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Abstract: For more than fifteen years the Los Angeles Police Department has made community relations and community mobilization important -- sometimes key -- elements in the way it goes about its work. This case focuses on the evolution of the LAPD away from a paradigmatically "professional" -- meaning independent and efficiency-oriented -- posture toward its present concern with attending to the felt needs of the city's neighborhoods. It examines the role and effectiveness of the Senior Lead Officer (SLO), a patrol rank charged with community mobilization duties as well as standard patrol and call-response duties. Resource constraints and management priorities have had great influence on the nature and extent of SLO's and the department's community mobilization activities; the case reflects officers' and community leaders' views on the choices the department has made.
Learning Objective: The case is useful for illuminating the traditional practices and priorities of American police organizations, and how community input can affect them. More generally, it can support a discussion of how public managers should think about the "product" of their organizations. (Please see the abstract for Neighborhood Policing: The London Metropolitan Police Force, C15-87-770.0.)