For years, police departments followed reactive "incident-driven" policing methods, characterized by responses to calls for service, gathering information, and then invoking the criminal justice process. This lurching from one crime report to the next had little impact on the underlying causes of the problem. Inspired by previous successes, several cities were recently selected to test P.O.P.'s usefulness, especially against drug-dealing. P.O.P.'s officers' tactics include neighborhood mobilization via informal meetings, street contacts, problem-identification, interviews and surveys, and regular communication with community watch groups. Various reasons for the success of P.O.P. in Newport News (Virginia) and Baltimore County (Maryland) are the use of surveys and interviews with thieves and prostitutes, conversations with runaways and parents, and the aid of various city departments such as the Department of Sanitation and the Health Department. P.O.P. results in curtailing the number of future incidents, thereby making fewer demands on officers to respond to repeated calls for service and developing better community relations in demonstrating concern for the people's day-to-day needs. P.O.P. which uses all available resources intelligently seems to be the future of law enforcement.