Which study was the first large-scale examination of police patrol practices, sponsored by the Police Foundation?

• A. Alibi
• B. Kansas City Experiment
• C. Self-Defense
• D. Vice squad

Answer: (B)

The main idea is identifying the first large-scale, systematic evaluation of how patrol presence affects crime and how people feel about safety, funded by a prominent policing organization. The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment, conducted in 1967–1968 and sponsored by the Police Foundation, divided the city into patrol beats and varied the level of visible patrol across them. The study found that increasing, maintaining, or decreasing patrol intensity did not produce meaningful changes in overall crime rates, crime reporting, or residents’ fear of crime. This challenged the belief that more patrol on the streets automatically deters crime and helped shift policing away from relying on patrol density alone toward other strategies such as rapid response and targeted enforcement, and later reforms focused on community policing. The other terms refer to topics or units rather than a large-scale study of patrol practices.