Crime And Violent Crimes

Crime rates, especially violent crimes such as murder, rape, and robbery, peaked around 1991 and 1992, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports. The major crime topics of that time included drug abuse and the war on drugs, still some remnants from the crack cocaine epidemic from the late 1980s, and the increase in juvenile violence in the late 1980s. In addition to these, legislation such as the Brady Bill continued to surface as a public policy that drew attention to the issue of gun violence, and other topics tended to be emphasized by the Bush administration, such as the exclusionary rule, the death penalty, habeas corpus, and the insanity defense. Community policing developed at the grassroots level in the early 1980s, coming out of local police demonstration projects that were often funded by the National Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. Community policing came about out of the rejection of traditional policing practices in the 1970s, largely as a result of various studies that found that long held assumptions in policing were found not to hold up to scrutiny. An article written by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling published in an edition of Atlantic Monthly in 1982 brought about the broken windows theory. This theory holds that when people no longer care about their community, the condition on that neighborhood often sends signals to people that no one cares. This allows for disorder and minor crimes to pass unnoticed, which will lead to more serious crimes. Once disorder begins to take hold and minor crimes become common, eventually the neighborhood will decay and become crime ridden. The key to fixing the broken windows is for police to target these minor crimes...

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...raining sessions are generally held at the state and regional levels and use curricula designed by the community policing consortium that reflect the knowledge it obtained from early work with a number of agencies and police leaders. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 allocated funding for the addition of 100,000 coops to support the concept of community policing to be added to state and local agencies across the United States. The policy allowed for the employment of these officers at 75 percent for three years of an officer’s pay and benefits, and it allowed for the funding of technology, staff support, and training. The bill also allowed for the use of technology and staff support that would free an officer to be able to work the street, which officially counted as the addition of a police officer under the reemployment aspects of the bill.