Toward Development of Meaningful and Effective Performance Evaluations
by Robert Trojanowicz
Director National Center for Community Policing
and Bonnie Bucqueroux
Associate Director National Center for Community Policing
National Center for Community Policing
School of Criminal Justice
Michigan State University
MSU is an affirmative-action, equal-opportunity institution.
This publication was made possible by a grant from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation of Flint, Michigan, to the National Center for Community Policing at Michigan State University. The information contained herein represents the views and conclusions of the authors and not necessarily those of the Mott Foundation, its trustees, or officers.
Copyright © 1992 by the Board of Trustees, Michigan State University
The authors would like to thank the following for their invaluable input and advice:
Dr. Bruce Benson:
Director of Michigan State University's Department of Public Safety
Lt. Tom Cornelius:
Aurora (CO) Police Department
Sgt. Andrew George: Lansing (MI) Police
Department
Mark Lanier:
Graduate student, Michigan State University
Assistant Chief
David Sinclair:
Lansing (MI) Police Department
Deputy Chief
Ronald Sloan:
Aurora (CO) Police Department
Introduction
When Ed Koch was mayor of New York City, he was famous for asking people
on the street, "How'm I doing?" Though a bit gimmicky perhaps, this was
a great way for the mayor to receive instant feedback--on how people felt
about his performance as mayor, how his administration was perceived, and
how people felt about the city in general. A consummate politician, Koch
instinctively recognized that everyone in public service must ultimately
answer to the "consumer"--the citizens, voters, and taxpayers--and that
survival in a political and public job requires knowing how people really
feel about your performance. No matter what the polls and surveys say,
what really matters is how the person on the street says you're doing.
The police, too, need ways to determine how well they are doing--as a department and also as individuals within the department. No issue is more basic to the functioning of the police in a democratic society, and no issue more clearly underscores the difference between traditional policing and Community Policing than performance evaluation.
This booklet is an initial attempt to stimulate dialogue about how best
to assess the performance of Community Policing departments and of individual
Community Officers out on the street. The information included in this
publication is by no means cast in stone; rather it is an attempt to promote
discussion--even argument--about how best to proceed.
Evaluating The Department
The mission of the police
Without belaboring the obvious, the first challenge in creating a yardstick
by which we can measure how well any given police department is doing requires
defining the job of the police and that is far more controversial and complicated
than it might at first seem. Is the primary function of the police to fight
crime or to maintain the peace? Which is more basic--catching bad guys
or preventing crimes before they occur? Which matters more--how fast the
police arrive or what they do when they get there?
Increasingly, the police have come to recognize that defining the function of the police exclusively in terms of crime is problematic, for many reasons:
How much crime is there? Nobody really knows how much crime there is, so this means that even a dramatic rise in the number of crimes reported may not mean there has been any increase in the actual number of crimes committed, but merely that more are coming to the attention of police. The reverse may also account for at least part of any reported decrease in crime. Indeed, in a community where people do not trust their police, crime rates may plunge merely because residents become increasingly reluctant to call the police. How much can police affect crime rates? The rise and fall in the rates of various crimes may have less to do with police activity than with other factors beyond police control, ranging from changes in the local unemployment rate to the effectiveness of courts and corrections. Is crime the measure that average citizens use to assess the police? There is little doubt that people often enjoy grumbling about how the police should do more to get all the bad guys off the street, but most people understand the limitations under which the police operate. Indeed, most people develop their impressions of police because of contacts that have nothing to do with serious crime--they are stopped for a traffic violation, or they call the department because of a problem with a barking dog or a loud party next door.
Traditional Versus Community
Policing
Traditional police departments have long defined their primary mission
and therefore their overall effectiveness in terms of crime-fighting. As
this suggests, this all too often leaves police officials no choice but
to apologize for increases in the crime rate that are not their fault--and
to claim victory for declines that may or may not have much to do with
police activity.
The danger is that this will lead to policing by and for the numbers--overvaluing quantitative results and undervaluing qualitative outcomes. It promotes an evaluation system that would, for example, ignore the contribution of an officer who takes the time to convince a youngster suspected of burglarizing dozens of homes to enroll in drug treatment, and who cuts the red tape to get him in. At the same time, the system would record and reward an officer who arrested the youngster as a user, even if that was likely to do little more than engage the rest of the expensive criminal justice system to little effect.
Community Policing, in contrast to the traditional system, focuses on solving the problem rather than on generating arrest statistics--quality not quantity. Community Policing rests on the belief that the police must become partners with the people in the community, so that together they can address local priorities related to crime, fear of crime, social and physical disorder, and neighborhood decay. Instead of making it difficult for an officer to find the time and opportunity to intervene with that youngster who needs drug treatment, Community Policing restructures the department so that Community Officers have the face-to-face contact required to effect such solutions. Community Policing shifts creative problem-solving--which the police have always done--from being an informal part of the job to recognition as the essence of formal police work, while at the same time, the Community Policing approach allows police the continuity they need to make the most of community-based problem solving.
