| Summary: | Police officers living in the community where they patrol is a compelling point of social discourse in America. Particularly because overwhelmingly police officers who patrol in urban communities where the residents are predominately African American reside outside of the community where they patrol. Using a three-item community-relationship rating scale, this study examines the perceived relationship between police officers and people who live in the communities where the police officers patrol. The findings from this study's multivariate analysis barely missed the threshold for confirming that police officers who live in the neighborhood where they patrol have a better relationship with the people in the community than do those who do not live in the community. However, a closer assessment of the findings brings other questions to light, for example, police officers who patrol middle- and working-class communities have a better relationship with the people in those communities and are more likely to live in those communities than in poor communities.
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