In 1996, the Bureau of Justice Statistics sponsored a pretest of a survey instrument designed to compile data on citizen contacts with police, including contacts in which police use force. The survey, which involved interviews (both face-to-face and by phone) carried out by the United States Census Bureau, was conducted as a special supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), an ongoing household survey of the American public that elicits information concerning recent crime victimization experiences. Questions asked in the supplement covered reasons for contact with police officer(s), characteristics of the officer, weapons used by the officer, whether there were any injuries involved in the confrontation between the household member and the officer, whether drugs were involved in the incident, type of offense the respondent was charged with, and whether any citizen action was taken. Demographic variables include race, sex, and age.

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

This data collection investigates the ways in which police use reports of drug-related crimes provided by residents of high drug/crime areas and how willing residents of these areas are to report such crimes to the police. Structured interviews were conducted by telephone with police representatives in most of the nation's 50 largest cities and in person with residents and police officers in high drug/crime districts in each of four major cities: Newark, Chicago, El Paso, and Philadelphia. Police department representatives were queried about the usefulness of citizen reports, reasons for citizens' reluctance to make reports, how the rate of citizen reports could be improved, and how citizen reports worked with other community crime prevention strategies. Residents were asked about their tenure in the neighborhood, attitudes toward the quality of life in the neighborhood, major social problems facing the neighborhood, and quality of city services such as police and fire protection, garbage collection, and public health services. Additional questions were asked about the amount of crime in the neighborhood, the amount of drug use and drug-related crime, and the fear of crime. Basic demographic information such as sex, race, and language in which the interview was conducted is also provided.