Policing as a Reassuring Factor: Good Policing can Reduce Fear

A sign means something.  When you see a stop sign there’s no mystery about its meaning.  Some signs are not as clear, and we have to interpret their meaning.  For example, when someone sees neighborhood disorder or social incivilities, such as obvious drug dealing, these serve as warning signals about the potential for crime victimization.  This can then lead to a fear of crime.  Sometimes other factors can come into play that impact a person’s fear.  These “other factors” interfere with the original sign, signaling something that makes you feel safe.  This is important for people who live in areas that suffer from a multitude of disorders or incivilities.  What are some of the other factors that can influence a person’s perception of safety?  If we know what those factors are, can we increase them, thus improve feelings of safety? 

Joining the podcast is Doctor Travis M. Carter, an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.  He discusses his recent study titled “Explaining the relationship between neighborhood disorder and crime fear.

Main Topics

• Incivilities create the perception of crime, but social capital, perceptions of enhanced informal social control and social cohesion, serve as cognitive heuristics that signal to people that their chances of victimization are lower.
• The “reassurance factor” describes people’s confidence in their local police as directly tied to fear of crime in their neighborhood. 
• The research findings suggest that perceptions of ongoing local social processes by neighbors and the police are fundamental to understanding why disorder is associated with fear of crime.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:34

A sign means something. When you see a stop sign, there's no mystery about what it means. Some signs are not as clear. If we see something vague, we have to interpret its meaning. For example, when someone sees a neighborhood disorder or civil incivilities such as obvious drug dealing, or or they see physical incivilities, such as a litter or a dilapidated building, or these serve as warning signals about the potential for crime victimization. Or this can then lead to the fear of crime or we commonly associate a direct relationship between one and then the other, or we see a lot of dumping, and this assumes on our part that the area is not safe or and this increases our fear of crime. But sometimes other factors can come into play that impact a person's fear, or these are other factors or interfere with the original sign or signaling something that makes you feel safe. This is important for people who live in areas that suffer from a multitude of disorders and incivilities. Or what are some of the other factors that can influence a person's perception of safety? You might ask, or well, if we know what those factors are, we can increase them, thus improving feelings of safety. Joining me on today's podcast is Dr. Travis Carter. He's an assistant professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska in Omaha. He earned his PhD in criminal justice from Michigan State University for just two years ago. He was here to discuss his recent study titled Explaining the Relationship Between Neighborhood Disorder and Fear of Crime or the Perceptual Role of Neighbors and the Police. Now you earned your PhD just two years ago, and this article was actually published in 2001, so you're one of those uh excellent overachievers that uh we've been seeing around the criminal justice uh policing research world for the past several years. Now you studied racial profiling and policing for your dissertation. What shifted your attention to this particular issue?

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah, that's right. It's been a minute since I've worked on this particular topic, but it remains a focal part of my research interests more broadly. And and really credit goes to my advisor at the time, Dr. Scott Wolfe, who is also in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, where I got my PhD, who got me into policing as well as the topic more broadly. Um, and and my research focuses on how officers use their discretion to produce optimal and then sometimes suboptimal outcomes for the folks that they protect and serve. And so my research kind of straddles this world between, you know, how do we improve the quality of policing, but also negotiating this world where there can be instances when it's not perfect. Um, and so, you know, looking at communities is really fascinating to me just because um it gives us some potential information as to how to improve that quality, right? And so, you know, I really look at how we can help officers improve outcomes and their enforcement practices to the extent that I can and really help them, you know, move the needle towards evidence-based policing uh for crime prevention.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Now, since perception, at least as far as I'm concerned, perception is not reality, why is this area of importance or relevance to the police?

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Yeah, absolutely. It's a really good question. And, you know, one of the things that, you know, for crime prevention, at least, that I find fascinating is that fear of crime is like a barometer, both for criminologists and police practitioners. It's not perfect, but you can definitely tell a lot about what's going on in a community based on how safe that they feel. You know, if they feel like the police are doing a good job in their community, if they feel that they're worried about walking, you know, home at night. Uh, these are all things, these are pieces of information that we can you know lean on whenever we talk about you know allocating resources effectively beyond just looking at crime hotspots on a map. And honestly, there can be too much of a good thing, too. And so being able to, you know, assess, you know, not only crime, but this police presence in these communities, uh, perception beyond just subjective indicators can can tell us a lot about how to do things you know in an ideal world.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Right. Now, I've I've briefly covered perception and how it influences a person's understanding, but can you give us a bit more depth on how perception influences a person's understanding of their environment?

