This chapter presents the results of a survey experiment testing cooperation interventions in Lagos. It provides background information on the relatively limited efforts to date to promote police–citizen cooperation in the megacity. The chapter describes the virtual reality–based survey experiment used to test the interventions in which respondents are shown a hypothetical area boy fight from a shopkeeper’s point of view. The results indicate that respondents who viewed the vignettes with an anonymous tip line and the intervention to raise awareness of cooperation support among shopkeepers boosts information sharing. Exposure to co-ethnic police officers in the vignette, however, shows little effect on information sharing. The chapter also discusses the mechanisms through which cooperation support exists despite widespread distrust of the Nigeria Police Force among Lagosians.

This chapter presents the results of a survey experiment testing cooperation interventions in Baltimore. It describes existing efforts in the city to promote cooperation with the police and how police rely on information from witnesses. The survey experiment entails respondents viewing and responding to a professionally produced fictional news report of a shooting with experimental variations to test the various interventions. The results show police encouraging cooperators to call an anonymous tip line (as opposed to a non-anonymous line) as well as creating awareness of cooperation norms both increase information sharing. The police commander portrayed in the news report being the same race as the respondent does not change the amount information that they are willing to share. The chapter also discusses the mechanisms of how support for cooperation exists in Baltimore despite distrust of the police.

This chapter theorizes how interventions employed by police and community safety advocates might promote cooperation. The evaluation focuses on two interventions that plausibly reverse cycles of silence: facilitating cooperator anonymity to reduce the risk involved in information sharing and creating awareness of support for cooperation to strengthen the perceived norms favoring information sharing. Given that these interventions do not address distrust in the police, which places a ceiling on cooperation support, the evaluation also includes the trust-based intervention of exposing citizens to police officers of the same race or ethnicity. The chapter concludes with enumerating principles that should be considered when evaluating the appropriateness of implementing interventions to promote cooperation.

This chapter charts the most recent history of the private criminal justice system, from its lowest point of influence in the 1960s to modern times, when private police outnumber their public counterparts by almost a two-to-one margin. It also notes that private police are distinctive not just because of their sheer number but because of the goals that they seek to achieve – which are essentially the goals of the client who is paying them or the goals of the neighborhood or volunteer associaton that they represent. The chapter examines not only paid private police but also volunteer private police, such as the Guardian Angels, the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, neighborhood watch programs, and “white hat” hackers.The chapter concludes by pointing out the relatively low level of regulation that applies to private police and by examining the pros and cons of using private police to detect and apprehend criminals.