The rise and growth of police gang units parallels another important development in American law enforcement, the shift or attempted shift toward community policing. For much of the twentieth century police organizations in the United States were characterized as being highly legalistic, bureaucratic, and centralized (Kelling and Moore 1988). As a consequence, a technocratic culture spread throughout agencies, and police departments became much more functionally complex and specialized (Reiss 1992). As of late, however, police reformers have attempted to reverse the trend toward organizational complexity and have suggested that police agencies make fundamental changes to their organizational structure so that they are better able to incorporate many of the new demands being imposed on the police as part of community policing (i.e., greater citizen interaction, enhanced problem solving).