As this suggests, the challenge is to find ways to capture and present Community Policing's successes to others, along with the traditional kinds of data that the police have always kept. How do we record, compile, and codify incidents such as when the officer got that young man into drug treatment? How can the police use such examples to help people understand how Community Policing works?
Persuading public policymakers
This booklet is an attempt to find new ways to gather, analyze, and
express qualitative information about police performance in an easy-to-understand
format, because the reality in a complex society is that data drives policy.
The police must compete for scarce resources in a political environment
where other agencies are also building cases to justify receiving more
funds.
Particularly in times of recession, dollars grow tighter as social ills multiply--more homeless, more crime, more runaways, more domestic violence, more substance abuse, more unemployment and poverty. All too often, public policymakers do not recognize the role that the police play in dealing with all of these problems because of the perception that the police should focus on crime, as if they were not all part of the same matrix.
Now that Community Policing makes dealing with a broad spectrum of problems
an integral part of the police mission, departments must find ways to collect
and analyze data that reflect this commitment, as a means of educating
public policymakers about the need for strong financial support. The chief
should tell that story about how the officer steered the young man to treatment,
and how that will cut the number of burglaries in the area overnight. But
civic officials and representatives of funders also want cumulative data
about how many, how much, how often.
HOW IS YOUR DEPARTMENT DOING?
Basic Ideals
Community Policing appears unstoppable, and estimates suggest that
as many as two-thirds of police departments that serve communities of 50,000
population or more have already embraced Community Policing or plan to
do so within a year. Yet questions persist concerning the actual depth
and breadth of this commitment.
Many departments, especially those in big cities, adopt Community Policing first as a limited experiment, all too often applying sterile and outmoded measures to assess its relative success or failure--primarily before and after analysis of response time, clearance rates, arrests, number of citations issued. Unfortunately as well, because Community Policing is not always fully understood, departments eager to climb on the bandwagon often claim every new initiative is Community Policing, whether or not it accurately reflects the Community Policing philosophy.
So a department that wants to know "How'm I doing?" must first begin by gauging its understanding of Community Policing and how well its activities reflect this approach. Toward that end, it pays to reiterate some of the basic principles of Community Policing, so the following is a checklist of basics for any Community Policing effort:
Community Policing is a philosophy, not an isolated program. Understanding and application of the approach should permeate the entire department, civilian and sworn, and ideally the entire community, including the Big Five (introduced later), and the philosophy is expressed in the organizational philosophy that assigns Community Officers to beats. Community Policing broadens the mission of the police beyond crime control. In addition to serious crime, Community Policing targets so-called petty crime (vandalism, low-level drug dealing, juvenile offenses), fear of crime, and social and physical disorder, including neighborhood decay. Community Policing provides decentralized service. This often means the officer works directly out of an office in the community, many times as part of a larger team (recognizing that circumstances may dictate other arrangements), with the goal of providing Community Officers a defined beat. Regardless of specifics, the objective is to reduce centralized control of Community Officers by the department, in favor of making them directly accountable to the people in their beat. Community Policing provides personalized service. The purpose in decentralizing officers is to allow them the time and opportunity to maintain daily, direct, face-to-face contact with the people in the community, so that they can forge a new partnership, based on mutual trust, to prioritize and address local problems. Community Policing implies a permanent commitment to the community. Community Officers are permanently assigned to specific beats, and they must not be routinely rotated or used to fill in for vacancies elsewhere in the system. Community Policing focuses on problem-solving. The overarching purpose of assigning Community Officers to permanent beats is to allow the officer the time and opportunity to solve problems regardless of whether the solution includes arrest or some other traditional measure of success. Community Officers are immersed in the life of the community, so that they can fashion creative solutions that address the underlying dynamics of crime, fear of crime, and disorder, with the support and often the direct participation of the community. Community Policing enhances accountability, by robbing the predator, the police, and the people in the community of anonymity that can cloak misbehavior. Community Policing is full-service policing. Community Policing does not supplant but rather builds upon traditional policing, and Community Officers function as full-fledged law enforcement officers who make arrests, but who do much more. Community Policing is not a specialty. Everyone in the department should practice Community Policing, and Community Officers are not removed from--or elevated above--their fellow officers. Instead they are generalists who perform a variety of tasks that enhance the delivery of decentralized and personalized police service. Community Policing involves average citizens in the police process. By providing a neighborhood its own officer, Community Policing allows people a voice in how they are policed--in setting local priorities, in fashioning solutions, in developing new proactive efforts and activities. Average citizens will also be asked to participate directly in a variety of initiative activities. Community Policing complements reactive policing with proactive policing. Traditional policing is structured to focus the vast bulk of its resources on responding to calls for service promptly, whereas Community Policing balances those efforts with activities aimed at short- and long-term prevention of crime, fear of crime, and disorder. Community Policing must face the test of operating within existing resources. Community Policing must be affordable and cost-effective; it is not something a department tries for a while or employs as an add-on, but rather it must become the way that the entire police department conducts its business in the community. Community Policing may serve as the model and as the centerpiece for the decentralization and personalization of other social services. Experience shows that the next phase of the Community Policing revolution may be the application of the lessons learned from Community Policing to the delivery of other social services. In practical terms, this can mean assigning other social service agents--the social worker, public health nurse, mental health therapist, drug counselor--to a neighborhood storefront called a Neighborhood Network Center, where the Community Officer acts as both protector and catalyst.
