Responding to officers’ gendered experiences through community policing and improving police accountability to citizens

Abstract

This paper sets out to evaluate the potential for community policing (CP) to produce changes in gender equality in police agencies. To that end, the author evaluates if tenets of CP can create the necessary organizational and ideological changes required to move toward a post‐gendered subjectivity in the work experiences of officers. If so, then CP tactics could be the start of changes of how traditional policing serves communities, opening a police–community partnership toward significant social change.

Keywords:

• community policing
• gendered experience
• police accountability
• collectivist policing
• gender equity
• dominant ideologies
• equity analysis