An Overview of The Kansas City Police Experiment

The Kansas City Police experiment began in October 1972 and continued through 1973. This experiment was conducted by the Kansas police department and evaluated by the Police Foundation. Patrols were varied within 15 police beats. Routine preventive patrol was eliminated in five beats, labeled “reactive” beats (meaning officers entered these areas only in response to calls from residents). Normal, routine patrol was maintained in five “control” beats. In five “proactive” beats, patrol was intensified by two to three times the norm (Foundation, 2016). Stimulatingly, the citizens of the community did not notice any difference when the level of patrol changed. Additionally, the study shows that whether there was an increasing or decreasing of the level of police patrol, there were no significant effects on the resident.

During this experiment, there was no change in commercial burglaries, auto thefts, larcenies involving auto accessories, robberies, or vandalism–crimes traditionally considered to be prevented by random, highly visible police patrol (Foundation, 2016). Correspondingly, the rate at which crimes were reported to the police did not differ in any important or consistent way across the experimental beats. Citizen fear of crime was not affected by different levels of patrol. Nor was citizen satisfaction with police (Foundation, 2016). The study of the Kansas Police experiment results shows that the highly visible police did not have any impact on crime in selected environments. The use of police in schools has increased dramatically in the past 12 years, largely due to increases in US Department of Justice funding.

Expanding police existence in schools may have appeared well and good as a response to expanding rates of youth violence and school shootings, however, these occasions can’t disclose why police keep on being positioned in school structures today. Many parents believed that having a police officer station in school prevents crime, but research shows that it doesn’t present violence crime. Also, in retrospect, the schools that are most likely to have a daily enforcement presence on school grounds are the schools with the poorest students. Schools, where more than 75 percent of the kids qualify for reduced lunch prices, are much more likely than their peers to have someone on school grounds full-time. Furthermore, A study done by Matthew Theriot of the University of Tennessee found that there wasn’t much difference in serious crime between the schools that had SROs and the schools that didn’t.

I would inform those parents that having police present at most public should only create some problems that led to the student being delinquent at a young age because the students with police present at the school are five times more likely to face criminal charges for “disorderly conduct”. In my opinion, I believe that police departments should try working together with the community in order to address the issue with the limited manpower they have. Community policing can be effective if the citizens feel that they can trust the police.

Once the citizens believe that they can create a healthy relationship with the police, they will provide the police with information and assistance to help prevent criminal activities. Also, there will be more arrest of criminals. Once the police gain the trust of the community, the lack of manpower will not be an issue because the community will become the eyes and ears of the police.