Which study showed random patrols did not reduce crime or increase feelings of safety?

• A. COPS Program
• B. Kansas City preventative patrol experiment
• C. Slave codes
• D. Black codes

Answer: (B)

Testing whether simply increasing visible patrols reduces crime or makes people feel safer.

The Kansas City preventative patrol experiment is the study that addressed this directly. In the 1970s, police divided the city into beats and randomly assigned some to receive more routine patrols, some to remain with standard patrols, and some to operate as reactive-only. Over about a year, researchers measured crime rates, reported incidents, and residents’ fear of crime. The results showed no meaningful differences across the different patrol levels in crime occurrence or in how safe people felt. In other words, simply boosting or altering random patrol presence did not deter crime nor improve perceived safety. This finding challenged the notion that patrol intensity alone has a strong deterrent effect and helped shift thinking toward more targeted, problem-solving policing rather than blanket increases in patrols.

The other options aren’t studies about random patrols. Slave codes and Black codes are historic laws related to slavery, not experiments on policing strategies, and the COPS Program is a policy initiative to promote community policing, not a controlled test of random patrol effects.