The Role of Gender in Community Policing

• In Event: Posters I

Abstract

Since the inception of the community policing era in the 1970’s (Cole, Smith, and DeJong 2016), police organizations have been tasked with implementing femininity into the masculine culture and organization of the police. Research conducted by Susan L. Miller (1999) shows that both feminine and masculine characteristics of community police officers can and should work together to achieve the goals of community policing. So where are we 45 years later? In this qualitative, ethnographic research study of an upstart community policing unit in a Midwestern police department, I highlight the ways that gender structures the work of the community policing unit comprised of 7 officers and one supervisor. My findings highlight the ways that the community policing strategy is a hybrid of community (feminine) and traditional (masculine) policing, including how community policing is influenced by both structural and individual levels of gender. This research contributes to the literature in that it documents the beginning stages of a new community policing unit, as well as allows us to see how far community policing has come and yet where it needs to go.

Author

• Brittany Mavrich, Westminster College