Assessing the need for organizational change in rural American police agencies

By the end of the twentieth century, neighborhood residents across the United States were joining forces with the police in collaborative partnerships to solve problems related to crime, disorder, and fear. Communities were seeing improvements in the quality of neighborhood life and in satisfaction toward the police in cities, towns, and counties that had implemented a community-based model of policing. For example, success stories had occurred in some of America’s largest cities (Chicago Community Policing Evaluation Consortium, 1997), medium-sized cities (Reisig & Parks, 2000) and in rural America (Giacomazzi, Helms & Brody, 2000).