Book excerpt: Reveals the reasons why community policing rarely, if ever, works. Drawing on data he collected in diverse Seattle neighborhoods from interviews with residents, observation of police officers, and attendance at community-police meetings, Herbert identifies the many obstacles that make effective collaboration between city dwellers and the police so unlikely to succeed. At the same time, he shows that residents' pragmatic ideas about the role of community differ dramatically from those held by social theorists. - from publisher information.