Community Policing: Misunderstanding and Misapplication Following Police Shootings

Prevailing community policing theory identifies the purpose of community policing being to empower state policing not diminish it. This basis identifies a major misconception of those arguing for police defunding, as it fails to address the realities and limitations of street-level bureaucrats in exercising their authority. Misapplying emotional calls for restructuring into perceived democratic control of the bureaucracy. This article explores the inherent problems within community policing and serves to link these problems within a larger discussion of governance and policing, making an argument that the calls for defunding and community policing at best demonstrate misunderstanding and at worst represent a poorly articulated political ploy. In either case, understanding the larger role of how the state legitimates policing identifies an inherent disconnect between policy and implementation. Substantive change in policing must come from changes in the law that provide the staying power for reform to overcome bureaucratic retrenchment to change and in our view of governance, specifically in what should be enforced and the role of government in maintaining order, to ensure that these reflect the realities of policing.

Which Clients Inspire or Reduce the Trust of Street-Level Bureaucrats?

Which types of clients increase or decrease the trust of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs)? Using interviews and focus groups with two groups of Israeli social service providers—teachers and social workers—and comparing them, —we develop a theoretical framework for determining the types of clients who evoke and reduce the trust of SLBs. Our findings indicate that there are seven types of clients who inspire or diminish this trust: —cooperative, honest, familiar, benevolent, aggressive, open, and manipulative. We discuss the significance of our findings for the implementation and outcome of public policy and suggest several avenues for future research.

An Exploratory Examination of the Relationship Between Trust and Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Willingness to Risk Their Lives for Others

This article presents the findings of an exploratory study examining the relationships between street-level bureaucrats’ (SLBs) trust in their peers, managers, and the institution they belong to, and their willingness to endanger their own lives for the public. We build on previous administrative and behavioral theories to present a model of these relationships. Using a survey of 211 police officers in Israel, our findings demonstrate the important role of trust in understanding the willingness of civil servants to risk their lives for citizens. We also identify additional factors that may be related to their willingness to take this risk and the types of clients for whom they are less or more willing to do so. We discuss the normative elements related to these findings and suggest fruitful future directions for study.

Walking the Talk of Social Equity? Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Decisionmaking About the Provision of Personal Resources

While public administration scholars argue that core values of social equity are exceedingly important in service provision, less is known of how these values are practised on the frontline in the contemporary public administration. Research points to a dual trend: together with practices aimed at increasing clients’ wellbeing, public service workers’ decisions about allocating public resources are guided by moral perceptions of worthiness, leaving behind the most weakened populations. The current study aims to decipher this duality, analyzing street-level bureaucrats’ decisionmaking about providing personal resources to low-income clients, in order to examine whether the pursuit of social equity is manifested in informal practices. Drawing on indepth qualitative interviews of social service providers in Israel, we found that decisionmaking about personal resource provision is grounded in two distinct sets of values. Alongside a pattern of providing resources to deserving clients, street-level bureaucrats also provide them to clients typically considered undeserving. These latter practices are aimed at decreasing social inequality, demonstrating that social service providers often walk the talk of social equity.