Date of Conferral

2017

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Public Policy and Administration

Advisor

James D. Mosko

Abstract

The priority shift from community policing to homeland security in local police departments in the United States has threatened the relationships and successes established by community policing, though little empirical research explored the relationship between funding and implementation of homeland security versus community policing objectives among local law enforcement agencies. Using Karl Popper's conceptualization of the liberal democracy as the framework, the purpose of this descriptive study was to examine how trends in funding and implementation of both community policing and homeland security objectives changed among American law enforcement agencies between 1993 and 2013. Data were acquired from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics dataset held by the Bureau of Justice Statistics for the years 1993 to 2013. The data included information from sample sizes that varied by year: 950 to 2,503 American law enforcement agencies with over 100 sworn officers and a stratified random sample of 831 to 2,145 American law enforcement agencies with fewer than 100 sworn officers. Data were examined using descriptive statistics and findings indicate community policing began as the priority, was scaled back after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when homeland security became the priority, and today local police departments are using strategy integration to maintain national security, public safety, and community relations simultaneously. Positive social change implications stemming from this study include the conveyance that communities are still the priority in policing and recommendations to local police agencies to utilize strategy integration to maintain community policing, regardless of the priority.

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