Highly popular with both the public and political leaders, community policing is the most important development in law enforcement in the last twenty-five years. But does community policing really work? Can police departments fundamentally change their organization? Can neighborhood problems be solved? In the early 1990s, Chicago, the nation's third largest city, instituted the nation's largest community policing initiative. Wesley G. Skogan here provides the first comprehensive evaluation of that citywide program, examining its impact on crime, neighborhood residents, and the police. Based on the results of a thirteen-year study, including interviews, citywide surveys, and sophisticated statistical analyses, Police and Community in Chicago reveals a city divided among African-Americans, Whites, and Latinos. By looking at the varying effects community policing had on each of these groups, Skogan provides a valuable analysis of what works and why. As the use of community policing increases and issues related to race and immigration become more pressing, Police and Community in Chicago will serve the needs of an increasing amount of students, scholars, and professionals interested in the most effective and harmonious means of keeping communities safe.

Implementing key features of Chicago's program -- CAPS' impact on neighborhood life -- Remaining challenges -- Suggested reading -- Notes.

In July 1919, an explosive race riot forever changed Chicago. For years, black southerners had been leaving the South as part of the Great Migration. Their arrival in Chicago drew the ire and scorn of many local whites, including members of the city's political leadership and police department, who generally sympathized with white Chicagoans and viewed black migrants as a problem population. During Chicago's Red Summer riot, patterns of extraordinary brutality, negligence, and discriminatory policing emerged to shocking effect. Those patterns shifted in subsequent decades, but the overall realities of a racially discriminatory police system persisted. In this history of Chicago from 1919 to the rise and fall of Black Power in the 1960s and 1970s, Simon Balto narrates the evolution of racially repressive policing in black neighborhoods as well as how black citizen-activists challenged that repression. Balto demonstrates that punitive practices by and inadequate protection from the police were central to black Chicagoans' lives long before the late-century "wars" on crime and drugs. By exploring the deeper origins of this toxic system, Balto reveals how modern mass incarceration, built upon racialized police practices, emerged as a fully formed machine of profoundly antiblack subjugation.

Reveals the reasons why community policing rarely, if ever, works. Drawing on data he collected in diverse Seattle neighborhoods from interviews with residents, observation of police officers, and attendance at community-police meetings, Herbert identifies the many obstacles that make effective collaboration between city dwellers and the police so unlikely to succeed. At the same time, he shows that residents' pragmatic ideas about the role of community differ dramatically from those held by social theorists. - from publisher information.

Police departments across the country are busily "reinventing" themselves, adopting a new style known as "community policing". This approach to policing involves organizational decentralization, new channels of communication with the public, a commitment to responding to what the community thinks their priorities ought to be, and the adoption of a broad problem-solving approach to neighborhood issues. Police departments that succeed in adopting this new stance have an entirely different relationship to the public that they serve. Chicago made the transition, embarking on what is now the nation's largest and most impressive community policing program. This book, the first to examine such a project, looks in depth at all aspects of the program--why it was adopted, how it was adopted, and how well it has worked.

Gathering accurate data probably constitutes one of the most important aspects of crime investigation and prevention. How do we put the data to use? How can we improve our methods of handling the information we collect? By describing a project for the development and implementation of a computerized crime-mapping system in the Chicago area, this book makes a significant contribution toward a more efficient and intelligent use of crime data to understand and prevent crime in a community setting.

"The book also delves into how the Chicago Police Department battles gangs, guns, drugs, and murder; how Hillard exhibited leadership in good times and in bad times; how Hillard dealt with politicians, the community, cops on the street and the media; how the department handled difficult crimes and their investigations; and how Hillard led, what he learned in the process, and what he accomplished. The book also discusses contemporary police issues including police corruption and brutality, use of force by police, police pursuits, police shootings and deaths, community policing, police accountability, and the use of emerging technologies in the fight against crime."--BOOK JACKET.