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Yeah, it's uh it's it's really fascinating. It's actually one of the things that got me into research in the first place. I wanted to understand why people think about the things that they do and what kind of makes them feel safe, what makes them feel unsafe, right? And so policing was a natural part of that interest as well. But, you know, uh one of the things that always uh, you know, stood out to me early on in reading about this kind of work is that uh it's one thing to see um broken windows and abandoned houses, but it's another to connect it back to how you think about your own personal safety, um, and maybe perhaps how you think about the police and how you think about your neighbors. And so uh there's some really fascinating work out there that actually looks at, you know, uh, for instance, Joshua Hinkle and folks, um, they conduct some studies where they they basically uh use Google Maps and they're looking at um neighborhoods and they're looking at what most researchers would call our objective indicators of disorder. You talked about drug dealing, loitering, broken windows, these are all objective indicators, but it may not necessarily seem as scary or as alarming to ordinary residents in those communities. And so seeing this objective indicator is, you know, as a presence is one thing, but then actually interpreting it from someone who lives in that area, that's a totally different thing. Um and so being able to kind of take that in, right, from the from the people that you're going to serve and understanding how they see this world uh not only helps us inform the right kinds of practices for them, uh, but also to understand what becomes then unusual and unsafe for them, right? That's when we can try and translate that information into actual actionable practices.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Aaron Powell Yeah, it's almost it reminds me of uh police officers uh when they when they get to know a neighborhood, they and there's some research on this. Um I think Klinger talked about this. The the uh the the normal crime. Aaron Ross Powell What they're used to in certain areas, so they might be patrolling one neighborhood where they're familiar with a certain amount of low crime or just you know general disorder versus other places where they anticipate higher levels of some types of crime. So, yeah, officers are going to have those perceptions as well. Now, you you then discussed in the article neighborhood incivilities and this thing called social capital as uh informal social controls. And what's the difference?

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Yeah, so you know, when we talk about incivilities, right, in in a neighborhood, what we're really talking about is just just this presence of potential uh disorder, uh basically looking again at broken windows, uh drug dealing, things, things that we would necessarily, as researchers or as you know, average, unaccustomed folks to the neighborhood seeing as out of place. Um but again, taking that information, right, and being able to translate it into how people feel about their well-being, um, what we you know, what we generally talk about in theory, if you will, uh, is is this you know perception of control, right? So you see a community starting to deteriorate, uh, again, one thing, but the the link in this chain, right, as we talk about um and and not only police research, but but social science research is is uh control. And so how you see these uh these broken windows is, you know, well, do you think that the community is investing in this neighborhood? Probably not. And what do you think about the police in this neighborhood? Well, do you think that they have a presence here? And so this kind of recalls back to some of the um uh older work. I don't want to age, you know, or you know, age myself or age anyone else in the room here.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

I do it, I do it to myself all the time, go right ahead.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Own it. Yeah, and well, and so it reminds me a lot of, you know, Wilson and Kelling, and they talk about broken windows policing and and what this kind of means down the road when we talk about, you know, not only just crime, but how people feel invested to potentially partake in preventing crime. Um, and so this is kind of an interesting process for police researchers and police officers because uh what it tells us and what we'll talk about here later is that uh police actually have a really important role in kind of either uh or primarily interdicting that process. They are a middleman or middle person that people connect their community to, but also have a hand in potentially shaping the subsequent feelings of safety in those neighborhoods, which we know to be very important uh for for their overall well-being.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Okay, so this this gets me to the next question. So this is a good transition. I I like when these happen. Um of the quote unquote other factors I hinted at in the introduction was the police. Now, your paper used the term um reassurance factor. So, what what is the reassurance factor?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Yeah, so we're just gonna go uh back a little bit further in time. Uh so we're gonna talk about uh a study, you know, in the 70s. Uh Bond uh originally started talking about this idea that that the police kind of uh create um in an ideal world this this feeling of reassurance, that there is this investment, um, that the criminal justice system is is you know using your tax dollars to to put into practice something that is going to ideally make you feel safe. Uh and then again, in an ideal world, that's the goal. And so um some other scholars in the field that that study policing, like Wes Cogan, you know, they took this idea and they said, yes, this makes sense. Let's let's really start to kind of play with it a little bit further. Um, and so you can think about reassurance in terms of confidence that the police are gonna, you know, be there, and then also uh believing that they're going to uh you know potentially do something about it, right? You can be there, but to then do something is totally different. And so uh those kind of competing ideas help us understand the role that police have as this middle person in this causal chain between not ideal community feeling really unsafe. And so the the police role is is something that's been talked about a lot, uh, but this study helps kind of uncover um what exactly under the hood do we expect law enforcement officers to be able to do.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yeah, the one of the uh uh upsides of doing this kind of research is that when I would teach res research methods, you could draw these on the board. Okay, you have A over here, you have Z on the other side, and then you've got all kinds of things that can come in between. And unfortunately with the podcast, we can't we can't provide that imagery, but that's basically what we're gonna be getting at is the you've got A on the one side, which is the disorder and incivilities, or the Z at the other end is gonna be the fear, and what are those B's, C's, D's, and those other uh things that come in between. Now uh you you you uh You also mentioned uh past research that shows that if a person sees disorder, they'll feel a sense of fear. Now, beyond the police reassurance factor that you just talked about, what are some of those other factors that were in your study?

