The purpose of the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN) was to provide an in-depth description of how the police and the community interact with each other in a community policing (CP) environment. Research was conducted in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1996 and in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1997. Several research methods were employed: systematic observation of patrol officers (Parts 1-4) and patrol supervisors (Parts 5-14), in-person interviews with patrol officers (Part 15) and supervisors (Parts 16-17), and telephone surveys of residents in selected neighborhoods (Part 18). Field researchers accompanied their assigned patrol or supervising officer during all activities and encounters with the public during the shift. Field researchers noted when various activities and encounters with the public occurred during these "ride-alongs," who was involved, and what happened. In the resulting data files coded observation data are provided at the ride level, the activity level (actions that did not involve interactions with citizens), the encounter level (events in which officers interacted with citizens), and the citizen level. In addition to encounters with citizens, supervisors also engaged in encounters with patrol officers. Patrol officers and patrol supervisors in both Indianapolis and St. Petersburg were interviewed one-on-one in a private interviewing room during their regular work shifts. Citizens in the POPN study beats were randomly selected for telephone surveys to determine their views about problems in their neighborhoods and other community issues. Administrative records were used to create site identification data (Part 19) and data on staffing (Part 20). This data collection also includes data compiled from census records, aggregated to the beat level for each site (Part 21). Census data were also used to produce district populations for both sites (Part 22). Citizen data were aggregated to the encounter level to produce counts of various citizen role categories and characteristics and characteristics of the encounter between the patrol officer and citizens in the various encounters (Part 23). Ride-level data (Parts 1, 5, and 10) contain information about characteristics of the ride, including start and end times, officer identification, type of unit, and beat assignment. Activity data (Parts 2, 6, and 11) include type of activity, where and when the activity took place, who was present, and how the officer was notified. Encounter data (Parts 3, 7, and 12) contain descriptive information on encounters similar to the activity data (i.e., location, initiation of encounter). Citizen data (Parts 4, 8, and 13) provide citizen characteristics, citizen behavior, and police behavior toward citizens. Similarly, officer data from the supervisor observations (Parts 9 and 14) include characteristics of the supervising officer and the nature of the interaction between the officers. Both the patrol officer and supervisor interview data (Parts 15-17) include the officers' demographics, training and knowledge, experience, perceptions of their beats and organizational environment, and beliefs about the police role. The patrol officer data also provide the officers' perceptions of their supervisors while the supervisor data describe supervisors' perceptions of their subordinates, as well as their views about their roles, power, and priorities as supervisors. Data from surveyed citizens (Part 18) provide information about their neighborhoods, including years in the neighborhood, distance to various places in the neighborhood, neighborhood problems and effectiveness of police response to those problems, citizen knowledge of, or interactions with, the police, satisfaction with police services, and friends and relatives in the neighborhood. Citizen demographics and geographic and weight variables are also included. Site identification variables (Part 19) include ride and encounter numbers, site beat (site, district, and beat or

This study's purpose was twofold: to investigate the nature of police patrol work in a community policing context and to field-test data collection instruments designed for systematic social observation. The project, conducted in Richmond, Virginia, where its police department was in the third year of a five-year plan to implement community policing, was designed as a case study of one police department's experience with community policing, focusing on officers in the patrol division. A team of eight researchers conducted observations with the police officers in the spring and summer of 1992. A total of 120 officers were observed during 125 observation sessions. Observers accompanied officers throughout their regular work shifts, taking brief field notes on officers' activities and encounters with the public. All of an observed officer's time during the shift was accounted for by either encounters or activities. Within 15 hours of the completion of the ridealong, the observer prepared a detailed narrative account of events that occurred during the ridealong and coded key items associated with these events. The study generated five nested quantitative datasets that can be linked by common variables. Part 1, Ridealong Data, provides information pertinent to the 125 observation sessions or "rides." Part 2, Activity Data, focuses on 5,576 activities conducted by officers when not engaged in encounters. Data in Part 3, Encounter Data, describe 1,098 encounters with citizens during the ridealongs. An encounter was defined as a communication between officers and citizens that took over one minute, involved more than three verbal exchanges between an officer and a citizen, or involved significant physical contact between the officer and citizen. Part 4, Citizen Data, provides data relevant to each of the 1,630 citizens engaged by police in the encounters. Some encounters involved more than one citizen. Part 5, Arrest Data, was constructed by merging Parts 1, 3, and 4, and provides information on 451 encounters that occurred during the ridealongs in which the citizen was suspected of some criminal mischief. All identification variables in this collection were created by the researchers for this project. Variables from Part 1 include date, start time, end time, unit, and beat assignment of the observation session, and the primary officer's and secondary officer's sex, race/ethnicity, years as an officer, months assigned to precinct and beat, hours of community policing training, and general orientation to community policing. Variables in Part 2 specify the time the activity began and ended, who initiated the activity, type, location, and visibility of the activity, involvement of the officer's supervisor during the activity, and if the activity involved problem-solving, or meeting with citizens or other community organizations. Part 3 variables include time encounter began and ended, who initiated the encounter, primary and secondary officer's energy level and mood before the encounter, problem as radioed by dispatcher, and problem as it appeared at the beginning of the encounter and at the end of the encounter. Information on the location of the encounter includes percent of time at initial location, visibility, officer's prior knowledge of the initial location, and if the officer anticipated violence at the scene. Additional variables focus on the presence of a supervisor, other police officers, service personnel, bystanders, and participants, if the officer filed or intended to file a report, if the officer engaged in problem-solving, and factors that influenced the officer's actions. Citizen information in Part 4 includes sex, age, and race/ethnicity of the citizen, role in the encounter, if the citizen appeared to be of low income, under the use of alcohol or drugs, or appeared to have a mental disorder or physical injury or illness, if the citizen was representing an establishment, if the citizen lived, worked, or owned property

