Company Profile
Police Foundation
Company Overview
The Police Foundation is a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting innovation and improvement in policing. Established in 1970, the foundation has conducted seminal research in police behavior, policy, and procedure and works to transfer to local agencies the best information about practices for dealing effectively with a range of important police operational and administrative concerns.
Our purpose is to help the police be more effective in doing their job. To accomplish our mission, we work closely with police officers and police departments across the country, and it is in their hard work and contributions that our accomplishments are rooted.
The foundation helps police departments to acquire both the knowledge gained through research and the tools needed to integrate that knowledge into police practices. Working with law enforcement agencies seeking to improve performance, service delivery, accountability, and community satisfaction with police services, the foundation offers a wide range of services and expertise.
One of the Police Foundation’s principal functions is to provide outlets for the exchange of ideas among practitioners at all levels, as well as scholars, policy makers, the media, and citizens. It has sponsored meetings, seminars, conferences, surveys, and focus groups that allow proponents of police reform to share knowledge, trade advice, and pose questions on the full range of critical issues facing the law enforcement profession. Topics have included community policing; law enforcement after September 11, 2001; police abuse of authority; understanding and implementing law enforcement technologies; women in policing; drugs and drug violence; police liability; police and civil disorder; crime mapping and problem analysis; recruitment, selection, and training; higher education for police; use of force; ethics; gun violence; and labor relations.
It is this interactive process which informs our work and guides our efforts. America’s police departments have actively and adeptly become laboratories for change, continually seeking efficient and innovative strategies and tools to confront ever-increasing challenges and demands. We are proud to have been their partner for over 40 years.
Motivating all of the foundation’s efforts is the goal of efficient, effective, humane policing that operates within the framework of democratic principles and the highest ideals of the nation.
Company History
The Police Foundation was established and given the mission of developing, testing, and disseminating ideas about how best to deliver police services. It quickly became apparent that average citizens expected the police to do more than simply protect them from criminals. In fact, most people called the police for help with matters that were not primarily criminal in nature, and patrol officers spent most of their time doing things besides solving crimes or catching criminals. It followed that the term “police services” accurately described at least four activities: preventing crime, arresting criminals, maintaining order, and solving problems.
As the foundation and the chiefs with whom it worked probed more deeply into these issues, it became clear that one of the best ways of preventing crime was to maintain order and solve problems. The experiments that made the foundation famous were those showing how little the mere presence of the police actually deterred crime and revealing how greatly citizens valued officers’ efforts to solve certain problems—individually minor but collectively important—that prevented people from living comfortably with their neighbors.
The foundation has now been in existence for over 40 years, a time in which it has conducted seminal research in police behavior, policy, and procedure and worked to give local agencies the best new information on how to effectively address many of their pressing operational and administrative concerns. The foundation, moreover, has established and refined the capacity to define, design, conduct, and evaluate controlled experiments, as well as tested ways to improve the delivery of police services.
It was the foundation that first brought researchers into a lasting, constructive relationship with law enforcement. It was the foundation, in cooperation with police departments across the country, which did much of the research that led the criminal justice community to question the traditional model of policing and experiment with new approaches. The impact of the foundation on police thinking is evident in the extent to which a new view of policing—one emphasizing a community orientation—has become part of the conventional wisdom.
It was in Kansas City that the foundation conducted a practical test showing that random, preventive patrol might not be the best way to deter crime, paving the way for directed patrol and later problem-oriented policing. Similarly, the foundation was among the first to learn that shortening police response time may have little effect on the chances of catching a burglar or robber, and its research in this area shifted the emphasis away from response time and toward managing calls for service. It was the foundation that began to see the advantages of foot patrol and door-to-door surveys as ways of dealing with the public’s fear of crime and disorder. The foundation’s early research on team policing was seen by many as a promising way to address the over-centralization and bureaucratization of police agencies that had further alienated citizens from police. More recently, the foundation has promoted the integration of problem analysis—the process of conducting in-depth, systematic analysis and assessment of crime problems at the local level—into modern police practices.
The innovations demanded by community- and problem-oriented policing require departments to incorporate a geographic, spatial, or local focus, and emphasize the importance of integrating crime-mapping techniques into departmental management, analysis, and enforcement practices. The foundation’s Crime Mapping and Problem Analysis Laboratory works to provide practical assistance and information to law enforcement agencies and develop the physical and theoretical infrastructure necessary for further innovations in police and criminological theory.
From its inception, the foundation has worked to ensure that police use the minimum amount of force that is necessary to discharge their responsibilities under the law. Foundation research on the use of deadly force was cited at length in a landmark 1985 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Tennessee v. Garner.