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Yeah, correct. So yeah, it's you know, uh without getting into the math of it, right, all the all the kind of modeling madness is nobody wants to do math on the podcast. Goodness gracious, no, absolutely not. So, no, we're here to talk about it, right? And so we can talk about communities as being, you know, it's it's a system of control, right? So we can steal from some uh some researchers, Bursick and Grasmick, they talk about how neighborhoods help prevent crime. And so they think of it as it's a matter of control and what your neighbors do in that community to potentially prevent crime from happening. And so we kind of take these ideas and we say that, yeah, we we expect the police to be there to be able to uh respond to calls for service and crime whenever this pops up. Um, but we also, to some extent, anticipate that our neighbors are going to also intervene if something happens, especially at a really low level or at a very high level. So you can think about instances where maybe there's somebody that's in your neighborhood going door to door and they're you know knocking on windows or looking through doors to try to see if uh you know something is is uh potentially easily uh you know available as we talk about it nowadays as porch pirates. But these are these are your low-stakes situations where neighbors could potentially intervene. And in a community that is really tight socially and organized, we would suggest that this is probably gonna happen. Um and at the high end, same thing. Whenever you, you know, you know, God forbid it ever happens, but if there's a homicide in your neighborhood, ideally someone's going to call the police. There's going to be a response once things settle over. And so when we talk about connecting potentially uh disorganized communities that have some, you know, not ideal situations going on in terms of the structure or what people see, um, you know, the police are part of that equation or part of that picture, um, but also how you view your neighbors, right? And so the extent that you think neighbors share similar values that you do, right, uh, then ideally they're going to intervene if something were to happen. But whenever you start to see a community fall apart, right, physically, um traditionally what we tend to see, at least from the research side of things, is that people will see that and they will think that their neighbors might not necessarily share the same values that they do. We call this kind of an erosion, if you will, of their sense of, you know, that your neighbors have your back or, you know, that they will actually do something. And when you don't think that anyone is going to help you, chances are you're not going to feel as safe, right? There's going to be a concern about your own welfare in those situations. And so that's essentially the other half of the of the coin that we look at in this study is how do people think about uh safety from the perspective that they live in a community and that there are two key actors, if you were groups of actors here that could play a role the police and then also their neighbors. So that's what we dig into.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Right. I recall reading an article, it was probably 20 years ago now, and it talked about it mentioned the uh the social web, I think they called it, in an in the neighborhood when people get to know each other and how far the web goes. And what they hinted at, but they didn't get into was uh two things uh that I thought were going to be really important. The number of younger kids now, and we're not talking adolescents and teenagers here, uh we're talking kids who are like eight, nine years old, and maybe again I'm showing my age, where you went to your friend's house down the street and played or and my mother knew Mrs. Smith but didn't know her well, but she knew her well enough to be able to call, hey, I scott there, and vice versa. So that was something that I I I thought would be an interesting c component to study is how many kids are in a neighborhood that that create that web where the parents might not know each other very well, but they know each other well enough that they can contact each other just in case something's going on. Now, jumping into your survey or into your study. You used a survey to get it get these questions, this information. How did you meet it how did you measure disorder and fear and the other variables? And you can talk about the survey a little bit as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Yeah, so um I'll uh I'll I'll preface this by first mentioning that um me is probably doing a lot of uh heavy lifting in that word. Um credit goes to my advisor again. I know we mentioned them at the beginning of uh this this episode here, but um Dr. Scott Wolf, uh he and his uh folks, his research team, uh had originally administered a survey. Um, and this is in a uh southeastern city uh back in 2013. Um so they sent this mail survey out to about 4,000 foot uh 4,000 households. Uh they got a response rate of about 46%. So they had about 1,600 surveys. That's pretty good. Which is a lot.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Yeah, it's that's a number that I think most of us wish we could hit nowadays. Oh yeah, you know, yeah, especially post-COVID. So um it's it's in a good spot um in terms of that survey distribution. Um, but what we actually, or you know, what they had asked, what we had collaborated with um were questions about how people viewed their community, right? And so we call these questions uh, you know, in relation to disorder, right? We talked about incivilities, disorder. These are kind of one and the same. Um, but these are questions that you know directly ask residents, hey, um, you know, how often are you seeing people you know dealing drugs um in your community? Uh, you know, is there a lot of vandalism, dilapidated buildings, broken windows? And and we asked them, you know, from a scale of not a problem at all to a really serious problem, you know, how how much of a problem is this for you, right, in your neighborhood? And so these kind of set up, if you will, the foundation for the study. We wanted to know, okay, your neighborhood probably has something to do with how you think about safety. And this is where we start that question. Uh, but to kind of get to the other end of that you know spectrum, you know, how people think about their safety, we asked them two questions. And these are questions that are uh, you know, they're kind of old school now. Um, right. So these questions come from uh the National Crime Victimization Survey way long ago. Um so we we stole from them because they ask good questions.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

