The Good and Bad: Implementing Community-Oriented Policing. Trikea Williams American Military University CMRJ 302: U.S. Law Enforcement Dr. Jeffrey Doughtary June 23, 2024 Abstract For over 30 years, community-oriented policing has been around to support and promote the organizational strategies to put more attention on the causes, decrease fear crime, increase crime prevention. There are many ways that community-oriented policing has helped law enforcement by decreasing social disorder and creating more problem-solving tactics. All community policing programs serve different purposes depending on the needs of the community. The way the movement of community policing works is by having the community and law enforcement work together to preserve …show more content…
The Good and Bad: Implementing Community-Oriented Policing Community-oriented policing is what police stations use to help improve their relationships with communities they neighbor. For example, neighborhood watch set up in a community is where officers work with the community to prevent crime and social disorder. Commonly, police officers face criticism for trying to maintain order in the community. The community becomes less trusting with police because they believe the police are abusing their authority (Gill, 2014). The community and the police are not always on the same side because people in the urban communities feel that they are being suspected of being an illegal immigrant or racially profiled. Police officers are required to use directive enforcement of laws when there is serious criminal activity that needs to be controlled (Gaines & Kappeller, 2015). One issue that the community has with community-oriented policing is that they fear the police because of their history of intimidating people of color or certain status. There are times where community-oriented policing is successful and crime rates have decreased (Crowl, 2017). Then there are times where community-oriented policing has failed because the trust of the …show more content…
There are many forms of contacts that a community can create to help policy, which are: neighborhood watch programs, community meetings, and townhall meetings. A neighborhood watch program becomes beneficial in the community because it creates a bond between the police organization to help solve problems and contribute to saving lives. When the law enforcement departments use community-oriented policing they are allowing them to put the guardianship of law and order in the hands of the members of the community to improve safety. There must be a foundation of trust incorporated for police officers with the community, or it will be hard to produce quality achievements in keeping the community safe. Community-oriented policing is set in stone for community members to feel heard when they voice their concerns, see action being taken about their concerns, and suggest ideas that could make the community safer. According to Perez (2017), there is one big shift in focus that COP focuses on which is responding to the problems of the entire community rather than individual problems. This form of community policing does have its challenges when the policing is not performing well with the officers placed in their
Policing is a very difficult, complex and dynamic field of endeavor that is always evolves as hard lessons teach us what we need to know about what works and what don’t work. There are three different Era’s in America’s policing: The Political Era, The Reform Era, and The Community Problem Solving Era. A lot has changed in the way that policing works over the years in the United States.
In order for the police to successfully prevent crimes, public cooperation is needed. Various community policing programs have been implemented and it is important to discuss the benefits and limitations of these programs. Community policing allows the community to be actively involved and become a partner in promoting safety. This partnership increases trust of police officers and helps citizens understand that the police are on their side and want to improve their quality of life (Ferreira, 1996). The role of the police officers goes beyond that of a “crime fighter” and expands to multiple roles including that of a victim-centered
The police are usually charged with the great responsibility of ensuring that citizens are living quality lives that are free of crime and fear. In order to perform this duty effectively, the police need accurate and deeper knowledge of the citizens and issues they encounter in their daily lives. This knowledge will not be easy to come by if the police work independently from the citizens. Over the last several decades, police agencies have been working to gain the respect and the cooperation of the communities they serve. Community Oriented Policing was introduced to bring a closer working relationship between the citizens and the police.
In correlation in examining other important elements in community policing, importance is placed on the people and their concerns. The ideology of law enforcement shifts from a crime fighting role to a service related role. Also, the sole responsibility of crime control is shared between the police, the citizens, and other civic organizations. Finally, not only is crime addressed, but also crime control, quality of life issues, and social issues as
Community policing has emerged since the 1970s as an increasingly important strategy for controlling and preventing crime and enhancing community safety. It is both a philosophy and an organizational strategy that allows the police and the community to work closely together in creative ways to solve the problems of crime, drugs, fear of crime, physical and social disorder, neighborhood decay, and the overall quality of life in the community. Community policing is difficult to define. Although it does not have a single definition, there are many elements of community policing.
