Research on officer-civilian interactions has identified widespread interactional problems with investigative policing practices, governed by the hierarchical status and authority of officers. To combat these effects and foster rapport between officers and civilians, police departments worldwide have established community-oriented policing (COP) programs. While scholars have investigated how officers and civilians perceive the benefits of these programs, however, research has yet to examine the actual face-to-face interactions of officers and civilians in non-investigative contexts. The current study moves this research forward by analyzing video data of 30 interactions between community police officers and civilians. Taken from a larger corpus of officer-civilian interactions in a major metropolitan city in the U.S. that established its formal COP program in the late 1980s, these data reveal how police officers and civilians have expanded the role of officers in non-urgent, civilian-initiated interactions beyond that expected in investigative contexts. In particular, this interactional context reveals how officers and civilians negotiate an alignment as community members through displays of epistemic authority about the city.