*
The historical presentation should be viewed with care, since many episodes, concerns and
problematic areas have been omitted in the interests of brevity. Chapter II of the technical report deals in
greater detail with the events leading to the experiment, while Chapter IV discusses many of the technical
and administrative problems experienced during that time. A comprehensive description of the
experiment’s development would require a volume in itself, and an analysis of the organizational
dynamics involved in designing and administering the preventive patrol experiment will be published by
the Kansas City evaluation staff at a later date.
**
In this report, routine preventive patrol is defined as those patrol activities employed by the
Kansas City Police Department during the approximately 35 percent of patrol duty time in which officers
are not responding to calls for service, attending court or otherwise unavailable for self-initiated activities.
(The 35 percent figure was a pre-experimental estimate developed by the Kansas City Police Department
for use in determining officer allocation.) Information made available daily to patrol officers includes
items such as who in their beats is wanted on a warrant, who is wanted for questioning by detectives,
POLICE FOUNDATION: The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment
5
II. DESCRIPTION OF THE PREVENTIVE PATROL EXPERIMENT
The impetus for an experiment in preventive patrol came from within the Kansas City
Police Department in 1971. While this may be surprising to some, the fact is that by that year
the Kansas City department had already experienced more than a decade of innovation and
improvement in its operations and working climate and had gained a reputation as one of the
nation’s more progressive police departments.
Under Chief Clarence M. Kelley, the department had achieved a high degree of
technological sophistication, was receptive to experimentation and change, and was peppered
with young, progressive and professional officers. Short- and long-range planning had become
institutionalized, and constructive debates over methods, procedures and approaches to police
work were commonplace. By 1972, this department of approximately 1,300 police officers in a
city of just over half a million—part of a metropolitan complex of 1.3 million—was open to new
ideas and recommendations, and enjoyed the confidence of the people it served.
As part of its continuing internal discussions of policing, the department in October of
1971 established a task force of patrol officers and supervisors in each of its three patrol
divisions (South, Central and Northeast), as well as in its special operations division
(helicopter, traffic, tactical, etc.).
*
The decision to establish these task forces was based on the
beliefs that the ability to make competent planning decisions existed at all levels within the
department and that if institutional change was to gain acceptance, those affected by it should
have a voice in planning and implementation.
The job of each task force was to isolate the critical problems facing its division and
propose methods to attack those problems. All four task forces did so. The South Patrol
Division Task Force identified five problem areas where greater police attention was deemed
vital: burglaries, juvenile offenders, citizen fear, public education about the police role, and
police-community relations.
Like the other task forces, the South task force was confronted next with developing
workable remedial strategies. And here the task force met with what at first seemed an
insurmountable barrier. It was evident that concentration by the South Patrol Division on the
five problem areas would cut deeply into the time spent by its officers on preventive patrol.
**
At