Communication and Police Organizations: The Case of Compstat

Year 2014, Issue: 22, 202 - 218, 31.12.2014

Yusuf Yüksel

https://doi.org/10.31123/akil.442128

Abstract

Effective communication is suggested to be crucial for the success of organizations. In terms

of police organizations, the hierarchical and bureaucratic structure, chain of command,

centralized decision making, and cultural tendency to hide information that remain in many police

organizations is believed to be the major obstacle in effective communication which, in turn,

leads to coordination problems, distortion and unresponsiveness to environmental changes.

Practical solutions in popular books remain in theory without organizing a system for effective

communication.

This article analyzes communication aspect of a popular management model in the USA called

Compstat which is suggested to help organizing a system for effective communication in police

organizations. The data is collected through the interviews of 26 police officers and observation

of Compstat meetings for 6 months in a large police organization (Newark Police Department)

located in the USA. The findings suggest that Compstat model helped to overcome the

communication problems rooted in bureaucracy and hierarchy of police organizations. However,

there are still some problems in terms of disseminating information to frontline officers, the extent

and quality of information sharing and expressing their thoughts freely in the regular Compstat

meetings. Based on these findings, this article discusses deeply the contribution of this model for

the communication problems in the police organizations and gives suggestions for practitioners.

Keywords: Police Organizations, Communication, Compstat, Compstat Meetings, Hierarchy, Bureaucracy.

Keywords

Police Organizations, Communication, Compstat, Compstat Meetings, Hierarchy, Bureaucracy

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