Police Leaders in the New Community Problem-Solving Era

After 40 years of research championing the police profession's move into the Community Problem-Solving era, there are police practitioners and scholars who argue that the police profession has entered a new, intelligence-led, anti-terrorism era. Police Leaders in the New Community Problem-Solving Era demonstrates that these innovations are simply ways of more finely applying the elements of a community problem-solving strategy within a technologically savvy, post-9/11, and economically downgraded United States.

This book chronicles what are arguably some of the nation's most capable police executives as they assist in moving their police departments into this New Community Problem-Solving Era. Given unprecedented access to the Boston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Newark (NJ) police departments, the cases are built using observations of police activities, in-depth interviews, surveys, and archival reviews. The reader will see how, rather than moving into a distinct era, even the most progressive police executives within rather forward-thinking settings are still on the road to fully realizing the community-based, crime and disorder reduction, and quality-of-life enhancing function of the police.

The authors illuminate the undeniable role that police executives can play in bringing their departments into the New Community Problem-Solving era and discuss the facilitators and inhibitors that will undoubtedly influence the police profession's move in this new era. Students of policing as well as practitioners from varied policing backgrounds will find this book relatable, easy to understand, and relevant to many areas of police research and practice.
George L. Kelling--famous for his broken windows theory of policing--is author of the book's foreword.