Practice Profile: Street-Level Drug Law Enforcement

This practice includes targeted-policing approaches for reducing drug and drug-related offenses. This practice is rated Promising in reducing reported, drug-related calls for services and offenses against persons. This practice is rated Ineffective in reducing reported property offenses, public order calls for service, and total offenses.

Practice Goals/Practice Theory

Street-level drug law enforcement practices are policing strategies that aim to reduce or prevent illicit drug use, drug dealing, and associated problems at drug-dealing locations.

Policing strategies are sometimes thought of as falling into four categories: standard policing, community policing, problem-oriented policing, and hot spots policing. These categories are based on the Weisburd and Eck (2004) conceptual model of law enforcement strategies, which classifies strategies based on the diversity of interventions used, and the level of focus. The diversity of interventions refers to the number of different approaches used to address the problem, including those carried out by the police as well as other partners who can play a key role in addressing community problems. For example, a problem-oriented–partnership-policing approach could include a law enforcement–housing services collaboration in which inspectors clean up problem areas and buildings in high-crime areas. Strategies that rely on a more diverse set of tactics are thought to be more effective than those that rely on a smaller number of tactics. The level of focus refers to the extent to which the police rely on generic approaches or those that are focused on certain people, places, times, or specific offense types. Focused interventions are thought to be more effective than more generic approaches. A visual representation of these two dimensions for classifying policing strategies can be found in Weisburd and Eck (2004, 45).

Practice Components

Standard policing approaches traditionally rely on unfocused strategies such as routine police patrols, calls for service, and arrests. Street-level, drug law enforcement strategies typically require greater diversity and focus; therefore, they generally fall within the three remaining categories: community-wide approaches, problem-oriented–partnership approaches, and hot spots policing. These approaches are classified as having low diversity of interventions and a low degree of focus.

Community-wide policing approaches include a diverse array of intervention tactics that rely on police–community stakeholder partnerships as well as partnerships between police and other service agencies. Intervention services are targeted at a broader neighborhood rather than to a specific high-crime area and seek to improve police–community relations, build neighborhood cohesion, and increase trust in police. Community members work with police to develop, implement, and maintain drug law enforcement activities in the neighborhood. These approaches are classified as having high diversity of interventions and a low degree of focus.

Hot spots policing involves traditional policing activities focused on hot spots of crime activity. Through this approach, law enforcement agencies can focus limited resources in areas where crime is most likely to occur. The appeal of focusing limited resources on a small number of high-crime areas is based on the belief that if crime can be prevented at these hot spots, then total crime across the city might also be reduced. Examples of tactics used are police raids on suspected drug houses, police crackdowns in high-crime areas, bust-buy operations, street sweeps, saturated patrol, curfew and truancy enforcement, and warrant servicing. These approaches are classified as having a low diversity of interventions and a high degree of focus.

Problem-oriented–partnership policing approaches focus on high-crime areas and rely on agencies and partnerships outside of law enforcement–such as housing and building inspectors, local businesses, and community members–to provide services in support of crime prevention. Examples of multiagency approaches include building inspection crackdowns at high-crime locations, collaborative efforts to improve problem areas, and drug market identification using geographic information-systems data. These types of strategies usually stress the importance of police efforts to analyze drug use activity and associated problems (such as disorder, violence, and fear of crime) and the use of partnerships and collaborations. These approaches are classified as having a high diversity of interventions and a high degree of focus.

Mazerolle, Soole, and Rombouts (2006) conducted additional tests—called moderator analyses—to examine the individual impacts of problem-oriented–partnership policing, community-wide policing, and hot spots policing on outcome measures. The authors found that there were no significant differences between the three street-level, drug law enforcement strategies when looking at offenses against persons and property crime. However, it appeared that the problem-oriented–partnership approach was more effective than the other two approaches in dealing with drug offenses, drug-related calls for service, and overall total offenses. Based on their review of street-level, law enforcement strategies, the authors concluded that collaborative, community-wide-policing efforts and building better law enforcement–community relations are more effective than enforcement-only approaches in dealing with drug and drug-related offenses.

These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:

These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:

Following are CrimeSolutions-rated programs that are related to this practice:

Minneapolis (MN) Hot Spots Experiment

San Diego (Calif.) Drug Abatement Response Team (DART)

Nashville (Tenn.) Drug Market Intervention

Specialized Multi Agency Response Team (SMART)

Kansas City (MO) Police Department Street Narcotics Unit

Operation Safe Streets (Philadelphia, Pa.)

Weed and Seed (Miami, Fla.)

Hot Spots Policing (Jacksonville, FL)

Hot Spots Policing (Lowell, Mass.)

Drug Market Analysis Program (Jersey City, NJ)

Problem-Oriented Policing in Violent Crime Places (Jersey City, NJ)

Police Foot Patrol, Philadelphia 2009

Safe Street Teams (Boston, MA)

Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS)

Operation Impact (Newark, New Jersey)

High Point Drug Market Intervention

Rockford Pulling Levers Drug Market Intervention

Why might a practice's outcome ratings differ from the ratings of specific programs encompassed by that practice?