Community-oriented policing: Testing the actual faithfulness of implementation by the police and their perceptions of its reduction in social disorganization

Police department attitudes and behaviors associated with faithfully implementing community policing may determine its success for combating social disorganization. The literature review presents a background for understanding community policing and its link to the theory of social disorganization. It is hypothesized that supportive attitudes toward community policing will produce behaviors consistent with its application that may help in combating the disadvantages of social disorganization. Secondhand public data of a two-part community policing survey is used to test each hypothesis. Analysis procedures used for this test consist of reliability comparisons, bivariate correlation and finally OLS regression. The results of this thesis indicate a promising causal relationship between supportive attitudes playing a role in shaping behaviors consistent with the performance of community policing techniques. The results also reveal that police agencies that have supportive attitudes toward community oriented policing also perceive that it can have a positive impact in combating social disorganization.