We borrow. As researchers, we borrow.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Yes, thank you. Yes, Scott. Yeah, we borrow. Uh that's the right way to put it. Everything is incremental in learning, right? So we stand on the shoulders of giants. Yes, we do. Um yes, and so these questions, you know, we we wanted to know, you know, do they feel safe? Uh you know, walking home at night in their neighborhood. We thought that was a really good way to kind of think about it. Um, and then more importantly, uh, you know, do you feel safe in your own home? Right? These are these are you know primary questions that people are, you know, to the extent that these are actually not ideal situations for folks, they're gonna be top of mind, right? And that's how you kind of want to think about measuring the problem. Um, so we these are the you know, you think about the the end result, what we're looking at is the safety question. Um, at the beginning of of every everything is the neighborhood questions, and then we kind of reach towards the middle, and that's how people think about the police, and that's how people think about their neighbors, right? So um to kind of measure uh people's perceptions of the police, we we asked them, you know, do you think that there's enough police around in your neighborhood? Okay. Um, and do you think they're doing a good job? So you can kind of couch this into effectiveness and presence. Um, of course, you know, in a perfect world, we ask them a million questions. Uh, Scott, I don't know about you, but I certainly don't have time to answer a million questions.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Um, and so we uh we tend to work give people 10 minutes and that's about what they'll take.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Yeah, exactly. And nowadays it feels like five in a world where you know everything's a little bit quicker in terms of that dopamine response on on social media. So, so two questions on police, and then uh we ask them another two questions on their neighbors. We wanted to know whether or not they felt like uh their neighbors shared similar values to as they did, right? So kind of tapping into this idea that if you share similar values, you'll likely help out if something were to go awry. Um, conversely, if your neighborhood's not doing so hot, maybe you don't think that they have similar values as you do. Um, and then and then the key, the key thing that we wanted to tap into was this this idea of control. Um, are your neighbors uh going to be counted on if something were to happen? Um and you know, would they exact the kind of control that you would anticipate to help keep you safe in your community? So we ask them all these questions, right? And ideally, what we're trying to see here is whether or not their perceptions of the community lead to their you know feelings of safety. Uh, but then we have to do some fancy statistics to basically link these things all together. Um we won't necessarily have to go into the details of that, but no, we do find some pretty interesting stuff.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

And then so skipping over the statistical methods that nobody's interested in hearing, and what did you find when it comes to the the the different uh intervening variables on whether somebody felt fearful or not?