Participation Of The Big Five
Important as well is that Community Policing cannot function in a vacuum; it depends on broad-based support inside and outside the department. Success in Community Policing depends on the involvement and interaction of the so-called Big Five--the police, the citizens (individuals and groups), civic officials, the community's public and private agencies, and the media. The following is an initial attempt to outline what police departments can do to educate groups outside the department--those whose support is essential for success:
Citizens (individuals and groups)
Has the department developed and implemented a strategy to educate
average citizens about the trade-offs implicit in the shift to Community
Policing and the timetable required to see positive change? (Among the
most obvious and common trade-offs are that response time for non-emergency
calls may be slowed to allow deploying officers in beats, and average citizens
are allowed input into setting local priorities in exchange for providing
their direct participation and support.)
How will people be made aware of their responsibilities and that the ultimate success of Community Policing depends on them?
Has the department planned (or executed) pre- and post-implementation surveying of the residents of the community? Did the surveys ask residents for input on problems and priorities?
Have Community Officers made contact with both average citizens and community leaders within their beats? Has the department identified the official and unofficial leaders in the community?
Is the department sensitive to the issue of overselling Community Policing
to people as a panacea?
Civic officials
Have they been included in the planning process? Do they understand
Community Policing, its trade-offs and its timetable?
How will they respond when Community Policing often means that groups which traditionally receive priority service (the business community, the affluent) may perceive that their service has declined in favor of others (typically those who live in poorer neighborhoods)?
Do civic officials understand that Community Policing means giving line officers greater autonomy, including the opportunity to make embarrassing mistakes?
With Community Officers providing what may previously have been the province of constituent service, are elected officials who must run for re-election aware of the potential for jealousy and conflict?
Will elected officials support Community Policing even if a powerful
constituent complains?
Community agencies (public and private)
Have they been involved in the planning process?
Are they willing to cooperate? Does this include direct participation and maybe changing their work hours?
Are they willing to consider decentralizing their social service agents,
so that they can work directly with Community Officers, part-time or full-time?
The media
Has top command met with editors and reporters in electronic and print
media to provide information on Community Policing during the planning
process?
Has the department made an effort to explain to the media the importance of educating the public about trade-offs and to encourage them to include this information in their stories?
Has the department provided reporters tips on success stories related to Community Policing?
Do Community Officers speak directly to the press, touting their achievements?
Applying The Community Policing
Checklist
For a department to see how well it is doing against the basic ideals
proposed above, we offer the Community Policing Checklist. It is a unique
instrument because it is as much a stimulus for discussion and debate as
a performance assessment tool. The real goal is not to apply this as a
traditional test, ticking off yes-or-no answers to see how well the score
stacks up to some theoretical ideal. Rather, the checklist is designed
to prompt two basic kinds of discussion:
Theoretical
How long must Community Officers spend in the same community?
Would allowing Community Officers occasional use of a patrol car violate the spirit of the approach?
What is the proper relationship between Community Officers and their motor patrol counterparts?
Should average citizens have direct input into setting police priorities--how much influence should they have?
How much participation should we expect from average citizens?
Can Community Officers benefit from advanced technology, such as computer link-ups and cellular phones?
Does Community Policing raise new ethical issues?
Can specialty units really be part of Community Policing?
Does Community Policing make the police more--or less--vulnerable to
lawsuits?
Applied
Are our beats too large?
Have civilians, particularly dispatchers, received enough training on how to apply the philosophy of Community Policing?
Do Community Officers have an easier--or tougher--time earning promotions?
Are there safeguards in place to detect burnout in Community Officers?
Are we expecting too much--or too little--from average citizens?
Have Community Officers succeeded in delegating appropriate tasks to
other social service providers?
These sample questions are certainly not meant to be exhaustive, only illustrative. Indeed, as noted before, the authors encourage you to provide information about your experience in using these tools, as well as suggestions about how to improve them.
