John A. Eterno

The New York City Police Department's Compstat: Dream or Nightmare?:

The Compstat paradigm has revolutionised the way policing is accomplished in democratic countries. Many agencies throughout the world have emulated the Compstat programme which originated in New York City in 1994. The strengths of Compstat have been widely publicised: dramatic reductions in crime, accountability of key staff members, and coordination of various units within an agency. The weaknesses of Compstat are less recognised: due process considerations, community relations, leadership issues, inadequate problemsolving. Weaknesses pose challenges and the authors present an alternative model to address these weaknesses. This model focuses on integrating community policings essential components within the context of the Compstat paradigm. This provides a more powerful mechanism to combat crime and terrorism.

Police Manipulations of Crime Reporting: Insiders’ Revelations

Social scientists have theorized about the corruption of crime reports (Bayley, 1983; Campbell, 1976). Yet, scant empirical research has examined the impact of modern policing methods on the accuracy of crime reporting. Our research uses an anonymous survey of 1,770 retired New York City police officers examining retirees’ experiences with crime report manipulations across their years of retirement. This includes retirees from the community policing as well as police performance management eras. We subject the data to various statistical tests including tabular analysis, graphical trends to visualize the data, MANOVA, and logistic regression to explain report manipulations. Results indicate that the misuse of the performance management system and pressures on officers from management are key explanations for manipulating crime reports. Individual explanatory variables such as gender, educational status, rank, race, and marital status had no effect. Our research supports Bayley’s and Campbell’s theories. We recommend greater transparency to remedy this.

Corruption and Fraud in Policing

In democratic society the police are part of the executive branch. As such, the police are checked and balanced in their power by the judicial and legislative branches. While this helps to minimize corruption, we find that corruption not only exists but morphs to deal with any control mechanisms. We demonstrate this through the New York City Police Department. Tracing this department’s history with corruption exemplifies the issues that law enforcement agencies in free society must deal with. Typical acts of corruption, whistleblowers, the police culture, and what can be done about corrupt activity will all be discussed in this chapter. Ultimately, corruption must be controlled for democratic institutions to properly function.