Citizen ratings of the importance of community policing activities

Presents findings from a community survey of citizens who rated the importance of a variety of police practices commonly associated with community policing. Findings show that citizens give lower ratings to preventive community policing activities that are usually thought of as having an indirect effect on crime, and they give the highest ratings to proactive enforcement activities. Estimates several different regression models in order to detect systematic differences in patterns of ratings: gender has the most consistent effect across the different models. Discusses the need for studies that include cross-community comparisons.