The department as a whole
Beat assignments
EVALUATING THE COMMUNITY OFFICER
Purposes and functions
Adopting Community Policing as a department-wide approach requires
modifying the performance evaluations of virtually everyone in the department
to reflect how well they are expressing the Community Policing philosophy
in their work. However, it is the Community Officer out on the beat who
most completely and directly expresses the Community Policing philosophy,
so if we can structure a valid and workable performance evaluation for
the Community Officer's job, the changes that should be made in all the
other performance evaluations would logically flow from that example.
Yet before we struggle with the question of how best to assess the performance of the Community Officer, we should discuss some of the reasons that performance evaluations are kept. Indeed, many employees resent or ridicule the effort as a waste of time. Others think that management documents performance merely to avoid litigation or defend their decisions in a lawsuit or grievance procedure if someone is fired.
However, as noted earlier, well-crafted performance evaluations provide the department the data that they need to justify budgets to public policymakers. The most basic purpose, however, is to give the employee honest feedback to the question of "How'm I doing?"
Yet the problem is that many employee evaluations fall far short of accomplishing even these basic goals. All too often, formal evaluations over-value those who "play the game" by generating the numbers. Indeed, too many performance evaluations penalize those who innovate. As one former police officer noted, officers who do little more than show up on time, neatly dressed, may well score better than the creative officer willing to take a risk. In professional jargon, the evaluation process in most police departments is risk averse--just don't let us hear any bad or embarrassing news and you will score OK. The winners are those who best play CYA--Cover Your 'Anatomy.'
As this suggests, this kind of performance evaluation process stifles creativity and impairs morale. Admittedly as well, it is far easier to craft a performance evaluation that measures and rewards busyness, efficiency, and speed than effectiveness.
So the attempt to create performance evaluations for Community Officers that accurately reflect the virtues of the approach is indeed a challenge. On the one end of the spectrum is the performance evaluation employed in a small department in Texas where the Community Officers are asked to write one or more sentences every few months about what they are trying to accomplish. While that may be enough to satisfy everyone inside and outside the department in a small town where everyone knows each other, consider the challenge of fashioning fair and effective performance evaluations for Community Officers in a department like New York City, which employs upwards of 27,000 police officers.
The best way to proceed to address the challenge of developing a suitable performance evaluation for the Community Officer requires identifying the many objectives that an ideal evaluation would meet:
To document the individual Community Officer's performance (for purposes of raises/promotions/commendations/censure/dismissal, etc). To provide some basis for comparing one Community Officer's performance to another's. To serve as a foundation for future goals for the individual Community Officer evaluated. To gather and document effective strategies and tactics that can be shared with others. To collect and analyze efforts that failed, to warn others of potential pitfalls. To contribute data to assessments of the impact and effectiveness of all Community Officers within the department. To serve as a foundation for decisions concerning Community Officers, such as those related to training, deployment, etc. To contribute to assessments of the impact and effectiveness of Community Policing as a department-wide commitment. To provide documentation useful to public policymakers/funders.
As this suggests, combining the individual Community Officer's evaluation with others demands finding ways to express quality as quantity, in other words, to make quality a countable commodity. The optimal approach would supplement this information with an essay, to capture anecdotes and to flesh out the data. But the challenge is to identify quantifiable outcomes that truly relate to the job and to ensure that this does not corrupt Community Policing into policing by the numbers.
Opening up the process
Part of the solution in reassuring people inside the department that
the performance evaluations are meaningful and fair requires allowing Community
Officers input into the process of developing their own performance measurements.
Once they understand the range of purposes that a performance evaluation
must meet, they will appreciate the difficulties involved, and supervision
will have gone a long way toward allaying their anxiety about its uses.
There will always be cynics who will carp at the process, but Community
Policing recognizes the importance of opening up dialogue as a means of
enhancing trust. However, for the opportunity to be meaningful, the department
must be willing to allow Community Officers to make substantive contributions
to developing the measurements by which they will be judged.
Also vital is ensuring that the evaluations focus on behavior--not character, personality--as a means of enhancing objectivity in the process. Every department wants officers to be hard-working, honest, fair, dedicated, brave, compassionate--but the challenge is to find ways to measure the relevant behavior without resorting to subjective judgments. First-line supervisors can tour the area and ask residents for feedback on how often they see the officer, do they know him or her by name, and has the officer been courteous to them--focus on what the officer does, not on who he is.
Indeed, no doubt many departments have hired individuals who have hidden prejudice toward one group or another--minorities, Jews, Moslems, gays. But the issue is not what the person thinks or feels, but what he or she does on the job. If people allow their personal feelings to influence their behavior on the job, their misbehavior must be uncovered and dealt with. But if they can overcome their biases and behave appropriately on the job, difficult as that may be, then their personal feelings and attitudes are irrelevant in a performance evaluation.
The other consideration in soliciting support for performance evaluations concerns how they are used. It doesn't take long for employees in any organization to figure out when the performance evaluations are used for punitive rather than constructive purposes. One function of performance evaluations is indeed to provide documentation to justify disciplinary action, but this use should apply to only a handful of cases.
