Modern Policing and the Control of Illegal Drugs: Testing New Strategies in Oakland, California, and Birmingham, Alabama, 1987-1989
Description
These data were collected in Oakland, California, and
Birmingham, Alabama, to examine the effectiveness of alternative drug
enforcement strategies. A further objective was to compare the
relative effectiveness of strategies drawn from professional- versus
community-oriented models of policing. The professional model
emphasizes police responsibility for crime control, whereas the
community model stresses the importance of a police-citizen
partnership in crime control. At each site, experimental treatments
were applied to selected police beats. The Oakland Police Department
implemented a high-visibility enforcement effort consisting of
undercover buy-bust operations, aggressive patrols, and motor vehicle
stops, while the Birmingham Police Department engaged in somewhat less
visible buy-busts and sting operations. Both departments attempted a
community-oriented approach involving door-to-door contacts with
residents. In Oakland, four beats were studied: one beat used a
special drug enforcement unit, another used a door-to-door community
policing strategy, a third used a combination of these approaches, and
the fourth beat served as a control group. In Birmingham, three beats
were chosen: Drug enforcement was conducted by the narcotics unit in
one beat, door-to-door policing, as in Oakland, was used in another
beat, and a police substation was established in the third beat. To
evaluate the effectiveness of these alternative strategies, data were
collected from three sources. First, a panel survey was administered
in two waves on a pre-test/post-test basis. The panel survey data
addressed the ways in which citizens' perceptions of drug activity,
crime problems, neighborhood safety, and police service were affected
by the various policing strategies. Second, structured observations of
police and citizen encounters were made in Oakland during the periods
the treatments were in effect. Observers trained by the researchers
recorded information regarding the roles and behaviors of police and
citizens as well as police compliance with the experiment's
procedures. And third, to assess the impact of the alternative
strategies on crime rates, reported crime data were collected for time
periods before and during the experimental treatment periods, both in
the targeted beats and city-wide.