Crafting Charismatic Cops: Reputation and Community Policing

• In Event: 4344 - Collective Memory

Abstract

Community policing has grown in popularity since the 1980s, serving a broad array of needs and interests. Yet few studies have theorized the role of these programs as strategies to manage the strained reputations of police in the context of highly publicized acts of officer misconduct that reduce trust in police. In this paper, I examine the role of reputations within a community policing project. Data is derived from 53 interviews and a multi-year ethnography that followed the development and implementation of a new community policing initiative in a large midwestern city. I discuss the role of reputation management strategies in formulating the concerns and knowledge practices within community policing strategies. The results demonstrate the centrality of reputation in the theory and knowledge practices involved in coproducing policing.

Author

• Wayne Clifford Rivera-Cuadrado, Northwestern University