Performance evaluations are not a bludgeon to whip people into shape, but rather a tool that can be used to set goals for the future. The challenge is to make the officers a real part of the process, so that they do not feel that they are being coerced by supervisors who have no feel for their problems and potential.
Enhancing quality
We have the example of U.S. automakers to remind us that quality is
not something you tack on like chrome, but it must be everyone's job. When
the top brass loses touch with the consumer, when the system pits workers
against bosses, quality suffers, and people balk and begin buying from
someone else if they can, as happened when American car buyers switched
to Japanese and German cars.
The public police have also found that they do not have a lock on the market, but those consumers who can afford to do so are shopping elsewhere for safety. We see the exodus from major cities to the suburbs--taxpayers voting with their feet, leaving urban police with smaller and smaller budgets. Indeed, the most affluent typically choose gated and walled communities patrolled by private security, where the residents receive decentralized and personalized policing for a fee. Given the choice, people want police officers that they know--officers that they can hold directly accountable.
So police managers should borrow from the experiments and innovations taking place in the private sector, as companies struggle to find new ways to involve workers in the process of producing quality. As Alvin Toffler notes in Power Shift, Ford Motor Company discovered that the traditional system of looking for defects and correcting them after the fact just wasn't working. "Only by allowing workers more discretion--no longer programming their every move--could the goal of zero defects be approached...and this...meant 'recognizing the power of the operators right down to shop floor level.'"
In In Search of Excellence, Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr., insist that the best organizations recognize the importance of treating all employees as adults. They note that one reason that the Roman Empire survived so long, even though managers back in Rome couldn't pick up the phone to issue orders, was that this meant that they had to assign someone to a 'beat' and then trust them to run the show on their own.
Goal-setting and problem-solving
As this suggests, the real function of the performance evaluation for
the Community Officer should be that it provides him or her the structured
opportunity to talk with management about how to make even more of the
job. Indeed, as one management expert said, the biggest mistake that managers
make is to use performance evaluations as a way to dwell on weakness rather
than to enhance strengths.
As a case in point, the expert noted that Ted Williams was a great batter and a lousy fielder, but Williams didn't waste much time practicing fielding. Williams' coach figured that, no matter how hard he tried, Williams could only make a minimal improvement in his fielding, from poor to fair perhaps, but that focusing on the negative would add to his frustration and self-doubt. So Williams instead spent his time working on batting--his strength--and that allowed him to progress from good to great to fantastic.
All too often, managers use performance evaluations primarily to identify weaknesses. Then the hapless employee spends the next few months struggling to improve--often to the detriment of the person's strengths.
Obviously, if the problem is serious (excessive use of force) or easily rectifiable (chronic tardiness), managers must demand immediate, positive change. But consider the department that urged its Community Officers to write a newsletter for their beats. Now think of gregarious Community Officer Tom, who is a superstar on the beat when dealing with people face-to-face, but who cannot put pen to paper without gritting his teeth in agony. Yet each time there is a performance evaluation, Tom is told that he must concentrate on putting out that newsletter--his boss spends more time talking about that than about all of Tom's wonderful new projects. So instead of concentrating on what he enjoys and does well, Tom spends hours in the office, struggling to put together a newsletter which is likely to be poor at best.
The solution? Encourage Tom to find someone else--a citizen volunteer, the local minister, a teacher--to write the newsletter, freeing Tom to spend more time doing what he does best. In essence, this means applying Community Policing's personalized, problem-solving approach to the problem of producing a good newsletter.
The danger, of course, is that some may perceive "letting Tom off the hook" as a serious fairness issue. A fellow Community Officer who spends the time to produce a newsletter may resent seeing Tom "get away" with "sloughing the job onto someone else." Indeed, because the department will want to document the production of that newsletter, Tom may even be able to claim credit for it, even though it does not take much of his time.
At a certain level, this is reminiscent of squabbling among kids in a family ("Why does Tommy get to stay up later than I do?"), but the issue of fairness must be addressed, to reduce internal friction and maintain morale. And the best explanation is that tailoring the performance evaluation process to the individual, when feasible, will ultimately prove to be the fairest system.
Again, if officers are involved in the process of developing and modifying performance evaluations, they will begin to recognize that they may lose in one instance, but that they can gain in another. Also of importance is the reminder that the goal is to move beyond the family model, where "Daddy" tells "Junior" what to do, to one where adults reason together about how best to proceed, and that requires greater flexibility.
Identifying tasks and activities
As noted in the Preface, the National Center for Community Policing
will be working to produce a job description/role definition for the Community
Officer. However, the real world cannot wait for research before proceeding,
so the following is a tentative list of duties and activities commonly
performed by Community Officers, as a starting point for discussion. The
more reference points for the job, the more foundation for building a quantitative
measurement of quality.
