Philosophy into practice? Community policing units and domestic violence victim participation

Much research has focused on the police response to domestic violence; howe ver, relatively little research has considered performance differences of v arious types of police officers. Although there has been widespread adoptio n of community policing by police departments across the country, if is not conclusive as to wthether units with a specific community policing philoso phy perform better than traditional units when handling domestic violence c alls. The current study addresses this issue by analyzing the factors assoc iated with victim participation, specifically, do officers and detectives o perating under a specific community policing mandate produce higher rates o f victim participation.? Bivariate and multivariate analyses indicate that victim participation rates did not differ by a community policing orientati on; rather situational factors exert the strongest effect on victim partici pation.