A field experiment on community policing and police legitimacy

Repeated instances of police violence against unarmed civilians have drawn worldwide attention to the contemporary crisis of police legitimacy. Community-oriented policing (COP), which encourages positive, nonenforcement contact between police officers and the public, has been widely promoted as a policy intervention for building public trust and enhancing police legitimacy. To date, however, there is little evidence that COP actually leads to changes in attitudes toward the police. We conducted a randomized trial with a large urban police department. We found that positive contact with police—delivered via brief door-to-door nonenforcement community policing visits—substantially improved residents' attitudes toward police, including legitimacy and willingness to cooperate. These effects remained large in a 21-d follow-up and were largest among nonwhite respondents.