To understand how we can proceed to produce a performance evaluation for Community Officers that includes countable items, it pays to look at the kinds of measures used to assess the performance of the traditional motor patrol officer. While we can debate how well these parameters actually relate to success in the job, the fact remains that most motor patrol officers are evaluated on countable items such as:
Radio calls--Number and types of calls, alarm responses (true and false); disposition; reports written; time spent; follow-up required. Arrests--Number and types of felonies and misdemeanors (self-initiated and assigned); warrants; juvenile apprehensions; DUIL's. Traffic--Number and types of traffic stops (moving and non-moving), including seatbelt and child-restraint violations (self-initiated and assigned); accidents, injuries; citations issued; action taken; time spent; motorist assists; parking tickets issued. Suspicious persons/situations checked/investigated--Number and type (self-initiated and assigned); number of persons contacted; action taken; disposition; time spent. Property recovered--Type and value, time spent. Desk/other assignments--Number and type, time spent. Administrative/miscellaneous--roll call, court appearances, prisoner transport assignments, subpoenas served, patrol car maintenance, reports written/taken, bar checks, etc.
In addition to the items listed above, the performance evaluation for the Community Officer must take into account factors directly and indirectly related to the officer's performance. The following is an initial attempt to contribute to a model.
Outcomes INDIRECTLY Related to Officer Performance
Crime rates--Number and types of crimes in beat area; trends up or down from previous month, year; crime analysis. Agency involvement--Number and types of other public and private social service agencies operating in the community (including agencies working out of a Neighborhood Network Center).
(Statistics for crimes in the Community Officer's beat area are a valid part of any performance evaluation; however, it is important to recognize that this may be only indirectly related to the specific officer's performance. Also, while the participation of other public and private social service agencies in community-based problem solving is a valid goal, the Community Officer may lack the power to make this happen.)
Outcomes DIRECTLY Related to Officer Performance
Rates of targeted crimes--Number and type; monthly and annual trends.
(With input from the community, the Community Officer may have prioritized specific crimes: drug dealing, burglary, vandalism, etc.)
Neighborhood disorder:
- Social disorder--open drug use/sales, panhandlers, runaways, addicts, "winos," truants, curfew violations, prostitution, homeless, mainstreamed mental patients, unlicensed peddlers, gambling, loitering, unsupervised youngsters, youth gangs, etc.
- Physical disorder--graffiti, abandoned cars, abandoned buildings, potholes, trash in yards, litter on streets, building code violations (residences and businesses), etc.
[The first-line supervisor and the Community Officer can work together to decide which items apply, then they can develop ways to measure progress. Some items will be countable (see below); the Community Officer can tabulate how many abandoned cars are tagged and towed, but the overall perception of improvement in neighborhood decay will require an on-site assessment from the first-line supervisor. If resources are available, the department could also survey residents periodically to assess their perceptions of progress toward improving the safety and quality of life in the beat.]
Calls for service--Number and type; monthly and annual trends.
(Experience shows that a new Community Policing effort typically results in an increase in the number of calls for service from that area, as people begin to look to the police for solutions to problems more than in the past. However, over time, most effective Community Officers discover that the number of calls for service declines, as people wait to tell the Community Officer about problems in person, or because residents begin handling more conflicts informally. Monitoring calls for service not only helps verify whether the Community Officer is doing a good job in the beat, but public policymakers should also appreciate that the time saved allows the police to do more with the same resources.)
Quantifiable Activities (Community-Based
Problem Solving)
(NOTE: There is some redundancy and overlap among categories.)
There are also a number of standard measurements of an officer's performance that should be part of the Community Officer's performance profile:
The officer should also have the opportunity to affix transcripts or tapes of any media coverage of initiatives in the beat. Community Officers can also solicit letters of support from local residents.
As you will see in Appendix B (Management by Objective--MBO), Dr. Bruce Benson, director of Michigan State University's Department of Public Safety, has developed a simple form that asks officers to identify three goals for the upcoming evaluation period, with space at the bottom for follow-up. Benson says that the goals can be as vague as "increased contact with the community," or as specific as "start new basketball league for youth by May 1." The goal is for the officer and supervisor to negotiate items that are appropriate to the challenges in the beat and to determine how progress toward the goals will be monitored.
Appendix C provides a sample log sheet, as used in the Aurora (CO) Police Department. It provides a reference that first-line supervisors can use to document critical incidents related to the Community Officers they supervise.
Opportunities for understanding
An individual Community Officer's performance evaluation should give a useful snapshot in time of that particular officer's activities. Yet performance evaluations must also contribute to a bigger picture, the effectiveness of Community Officers in the field. Toward that end, top command can begin to aggregate information, so that a broader picture emerges.
