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13 Am. J. Police 1 (1994)
The Problems of Problem-Solving: Resistance, Interdependencies, and Conflicting Interests

handle is hein.journals/ajpol13 and id is 321 raw text is: American Journal of Police, Vol. A711, No, 3 1994 1 THE PROBLEMS OF PROBLEM-SOLVING: RESISTANCE, INTERDEPENDENCIES, AND CONFLICTING INTERESTS Michael E. Buerger University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Visiting Fellow, National Institute of Justice Fifteen years after it was first proposed, the concept of prob- lem-oriented policing has a well-established foundation in the police practice of problem solving.1 Herman Goldstein first proposed prob- lem-oriented policing (now known more familiarly as POP) as an alter- native to the means-over-ends orientation of traditional reactive polic- ing. To measure police performance in terms of outcomes rather than activities, Goldstein proposed the police abandon both their reliance on broad, legalistic categories that are essentially catch-alls, and their ten- dency to look at calls as episodic, unconnected events (Goldstein, 1979). He argued that the police need to go beyond the immediate di- mensions of incidents in order to properly identify the real problems, and devise realistic, workable solutions. Goldstein and Susmilch (1981; 1982a; 1982b; 1982c) went on to explore the possibilities of POP with the Madison (WI) Police Depart- ment in two studies of the drunk driver and the repeat sex offender. While the police provided valuable information, data collection and analysis were produced by the researchers, not by police officers (as true POP envisions). In Maryland in 1983, Goldstein helped Baltimore County's COPE (Citizen Oriented Police Enforcement) Team integrate problem-solving into its fear-of-crime mandate (Cordner, 1985). The Newport News (VA) Police Department engaged in a series of prob- lem-solving initiatives in conjunction with PERF, the Police Executive Research Forum (Eck & Spelman, 1987). Functional problem solving was an essential element of the Community Patrol Officer Program (CPOP) begun in New York City in 1984, even though CPOP is now promoted as community policing rather than problem-oriented

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