LAW-ENFORCEMENT IN A TIME OF COMMUNITY POLICING

Community policing creates the expectation that officers will become m ore selective in making arrests and that those decisions will be influ enced more by extralegal considerations and less by legal ones. Data o n 452 nontraffic police-suspect encounters were drawn from ride-along observations in Richmond, Virginia, where the police department was im plementing community policing. The arrest/no arrest decision is regres sed on variables representing legal and extralegal characteristics of the situation. Legal variables show much stronger effects than extrale gal ones, but that depends upon the officer's attitude toward communit y policing. Supporters of community policing are, as predicted, more s elective in making arrests and much less influenced by legal variables than are officers with negative views. However, pro-community-policin g officers are like negative officers in the extent of influence exert ed by extralegal factors. There are some differences between the two g roups of officers on the strength and direction of effects of predicto r variables taken individually, but only 1 of 17 is significant. Thus, in a time of community policing, officers who support it do manifest some arrest decision patterns distinguishable from those of colleagues who adhere to a more traditional view of law enforcement.