ABSTRACT
The United States is in the midst of a sea change in policing. Federal funding for community policing through the National Institute of Justice has dropped off dramatically after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Policing for citizens, with its tripartite functional structure of service, order maintenance, and crime prevention, was central to policing through the twentieth century. The last third of the twentieth century has been widely described as the era of community policing, which can be described as the highest expression of citizen-based policing. By enforcing the "informal norms of the community" the police will, in the day-to-day practice of their work, enforce the same values as the communities they police. Cognitive dissonance is a concept that has been around for more than 40 years. Cognitions include beliefs about people. For the police, cognitions can include stereotypes about those policed.