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Yeah, so yeah, I think high level, right? Um maybe not a surprise, but you know, how you see your community uh drastically impacts your feelings of safety, right? So if you see that your neighborhood isn't looking great, if if things are falling apart, uh maybe unsurprisingly, you don't feel particularly safe. I know I certainly wouldn't, so the narrative kind of sticks, especially on a personal level. Um, but we wanted to know why this was, right? We wanted to know what links that idea of your neighborhood being unsafe, right, to how you feel about your own welfare. Um, and that really kind of goes down into two things, right? It goes down into whether or not you think that your neighbors are going to help intervene if something were to happen, right? So we talk about this as informal control, so uh non-police response, right? And that intervention, right, of your neighbors is a key linking mechanism, right, between your neighborhood and your safety. But what's fascinating is that it's not just about your neighbors, it's actually about the police too. Really? The police are right down the middle, right? So you think about your neighborhood, it's not just how you see your neighbors, you're also simultaneously thinking about what are the police doing in this neighborhood? Are they contributing to um better outcomes or are they not doing anything? And perhaps it's the disinvestment, right, that they're feeling when they see that this neighborhood is falling apart that is right telling them, hey, I don't think that they're gonna help me out. So naturally I feel unsafe. Um, and that is really where we see these kind of relationships drive that relationship. As a whole in terms of your safety and the community welfare.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Okay. So what are some of the implications of your finding when it comes to police leaders, uh the police agencies, personnel, or anything like that? What does this information contribute to their understanding?

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Yeah, no, it's uh just selfishly, um, this is a question that my advisor would give me uh with pretty much every paper we ever wrote. Um so he would always put me on the hot seat and say, well, well, you know, what are they gonna care about? And and you know, it's a good exercise. It's one that I don't think that we as researchers ask ourselves enough. Um, and the picture I would say, at least for for um leadership, is that you know, fear of crime, how people think about their communities, is a really good tool, right? It's a really good tool for uh monitoring. It tells us whenever things are not necessarily going as planned. Um again, it's more than just dots on a map, right? Which is something that uh requires us to be a little bit more pragmatic as to how to measure, but it's really informative because it's the perception, it's not always the objective presence that that really kind of sparks fear. That's one of the things that we kind of talk about at the beginning of this episode. And importantly, right, that kind of flare-up on the barometer of fear of crime, right? What's symptomatic of that is how people think about the police. If you have a police presence there, right, we tend to see positive outcomes for safety. And we also know that it doesn't just map on, you know, with crime prevention, which we know is already associated. There's a lot of good research out there, but we also now see that it also impacts how people feel, right, which is which is another important social determinant of their health. It's great for community organization. It helps, you know, families raise in positive communities. So having a police presence is really important. Um, one of the things that we don't necessarily talk about here, right, but it's something that is observed in other research that I would highly encourage, right? Police leaders kind of keep in the back of their mind, which they probably already know, um, is that it's not about too, you know, we don't want to go to a world where there's too much presence, right? There is research out there that kind of tells us, you know, maybe um having heavy-handed approaches, right, kind of have some potential deleterious outcomes, right, down the road. So we want to find a good balance, right? If there's no investment, not ideal, right? Too much investment, that can also be kind of a bit of a tall task, right, for community safety. So kind of recognizing when fear is spiking, that we are probably in a world where we need to think about what is the police presence and the quality of the police activity in those areas. Because if they're feeling disinvested, right, they're feeling like this this community is eroded, right? Well, naturally they're going to connect it back to the police. And so we want to be able to understand how do we fine-tune that in a way that we can create better outcomes for the communities. So that would be my big self for that.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Is there a second that you want to mention?

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Yeah. So I would say that, you know, in terms of you know how people think about the police, right, it's not just about presence, it's about legitimacy. One of the things that we find that's a little bit smaller, right? So you talk about the magnitude of the influence, if you will, um on people's safety uh perceptions, right? You know, presence is a big deal. It's it's a super big deal. We don't want to underestimate that. Um, but kind of hiding in the background, but but equally uh, you know, equally of you know, at least interpretive value is how people think about the police as a legitimate institution, right? If you have trust in the police, that also, as we've observed, kind of maps onto your feelings of safety.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