Obviously, because Community Policing often sparks an explosion in creativity, no one can anticipate all the unique efforts that Community Officers will undertake. However, we find, for example, that Community Officers, many of whom are assigned to low-income areas with a high percentage of renters, spend significant time trying to deal with the disorder problems associated with low-income rentals. The following is the kind of analysis that could be done by combining information from a number of Community Officers' performance evaluations:
Affordable housing--In the past X months. XX Community Officers
have spent more than XX hours dealing with the disorder problems associated
with the low-income rental housing in their beats. An immediate sign of
success was that such initiatives led directly to the closing of XX dope
houses, as well as the arrest of XX suspected dealers.
XX Community Officers also held a series of XX meetings with
landlords, instructing them on how to avoid renting to dealers and other
undesirables. One Community Officer is even working on developing a database
that they can use to warn each other of problem tenants.
XX Community Officers had XX contacts with code officials,
so that they could work together to upgrade housing stocks--without triggering
gentrification that can put affordable housing out of the reach of the
poor. The officers were able to effect improvements in XX homes, and they
were able to assist in resolving XX landlord/tenant disputes. Community
Officer X is planning to host a community meeting on the rights and responsibilities
of landlords and tenants. The officer has also found a donor who will supply
those tenants who need a deadbolt lock.
Community Officers had XX contacts with city officials about
improving the streetlighting, as an assist in keeping dealers and prostitutes
off the street. The officers also made XX contacts with City Sanitation
to improve the timeliness of garbage removal.
As this suggests, the individual performance evaluations of Community Officers can provide the raw material for a sophisticated presentation on a variety of topics. Some topics are obvious--efforts aimed at the demand side of drugs, for example--but, since Community Policing tailors its efforts to local needs, the topics targeted for breakout may differ, department to department. For example, some departments may have enough data to justify an entry on public housing, while others may not. In other circumstances, the department may want to keep track of efforts aimed at youth, at the homeless, etc. Departments in states like Florida may need to document efforts to protect tourists. Indeed, the reason for keeping the categories listed above so general is that no one listing could possibly anticipate all the items that might be worth keeping track of.
Blending quantitative and qualitative information in this manner can also go a long way toward making the case for Community Policing within the department and also to public policymakers. Moreover, this kind of report would make an excellent news release to the media on the department's efforts in providing affordable housing. If there is a suitable site, the release of this information might be a good occasion for a news conference. The department must make the case to reporters that footage and photos of officers standing in front of a huge seizure of drugs, guns, and cash tell only part of the story.
A few tips borrowed from the field of journalism: Remember to go from
the general to the specific, the specific to the general, as a way of making
your point, while maintaining interest. In addition, an opening (or closing)
anecdote (culled from the Community Officers' essays) would help humanize
the effort and drive home the impact that Community Officers have on the
lives of real people.
THE FIRST-LINE SUPERVISOR
A performance evaluation for the sergeant who assists and supervises
the Community Officer must obviously build upon the model provided above.
To avoid repetition, it goes without saying that the performance of the
first-line supervisor can also be measured on the same list of Quantifiable
Activities (Community-Based Problem Solving) listed above, in terms
of the supervisor's activities in the same regard (communication, contacts,
etc.) or in terms of actions that the supervisor takes to facilitate the
activities of the Community Officer in that regard (such as securing resources
that Community Officers can use). The first-line supervisor will also,
of course, be evaluated on traditional measures, just as Community Officers
are also evaluated on these measures.
In addition, the first-line supervisor can be assessed on:
Conclusion
This booklet should be considered the first word--not the last--in
an ongoing attempt to develop performance evaluations that document Community
Policing's impact without burying those who must administer them under
a blizzard of paperwork and red tape. Again, there is some happy medium
between asking Community Officers to write a sentence about their efforts
versus an eight-hour marathon session to fill out a 20-page report. But
when we consider all of the disparate purposes that -performance evaluations
serve, the importance of the challenge cannot be denied. We look forward
to your input, advice, and criticism. How're we doing so far?
Endnotes
COMMUNITY POLICING OFFICERS--
LANSING POLICE DEPARTMENT
- Use of community surveys to identify problems and their solutions.
- Citizen surveillance (with or without cameras) at peak times of crime
and disorder.
- Drug hotlines for reporting drug-related activity.
- Education and recreational programs for neighborhood children (including
such activities as tutoring and playground participation).
- Conflict resolution training for citizen volunteers.
- Self-esteem enhancing classes and activities for neighborhood children.
- Fingerprint identification programs.
- Eliminating abandoned vehicles from the neighborhood that are being
used by prostitutes.
- Community Policing Officer involvement in the Special Olympics.
- The CPO being a member of a community problem-solving team.
- Community volunteers escorting the elderly and new neighbors to businesses
and resource centers.
- Use of the media to provide safety tips, especially at special times
of the year like Halloween.
- Cleaning up vacant lots that attract drug dealers, prostitutes, and
other undesirables.
