Examining officer support for community policing in counterterrorism over time

Using surveys to understand support for community policing in counterterrorism.

Abstract

Law enforcement leaders and officers generally agree that community policing can be beneficial in counterterrorism. Yet, data often come from a single department or a single timepoint so it unclear if findings replicate or generalize. To partially address this, we collect officer-level surveys in the same department at two timepoints to examine how support for community policing in counterterrorism—and factors associated with it—are time (in)variant. Relative to Wave 1, officers reported less experience with community policing and were less supportive of community policing in general and in counterterrorism specifically in Wave 2. Further, results only partially replicated from Wave 1 to Wave 2—which were three years apart in the same department. Together this suggest that both departmental and temporal factors influence officer support for community policing in counterterrorism.

Both departmental and temporal factors influence officer support for community policing in counterterrorism.

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