How The Police Are A Public And The Public Are The Police?

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There are significant reasons why law enforcement executives feel that the time has come to reevaluate the policies and practices of their organizations. These reasons derive from the history of policing and police research during the last years, in the changing demographics of communities, and in the shifting characteristics of crime and violence that affect these communities. When Sir Robert Peel established the London Metropolitan Police, he established a number of principles to follow, one these principles could be considered the start of community policing: “the police are the public and the public are the police” (Bain, 2014). For a plethora of reasons, the police began to lose sight of this relationship as the central organizing concept …show more content…

Based on its analysis of a carefully controlled experiment carried out chiefly in Newark, the foundation concluded, to the surprise of hardly anyone, that foot-patrol had not reduced crime rates (Koper, 1995). However, residents of the neighborhoods where foot-patrols had been conducted seemed to feel more secure than persons in other areas that were not receiving foot-patrols. These same citizens tended to believe that crime had been reduced, and appeared to engage in fewer processes take to protect themselves from crime and acts of disorder, such staying at home with the doors locked and not taking walks in the evening (Kelling & Wilson, The Atlantic, 1982). More importantly, citizens in the foot-patrol areas had a significantly more favorable opinion of the police than did those living elsewhere, where the foot-patrol experiment was not conducted. This study also revealed that the officers that had been assigned walking beats exhibited higher morale, greater job satisfaction, and a more favorable attitude toward citizens in their neighborhoods than did officers assigned to patrol cars only (Bain,

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