Citizen Perspectives on Community Policing: A Case Study in Athens, Georgia

Assessing citizen satisfaction with local governmental services and their delivery and distribution is essential in evaluating, restructuring, and implementing effective governmental policies. Citizen evaluations provide public officials with important clues about the perceived performance of local agencies, an important factor in inner-city areas where residents have expressed considerable dissatisfaction with the delivery of police services. This book examines the perspectives of inner-city residents in Athens, Georgia and focuses on policing, community policing, and the co-production of law enforcement.

A qualitative, non-experimental research design with focus-group interviewing is used to collect, explore, and examine the perceptions and attitudes of East Athens residents and community policing officers. The focus-group technique enables the researchers to gather in-depth data on the expectations of these inner-city residents and the implications for public administrations serving this community. The results of this study examine not only the police service delivery and community policing effort in question, but also more general efforts of implementation and evaluation of public policies.