And the way that we can kind of think about that in terms of a practical takeaway for police leaders is that it's not just about being present, it's about how you engage in the community, right? We know in studying community policing, right, and problem-oriented policing is that you know, fine-tuning that quality by elevating, you know, community voices, by having this constant dialogue, right, in an interactive sense, uh, making people feel involved in these communities and part of the process helps us get towards better outcomes, not just for crime prevention, like we know, but also potentially for fear of crime. Um, and again, fear of crime is just another way to kind of think about welfare in a community. And so thinking about this legitimacy angle here, right? It's it's important that we don't lose sight of you know, thinking about what we do in those communities, not just that we are present in them, right? So that's the kind of two, the two-piece takeaway I would give for for leaders.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Aaron Powell It seems to me that we're in the past several years, you know, 20 ish or possibly even more than that, the idea of uh uh hotspots. I think you just mentioned hotspots, getting the officers to go there. But then the the constant question I'm getting uh from people I'm dealing with uh in you know my current world or is what are the cops doing there? And that's one of the bearers of any of the research, finding out what the cops are doing when they're actually there for the you know twelve to fifteen minutes or are they sitting in their car like a potter plant, or are they getting out walking around and talking to whoever happens to be in the area for uh and the idea of the officer friendly it it sounds goofy, but you know, officers are I I I one I one cop said this to me, and I think I said this on the podcast before or you don't have to be an asshole to an asshole for and it that was just the the idea was that you're right, you can be a decent human being and have a conversation about you know whatever's going on in that area of football, you know, from the the the soccer that's on TV these days or all these other kinds of things. So that seems to be one of those things that maybe police officer uh uh leaders could be. The legitimacy of getting the cops out there and go doing quality interaction, even if it's not a law enforcement activity, whether it's you know, you're at the hotspot, kind of law enforcement, or whether it's some sort of community function, you know, during the summer times around here, um these areas they often have different uh uh you know festivals and whatever, or even if it's just uh at a park and have the cops showing up with one of those pop-up tents, um, some things to hand out, and it it increases the legitimacy of the police.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Yeah, absolutely. You know what I think is is always kind of fascinating to me is you you if you look at the broader literature on hotspots policing, right? You see the meta-analyses come out year after year, um, and they and they generally tell us that they prevent crime. But the question, the black box is often, well, what are they doing in those communities like you mentioned? Um, and and what it you know kind of reminds me of in particular is is uh it's it's you know, like the Philadelphia, I I'm thinking about the Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment uh back in like 2010-ish with with Ratcliffe and folks. Um, you know, it's it's not just about being present, it's about what you do in those interactions, right? So, you know, you can you can boost the number of interactions, but like you said, assholes to assholes doesn't make anything better, right? It's just creating negative outcomes in the opportunities that you're trying to increase, right? So, you know, having these foot patrols, having this presence is one thing, but what you do in those interactions really matters more. And that kind of goes back to some of the some of the original work on problem-oriented policing. I think about Goldstein, right? Um, in the late 70s, when he's talking about, well, what do we, what do we mean when we say that we want officers to be problem-oriented, right? Problem solvers. Well, it means having productive interactions with community members.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

All right, this is this has been some great information. Is there anything we missed that you wanted to mention?

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Yeah, so you know, I think at a high level, right, as researchers, we're always uh prone to kind of criticizing our own work. And and I think, you know, there's a healthy way that we can go about doing this, right? And so I do want to caveat that some of the findings that we talked about here today, right? It's one research study. One of the fun things about research is that we build off of each other's successes and also some of our headaches. Sure. Um, and so being able to kind of recognize that, you know, this is one study, this is one city, um, it's one slice of time. Uh, you know, there are potentially other things that we need to think about here that we're not talking about, right? So we talked about the quality of policing. One of the things that we find in our study is that presence matters. But as we just talked about as well, it's the quality of the interactions when you are present, right? So, you know, one of the things that we want to really kind of hammer on for future research for practitioners that are interested in fine-tuning their own operations is thinking how do we have not just interactions with community members in areas of need, but how do we enhance the quality of those interactions? And that's a hard question. Uh, but what we do know is that by having at least an open dialogue with the community members, that that's a good first step and often is a very organic process. Um, the only other thing that I'd really kind of want to take away here, right, as well, is that fear of crime is one of those kind of old school things that we talk about in research, but it often rears its ugly head in the worst of circumstances, whenever communities are falling apart and there's already a really um, there's there's a prevalent disinvestment in those neighborhoods. That's when those conversations tend to arise. You're not usually hearing these conversations when people feel safe and when everything's roses. Um, and so whenever we think about how to kind of monitor right welfare in communities, I would encourage you know folks to think about this in a proactive sense. Um, that making you know community surveys more of a normal thing is a first step in the right direction whenever we talk about measuring welfare over time and trying to get communities a little bit more open. I think that those lines of communication sometimes become one way, or they're only productive whenever there's a really bad situation occurring. Um, normalizing conversations in times of peace, right, I think can get us in a really good direction, not just for research, but also just to keep communities a little bit better off.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

Right. That's something I'm gonna try to track down, somebody who knows about doing community surveys uh in a cost-effective manner, because they can be such valuable re sources of information, but they can be extremely expensive for some places to do it to do it. Travis, great information. I really appreciate your time on the podcast today.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Thanks so much, Scott. Really appreciate being here.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

My pleasure, and thanks for coming on, and you have a great day. Take care.