ABSTRACT
Patrol is the backbone of police work. Every police officer starts on the beat and patrol absorbs a larger proportion of manpower than any other policing function. This chapter examines three main types of patrol innovation. The first concerns those activities aimed at increasing patrol strength. Most chief officers openly espouse the virtues of returning more officers to the beat. A second, related change involves attempts to alter the balance between different types of patrol – mostly away from car patrol and in favour of general foot or area beat patrols. A third type of innovation is aimed at altering the type and purpose of activities undertaken by patrols and making them more useful, effective and purposeful. A difficulty that stands in the way of assessing virtually all recent patrol innovations is that they assume what they ought to set out to prove, namely that having officers out and about patrolling on foot is the best use of police resources.
