preview

Kansas City Police Patrol

Decent Essays

Prior to the 1970’s, law enforcement agencies were completely unaware of how effective their methods of policing and patrolling truly were, if they were even effective at all. After questioning the efficiency of their methods for so long, the Kansas City Police Department decided to conduct an experiment on preventative patrol. This experiment focused on four main questions-- would the public notice, would visible police affect crime, would the citizens’ fear of crime diminish, and would police satisfaction change. Although preventative patrol has the aspects of a powerful policing method, this landmark experiment may have produced some interesting and thought provoking results on the topic.

To be able to effectively prevent future crime, …show more content…

The first question focused on the public. The police department wanted to see if the public would notice the change in the number of patrol officers. This was important because another key question the experiment was focused around was if the citizens in the corresponding areas felt safer in cities where crime heavily patrolled by officers. To answer these questions, the Kansas City Police Department sent out community wide surveys before and after the experiment occurred. Oddly enough, upon completion of their experiment, the Kansas City Police Department found that citizens did not notice the difference when the level of patrol was changed and the public, as a general whole, did not appear to have an increase in their sense of safety even in areas where patrol was heavily augmented. Accordingly, police satisfaction was not greatly altered either. This was mainly due to the fact that citizens did not notice the change in the amount of patrol officers. Because of this impalpable change, citizens in these areas were unaffected and many of them believed the police were engaging in their normal preventative patrol

Get Access