In a mid-sized Midwestern city--population 250,000--Susan L. Miller spent several years interviewing a diverse mix of police officers and citizens, often spending four hours a day in squad cars and four on foot.

The associate professor of sociology and criminal justice was conducting research on gender traits as part of a larger project that evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of community policing.

She and her team wanted to know if feminine characteristics--such as trust, cooperation, compassion, interpersonal communication and a nonthreatening demeanor--had a place in police work, where such masculine traits as toughness, aloofness and physical intimidation are highly prized.

Miller's findings are reported in a book, Gender and Community Policing: Walking the Talk, recently published by Northeastern University Press.

She found that "feminine" traits are at the heart of successful community policing, where officers become part of a neighborhood often interacting positively as a force for change rather than simply as protectors and enforcers.

"If community policing is a success, people in the neighborhoods feel safer and are more trusting of the police. Residents will give police information about crimes, and police will have more success in fighting crime," she says.

Until she became interested in community policing, Miller had only taught courses and experienced "citizen ride-alongs" in a large East Coast city where, at times, she says she saw police physically brutalize helpless suspects and use racist, misogynistic and homophobic epithets to harass and terrify.

Even though she saw some quality policing, she says she felt those officers lacking in compassion and professionalism hurt any effort to improve the situation in these cities. In fact, she says, their actions and attitudes often made it worse.

A friend of hers, a sports sociologist working with neighborhood police officers (NPOs) in a Midwestern city, invited her to spend a day with a female NPO. What Miller observed challenged her "preconceptions and past experiences" and caused her to investigate community policing and gender.

As an NPO, an officer spends eight hours a day patrolling a neighborhood on foot and is encouraged to interact with the people in the community and even to organize activities. They make arrests and do follow-up with victims and offenders, getting back-up and support when needed from squad cars and detectives.

"We'd spend eight-hours-a-day in the neighborhoods. We did hundreds and hundreds of hours of fieldwork and in-depth interviews with officers who had been involved in neighborhood policing from the start to officers who had only recently become involved," Miller says.

Miller's research had the cooperation of the local police department, which created its community policing program in 1986. Several women officers and officers of color came up with the idea as a way to resolve tension between residents and police and help improve quality of life in the neighborhoods.

What started with two neighborhoods has grown to 12.

"Initially, only women and minority police were attracted to community policing, but after hearing positive feedback, white male officers became interested," Miller says. "Interestingly, as more white male officers became involved, the community policing program gained legitimacy and popularity."

For men who had been "traditional police officers," Miller found that the experience of community policing could be life-altering. While most wouldn't describe the skills they had to use in the neighborhoods as "feminine," they did realize they were developing skills that they hadn't been using in squad cars.

In the book, Keith, a former NPO, was quoted: "Being an NPO developed my communication skills. It really helped me deal with interpersonal relationships. It helped me understand what's going on in people's lives, as opposed to what I think should be going on in their lives."

In some cases, women officers who were not anxious to adopt macho attitudes found that they had to become more assertive and threatening when involved in crime in their neighborhoods.
"A lot of times, there's no choice but to fight," Lisa, a community officer, said. "If we're going to the cement, we're all going together....When I can't get anywhere by talking, I know how to handle the situation another way."

Miller found that if the NPO could adjust his or her personality to accept some feminine traits, the result was a climate of trust, respect and safety in the neighborhood. But, in communities where the NPO was unable to communicate, cooperate, trust and show compassion, there was a feeling of surveillance, harassment and fear. "If it's implemented incorrectly, community policing can do damage," Miller says.

She concludes her book with 10 policy recommendations for police forces that have or are considering community policing. The recommendations deal with gender issues and make suggestions for more effective crime fighting within community policing programs.