The Role of Leadership in Implementing a Police Organizational Model for Crime Reduction and Accountability

摘要

This article presents a case study that focuses on the role police leadership played in a ‘practice-based’ collaborative partnership between the Port St. Lucie, Florida Police Department (PSLPD) and the lead author of this article that sought to increase the effectiveness of the agency’s crime reduction efforts (i.e. implementation of the Stratified Model of Problem Solving, Analysis, and Accountability) from January 2004 through December 2010. The article describes each phase of the partnership and the different role of leadership in each. The main conclusion illustrated in this case study is that that even when an agency can facilitate external partnerships with researchers, provide resources, and improve their data and analysis capacity, successful organizational change will not be achieved until there is substantial, direct, and active leadership by the agency’s chief and command staff. In other words, this study provides evidence that widespread organizational change for crime reduction in police agencies does not occur from the ‘outside-in’, the ‘bottom-up’, or from the ‘middle-out’, but from the ‘top-down.’