To explore the idea of community policing and to get an understanding of citizens' policing needs, representatives from the Ada County Sheriff's Office and Boise State University formed a research partnership and conducted surveys of county residents and sheriff's deputies. The county-wide survey of residents (Part 1) was designed to enhance the sheriff's current community policing program and to assist in the deployment of community policing officers by measuring citizens' perceptions and fear of crime, perceptions of deputies, knowledge of sheriff's services, and support for community policing. Questions in the citizen survey focused on feelings of safety in Ada County, such as perception of drugs, gangs, safety of youth, and safety at night, satisfaction with the Sheriff's Office, including ratings of the friendliness and fairness of the department and how well deputies and citizens worked together, attitudes regarding community-oriented policing, such as whether this type of policing would be a good use of resources and would reduce crime, and neighborhood problems, including how problematic auto theft, vandalism, physical decay, and excessive noise were for citizens. Other questions were asked regarding the sheriff's deputy website, including whether citizens would like the site to post current crime reports, and whether the site should have more information about the jail. Respondents were also queried about their encounters with police, including their ratings of recent services they received for traffic violations, requests for service, and visits to the jail, and familiarity with several programs, such as the inmate substance abuse program and the employee robbery prevention program. Demographic variables in the citizen survey include ethnicity, gender, level of schooling, occupation, income, age, and length of time residing in Ada County. The second survey (Part 2), created for the sheriff's deputies, used questions from the citizen survey about the Sheriff's Office service needs. Deputies were asked to respond to questions in the way they thought that citizens would answer these same questions in the citizen survey. The purpose was to investigate the extent to which sheriff's deputies' attitudes mirrored citizens' attitudes about the quality of service.

This study, funded under the Measuring What Matters Program, was conducted to identify general neighborhood strengthening, or community building, processes and police contributions to them. The purpose of the study, also known as the Police-Community Interaction Project (PCIP), was to conceive, identify, or define recognizable patterns of interaction and to find ways to treat these as quantities that vary in amount and can be shown to fluctuate over time or across places. To that end, researchers conducted surveys of block clubs, neighborhood associations, and umbrella groups to gauge the issues that were important to them, steps they were taking to address these issues, and the ways in which they interacted with the police. Researchers also attended the meetings and events held by the Westside Cooperative Organization (WESCO), an umbrella group, and gathered coded data about the meetings, events and issues discussed. Specific variables in the study include demographic variables about the blocks, neighborhoods, and districts represented by the organizations, descriptive variables on the organizations themselves, variables describing issues of importance to the organizations and steps those organizations were taking to address the issues, variables to describe the interaction between the organizations and police, and variables describing police involvement in community activities.

This survey collected descriptive information from municipal police departments and sheriffs offices across the United States to determine whether the departments had implemented community policing, how their investigative functions were organized, and the ways in which their investigative organizational structure may have been modified to accommodate a community policing approach. The research project involved a national mail survey of municipal police departments and sheriffs offices in all jurisdictions with populations of more than 50,000 and 100 or more sworn officers. The survey was mailed in the late fall of 1997. Data contain responses from 405 municipal departments and 196 sheriffs offices. Questionnaires were similar but were modified depending on whether they were sent to municipal or sheriffs agencies. Data generated by the questionnaires provide descriptive information about the agencies, including agency type, state, size of population served, number of full-time and part-time sworn and civilian personnel, number of auxiliary and rescue personnel, number of detectives, whether the sworn personnel were represented by a bargaining unit, and if the agency was accredited. Respondents reported whether community policing had been implemented and, if so, identified various features that described community policing as it was structured in their agency, including year implementation began, number of sworn personnel with assignments that included community policing activities, and if someone was specifically responsible for overseeing community policing activities or implementation. Also elicited was information about the organization of the investigative function, including number of sworn personnel assigned specifically to the investigative/detective function, the organizational structure of this function, location and assignment of investigators or the investigative function, specialization of detectives/investigators, their pay scale compared to patrol officers, their relationship with patrol officers, and their chain-of-command. Finally, respondents reported whether the investigative structure or function had been modified to accommodate a community policing approach, and if so, the year the changes were first implemented.

Between 2008 and 2009, the research team gathered survey data from 458 members of the community (Part 1), 312 police officers (Part 2), and 804 individuals who had voluntary contact (Part 3), and 761 individuals who had involuntary contact (Part 4) with police departments in Dallas, Texas, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Kettering, Ohio, and the Broward County, Florida Sheriff's Office. The surveys were designed to look at nine dimensions of police performance: delivering quality services; fear, safety, and order; ethics and values; legitimacy and customer satisfaction; organizational competence and commitment to high standards; reducing crime and victimization; resource use; responding to offenders; and use of authority. The community surveys included questions about police effectiveness, police professionalism, neighborhood problems, and victimization. The officer surveys had three parts: job satisfaction items, procedural knowledge items, and questions about the culture of integrity. The voluntary police contact and involuntary police contact surveys included questions on satisfaction with the way the police officer or deputy sheriff handled the encounter.