Disentangling the myth about citizen participation in collaborative work with police The difference between general citizens and citizen volunteers

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to expand the research on citizen participation in police work by attempting to disentangle the difference between volunteers and general citizens. Design/methodology/approach - Independent variables including the demographic characteristics, victimization experiences, fear of crime, neighborhood disorders, and satisfaction with the police services were used to explain the volunteers' attitudes toward the police. A random sample of general citizens was used as a comparison group. Using two data sets derived from a survey of 324 citizen volunteers in community policing programs and a random telephone survey of 1,197 general citizens in Houston, TX, two structural equation modeling models for general citizen sample and citizen volunteer sample were tested. Findings - The results revealed that satisfaction with the police services was the only factor having a direct impact on attitudes toward the police in volunteer group. In addition, volunteers' attitudes toward the police and satisfaction with the police services were higher than general citizens even though their victimization experiences, fear of crime, perceived neighborhood disorders were higher than general citizens. Originality/value - The authors argue that there is a strong diffused support, first raised by David Easton (1965), among the volunteers. This exploratory study would be a reference for future studies.