Andragogical Instruction for Effective Police Training By Robert ...

Addressing community policing, Miller and Hess (pp. 20–21) suggested that it consists of (1) building comprehensive partnerships between the police and the community, (2) collaborating in identifying and solving problems within the community, and (3) mitigating and preventing crime. Indisputably, its spirit and import has made significant strides toward bridging the many voids that have existed between the police and the community, however, not without the growing pains often associated with entrepreneurial growth and development.

More recently, advancing the philosophy of community policing has been the management practice of Compstat, a concept that originated with the New York City Police Department in 1994. Deriving its name from a computer-based program file called “Compare Stats” (short for comparative statistics), CompStat represents a philosophical management tool that emphasizes “accountability and discretion at all levels of the organization” (Bratton, 2003, cited in Henry, 2003, p. iv). Henry (2003), in his book entitled The Compstat Paradigm (2003), explained that before Bratton's arrival as police commissioner, the New York City Police Department “had no functional system in place to rapidly and accurately capture crime statistics or use them for strategic planning.” Looking to capitalize on the goals of community policing, he explained that as a result of introducing CompStat, the New York City Police Department underwent a tumultuous transformation from what he described as a “rather passive and reactive agency that lacked energy and focus, to an agency that responds quickly and strategically to crime and quality of life trends with an unprecedented vigor.” Simply stated, CompStat represents a management process “that identifies problems and measures the results of its problem-solving activities.” “What was once simply a web of interconnecting lines has come to resemble a network of complimentary policies, practices and strategies that combine to make the Criminal Justice enterprise…reach a new level of effectiveness” (pp. 8–12). In Bratton's words, CompStat involves