The foundation has fulfilled another fundamental component of its mission by making sure to transfer its findings to local agencies for practical, everyday use by police administrators and police officers. Its comprehensive use of force research led the foundation to launch a multi-year research and development effort to develop technologies that help police agencies monitor officers whose behavior places departments at risk, erodes public confidence, increases liability, and undermines effectiveness. More than an early-warning system, The RAMS™ (Risk Analysis Management System) offers a comprehensive approach to ensuring proper training, accountability, quality service, and community satisfaction with police services.
When the foundation began its work, social experimentation in policing was a developing field rather than a well-established discipline. It was also at this time that the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration opened the doors of higher education for police officers, and colleges and universities across the nation created criminal justice departments to fill the needs of this emerging student group. These developments produced the robust field of policing research that exists today and a cohort of policing scholars. Among the most imminent of these academic luminaries are David Bayley, Egon Bittner, James Fyfe, George Kelling, Mark Moore, Lawrence Sherman, and David Weisburd, all of whom spent part of their careers working with the Police Foundation. Besides nurturing talent in the field, the foundation has supported new forums for debating and disseminating ideas to improve American policing, and it has helped create independent organizations dedicated to the advancement of policing, such as the Police Executive Research Forum, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and the Police Management Association.
Notable Accomplishments / Recognition
It was the foundation that first brought researchers into a lasting, constructive relationship with law enforcement. It was the foundation, in cooperation with police departments across the country, which did much of the research that led the criminal justice community to question the traditional model of policing and experiment with new approaches. The impact of the foundation on police thinking is evident in the extent to which a new view of policing—one emphasizing a community orientation—has become part of the conventional wisdom.
When the foundation began its work, social experimentation in policing was a developing field rather than a well-established discipline. It was also at this time that the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration opened the doors of higher education for police officers, and colleges and universities across the nation created criminal justice departments to fill the needs of this emerging student group. These developments produced the robust field of policing research that exists today and a cohort of policing scholars. Among the most imminent of these are David Bayley, Egon Bittner, James Fyfe, George Kelling, Mark Moore, Lawrence Sherman, Craig Uchida, and David Weisburd, all of whom spent part of their careers working with the Police Foundation. Besides nurturing talent in the field, the foundation has supported new forums for debating and disseminating ideas to improve American policing, and it has helped create independent organizations dedicated to the advancement of policing, such as the Police Executive Research Forum, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and the Police Management Association.
The first study to impact police operational practices was the Police Foundation’s landmark Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment (KCPPE). This study showed that increasing or decreasing the level of routine preventive patrol–the backbone of police work–had no appreciable effect on crime, fear of crime, or citizen satisfaction with police services. The experiment demonstrated that resources ordinarily allocated to preventive patrol could safely be devoted to other, perhaps more productive, crime control strategies. More specifically, the results indicated that police deployment strategies could be based on targeted crime prevention and service goals rather than on routine preventive patrol.
A good deal was learned from the Kansas City experience about what to expect in mounting, conducting, and evaluating major experiments in policing. The overarching message of this seminal experiment, however, is that “police practices should be based on scientific evidence about what works best..
The Newark Foot Patrol Experiment showed that the addition of foot patrol, in a mix of police strategies, measurably and significantly affected citizens’ feelings of safety and mobility in their neighborhoods. The landmark fear reduction experiment in Houston and Newark was the first empirical study of police efforts to reduce fear of crime. The project demonstrated that if police officers work harder at talking and listening to citizens, they can reduce citizen fear of crime and, in some cases, reduce crime itself.
Both of these studies demonstrated the importance of policing tactics that fostered a closer relationship between the police and the community, and served as a major catalyst for an increased focus by both researchers and police practitioners on the specific elements associated with community-oriented policing. Foot patrol and police-community cooperation were integral parts of Herman Goldstein's approach that helped synthesize some of the key elements of community policing into a broader and more innovative framework called problem-oriented policing,
Foundation research has also had a profound effect on how police respond to domestic violence. A study in Detroit and Kansas City showed the importance of threats as predictors of domestic violence, and, in the first scientifically controlled test of the effects of arrest for any crime, the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment found that arrest was the most effective way to prevent further violence.
From its inception, the foundation has worked to ensure that police use the minimum amount of force that is necessary to discharge their responsibilities under the law. Foundation research on the use of deadly force was cited at length in a landmark 1985 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Tennessee v. Garner.
Its comprehensive use of force research led the foundation to launch a multi-year research and development effort to develop technologies that help police agencies monitor officers whose behavior places departments at risk, erodes public confidence, increases liability, and undermines effectiveness. More than an early-warning system, The RAMS™ (Risk Analysis Management System) offers a comprehensive approach to ensuring proper training, accountability, quality service, and community satisfaction with police services.
A guiding tenet of the foundation is that to advance, policing—like other public services—deserves the best of thorough, objective study, and the impetus of new ideas that have the widest possible dissemination. Foundation research findings are published as an information service and are widely used in college, university, and law enforcement training classrooms in the U.S. and abroad.