Research comparing police and citizen perceptions of neighborhood problems and the impact their agreement or disagreement has on attitudes toward the police is limited. While researchers have examined citizen attitudes toward the police since the 1960s, there have been few studies focusing on police and citizen priorities. This research examined these issues together to determine whether or not differences in perceptions impact citizen attitudes toward the police.

This research explored data collected from two sources, including a survey of citizens in Cincinnati neighborhoods and a survey of Cincinnati police beat and community officers assigned to separate neighborhoods. It examined police and citizen alignment of 13 neighborhood problems focusing on crime and disorder, and the impact these have on attitudes toward the police. Logistic regression models were used to examine the influence police-citizen agreement on neighborhood problems had on citizen perceptions of attitudes toward the police in general, citizen attitudes toward the job police were doing to prevent crime in their neighborhood, and citizen attitudes toward the job police were doing working with citizens in their neighborhood to solve crime.

Findings revealed that when citizens viewed disorder as less of a problem than officers, citizen satisfaction toward the police increased across all dependent variables in the study. Findings also revealed that the mere presence of a difference in perceptions impacted attitudes toward the police, regardless of the magnitude of the difference in perceptions. When police and citizens differed in their perceptions of neighborhood crime problems, citizens were more likely to have positive attitudes toward the job police were doing to prevent crime when they perceived crime as less of a problem than officers.