- Tearing down buildings that are havens for problem people.
- Using No Parking or Standing signs to reduce congestion and
undesirable "vendors."
- Using volunteers to collect clothes for the homeless.
- Enactment of loitering laws to keep streets clear of problem people.
- Encouraging churches, businesses, and volunteers to provide food,
clothing, and shelter for street people.
- CPOs using different types of transportation to facilitate movement,
including all-terrain vehicles, dirt bikes, ten-speed bikes, horses, and
golf carts.
- Enforcing park restrictions and hours to control undesirable persons.
- Development of exchange programs between urban and suburban churches.
- Recreational programs for inner-city youth in rural areas.
- Identification of absentee landlords and holding them responsible
for their building code infractions and unkempt property.
- Closing up houses and apartments that have more than one drug violation.
- Removing telephones or limiting them to only out-going calls to eliminate
their use for drug dealing.
- Use ID cards for residents of crime-ridden apartments to keep non-residents
from misbehaving.
- Establishing Neighborhood Network Centers to decentralize and personalize
other service providers.
- Use of volunteers to supervise recreation activities at neighborhood
school gymnasiums during non-school times.
- Educating the youth on their legal rights and responsibilities.
- Educating senior citizens on how to avoid and deal with "con" artists.
- Encouraging residents to use their homes as "safe havens" for children
going to and from school who may be targets of deviant behavior.
- Supervision of community service/prisoners.
| DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY My main objectives for the period _____________________________________________
1. 2. 3. Officer _________________________________
Supervisor______________________________
Community leader________________________
Evaluation of progress toward above objectives: 1. 2. 3. Officer _________________________________
Supervisor______________________________
Community leader________________________
Devloped by Dr. Bruce Benson--10/90 |
AURORA (CO) POLICE DEPARTMENT
NOTE: This is kept by supervisors on the employees--this is a copy of actual handwritten entries by supervisors (with names X'ed to maintain confidentiality).
NAME: __________________________________________________________________________________
Evaluation Date From _______________ to ______________
| DATE | EMPL | SUP | INCIDENT |
| 2/14
3/19 5/8 6/8 6/8 7/16
7/16 8/6 8/9 8/27 |
|
|
Received a good letter from Jackie X regarding
assisting them in December on 1989.
Corrective action for loss of gas card. Gave me a letter on Community Policing project update. Good letter from Adams County DA office. Good letter from Det. Sgt. X on project. Talked to X about unaccetable sick leave. I gave him an order to bring in doctor's sli on future sick days. Good letter from Det. X from citizens. Gave me a Community Policing memo update for month of July. Went over 6 month evaluation. Inspection today, all in order--all cards, uniform, etc. |
Publications From The National Center for Community Policing
Books
An Evaluation of the Neighborhood Foot Patrol Program in Flint,
Michigan
A Manual for the Establishment and Operation of a Foot Patrol Program
Community Policing: A Contemporary Perspective, by Robert Trojanowicz
and Bonnie Bucqueroux, Anderson Publishing Company, Cincinnati, OH
(Please contact Anderson Publishing directly by calling 1-800/543-0883)
Community Policing Series
Perceptions of Safety: A Comparison of Foot Patrol versus Motor Patrol Officers
Job Satisfaction: A Comparison of Foot Patrol Versus Motor Patrol Officers
The Status of Contemporary Community Policing
The Impact of Foot Patrol on Black and White Perceptions of Policing
Uniform Crime Reporting and Community Policing: A Historical Perspective
Performance Profiles of Foot Versus Motor Patrol Officers
Community Policing: A Taxpayer's Perspective
Implementing a Community Policing Model for Work with Juveniles: An Exploratory Study
Community Policing: Training Issues
Community Policing Programs: A Twenty-Year View
Community Policing: The Line Officer's Perspective
Community Policing: Community Input into Police Policy
The Philosophy and Role of Community Policing
Community Policing: University Input into Community Policing
The Meaning of Community in Community Policing
Community Policing: Would You Know It If You Saw It?
Reinventing the Wheel in Police Work: A Sense of History
Preventing Civil Disturbances: A Community Policing Approach
Turning Concept into Practice: The Aurora (CO) Story
Rapid Response and Community Policing: Are They Really in Conflict?
Community Policing and the Challenge of Diversity
Articles
The Foot Patrol Officer, the Community, and the School: A Coalition
Against Crime
Community Policing: Defining the Officer's Role
Foot Patrol: Some Problem Areas
An Evaluation of a Neighborhood Foot Patrol Program
Community Policing is Not Police-Community Relations
The Community Policing Challenge
f you wish to receive a copy of a Center publication, please contact us at the address or telephone numbers given below:
National Center for Community Policing
School of Criminal Justice
Michigan State University
560 Baker Hall
East Lansing, MI 48824-1118
517/355-9648
http://www.ssc.msu.edu/~cj