Criminal Justice Commission

Abstract: Modern beat policing, or foot patrol, programs have ex-panded the role of the beat officer beyond the traditional surveil-lance function of "walking the beat. " Today, beat officers are also expected to liaise with the community and solve community prob-lems. Thus, the beat officer's role has become a popular way of in-corporating preventive and reactive functions into the day-to-day duties of a police officer. This paper reports the major findings of an evaluation of a two-year beat policing pilot project established in Toowoomba, AUS. The results showed that the Toowoomba project-increased beat residents ' levels of satisfaction with policing serv-ices; had little effect on beat residents'feelings of safety; had some success in tackling chronic problem addresses in the beat areas 154 — Christine E.W. Bond and David John Gow and helped to reduce, or at least contain, the incidence of certain types of crime. Implications of the Toowoomba evaluation for police management are discussed