Electronic Community-Oriented Policing

Xiaochen Hu is assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Fayetteville State University.Nicholas P. Lovrich is Regents professor emeritus and Claudius O. and Mary W. Johnson distinguished professor of political science at Washington State University.

This book’s main message is that police agencies can, through social media, manage their image, bolster their legitimacy with the public, and foster closer bonds with the communities they serve. They can do so by supplementing traditional community-oriented policing with what the authors call "electronic community-oriented policing," or E-COP. This provides greater opportunity for two-way police-public interactive communication that benefits both sides. While E-COP can be a tool in crime fighting, the authors focus more on identifying best practices the police can employ to communicate more effectively with the people they protect and serve. The authors predict that E-COP will become one of the main policing strategies worldwide. They base their suggestions for improving police use of social media on their own study, which analyzed Facebook posts published by US police departments. . . this book will be of interest to students, scholars, and practitioners in criminal justice and police studies. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.

• Part I: Police, Media, and New Media Chapter 1: Media, the Criminal Justice System, and the Police Chapter 2: New Media and Police Part II: Conceptualization of Electronic Community-Oriented Policing: Theoretical Foundations Chapter 3: Theories on Individual, Social, Mass Communication, and Organizational Behavior Chapter 4: Community-Oriented Policing and the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing Chapter 5: Electronic Community-Oriented Policing: Core Concepts and Strategies Part III: Contemporary Electronic Community-Oriented Policing Efforts Chapter 6: What Do the Police Do on Social Media? Chapter 7: Public Preferences Regarding Police Use of Social Media Chapter 8: Outliers: Facebook Posts That Received Extraordinary Public Attention Chapter 9: Case Study: Small Police Agency Use of Facebook Part IV: Future Directions Chapter 10: Improving Electronic Community-Oriented Policing Chapter 11: Implementing and Evaluating Electronic Community-Oriented Policing Conclusio