Scripted Policing and Community Relations

• In Event: 3551 - Urban Politics and Violence

Abstract

Since its establishment in 1993, the Department of Justice’s Office of Community-Oriented Policing Services has invested $14 billion into local police departments’ efforts to improve community relations. Yet in 2015, the public’s confidence in police reached its lowest point since 1993. Drawing on six years of Chicago Police Board meeting transcripts, this paper identifies one mechanism for why, despite police investment, community relations can fail to improve. While community meetings where residents present complaints are envisioned as enhancing citizen voice, both police and residents repeated identifiable scripts—defined as stylized narratives based on generalized knowledge from typical events—that reflected contrasting conceptualizations of community issues. Specifically, these scripts reveal how police and residents differentially conceptualize measurement, proximate responsibility, and root causes of community issues. These scripts thus offer theoretical and policy insights into (a) why greater citizen participation can fail to achieve greater influence; (b) how citizen conduct can shape the decision-making of street-level bureaucrats; and (c) why non-legal cynics who seek police services can nonetheless fail to receive them. Without examining “how” community initiatives are implemented, new programs risk becoming more perfunctory and productive.

Author

• Tony Cheng, Yale University