: The police and neighborhood safety. The Atlantic Monthly, 29-38.

Michael E. Buerger is an associate professor at Northeastern Universitys

College of Criminal Justice in Boston, Massachusetts. After 9 years as a
municipal police officer in New Hampshire, he has been a police researcher
in a variety of settings, most recently serving as research director for the Jersey City, New Jersey, Police Department. His current interests are problemand community-oriented policing initiatives, their impact on police management structures, and the resistance of police culture to reform.
Anthony Petrosino is research fellow at the Center for Evaluation at the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, within its Initiatives for Children
Program. He is also research associate at the Harvard Graduate School of

Buerger et al. / EXTENDING THE POLICE ROLE

149

Education, and coordinator for the Campbell Crime and Justice Group, an
international network of individuals who will prepare systematic reviews of
high-quality research on what works in criminal justice.
Carolyn Petrosino is associate professor of sociology and anthropology at
Bridgewater State College, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. She received a
Bachelors of Science from Howard University, Washington, DC; a Masters
in social work from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey; and a
Ph.D. in criminal justice from Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey. She
has conducted research and has published several articles on the practices
and policies of parole decision making, evaluation research of community
policing programs, police subculture and intra-agency communication patterns, and perceptions of police subculture among minority officers. She is
currently involved with examining recruitment initiatives of hate groups in
America and is presently editing a volume on the harm of hate crime for the
Journal of Social Issues.