Community policing allows officers to be actively involved on the streets alongside the community. Their focus is not only to solve crimes but to interact with the people in their neighborhood, establish a rapport with them. This initiative has gained popularity within recent years as the police and leaders of the community pursue more significant ways to promote public safety and to enrich the quality of life of their community members. The police and the citizens often come in contact with each other for a multitude of reasons other than criminal purposes. Police officers often engage in community service by providing an abundance of information for those in need, and they offer educational services at schools and outreach
This concept has been around for decades and is believed to be an important aspect of law enforcement and the foundation of communicating with the people a law enforcement agency serves. There is such a strong belief in community policing in 2004 the Department of Justice (DOJ) dedicated an entire division to it. The DOJ calls this division the Community Oriented Policing Service also known as COPS. The Department of Justice states “Community policing begins with a commitment to building trust and mutual respect between police and communities. It is critical to public safety, ensuring that all stakeholders work together to address our nation's crime challenges. When police and communities collaborate, they more effectively address underlying issues, change negative behavioral patterns, and allocate
Community policing is a strategy used by various departments in order to create and maintain a relationship between the law enforcement agency and the community being patrolled. Community policing is composed of three critical components, community partnerships, organizational transformation, and problem solving (Gardiner, 154, 2016). Community partnerships are pivotal in community policing since they increase public trust and create am improved relationship in law enforcement agencies better serving the community (Gardiner, 87, 2016). These partnerships not only offer public input but also encourage the public to cooperate with law enforcement agencies in order to minimize crime within the community (Gardiner, 88, 2016). Unlike, the traditional strategies of policing, community orientated policing has been adopted by two-thirds of agencies in order to improve public safety and control crime. (Gardiner, 148, 2016).
There are many different ways of policing in the 21st century and all address and apply different theories and ideas to try and control the crime this day in age. One of these methods is called community policing and many law enforcement agencies around our country and the world use it as a model for policing and interacting with communities. Community policing is based on the belief that policing agencies should partner with communities with the goals to prevent or reduce the amount of crime in those areas (Pollock, 2012 p. 99). There are 3 main aspects of community policing that I will talk about in this paper and they are community partnerships, organizational transformation, and problem solving. After hearing about the
Community oriented policing has been around for over 30 years, and promotes and supports organizational strategies to address the causes, and reduce the fear of crime and social disorder through problem solving tactics. The way community policing works is it requires the police and citizens to work together to increase safety for the public. Each community policing program is different depending on the needs of the community. There have been five consistent key elements of an effective community oriented policing program: Adopting community service as the overarching philosophy of the organization, making an institutional commitment to community policing that is internalized throughout the command structure, emphasizing geographically decentralized models of policing that stress services tailored to the needs of individual communities rather than a one-size-fits-all approach for the entire jurisdiction, empowering citizens to act in partnership with the police on issues of crime and more broadly defined social problems, for example, quality-of-life issues, and using problem-oriented or problem-solving approaches involving police personnel working with community members. Community oriented policing has improved the public’s perception of the police in a huge way. Community policing builds more relationships with the
From this Community Police Consortium, the BJA put together a report titled Understanding Community Policing, A Framework for Action, which focused on developing a conceptual framework for community policing and assisting agencies in implementing community policing. The basis for this consortium was much more direct than the previous efforts set forth by Presidential Commissions during the 1960’s and 1970’s, and led to what became known as the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS, Title 1 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994). The core components outlined in the BJA report listed the two complementary core components to community policing: community partnership and problem solving. The report further stated that effective community policing depends on positive contact between patrol officers and community members, establishing and maintaining mutual trust as the primary goal of a community partnership, and police and community must join together to encourage and preserve peace and prosperity. While these are just a few of the recommendations listed in the report, there were many more that set forth the framework for community policing, but these were the core components.
Community policing is the philosophy that promotes strategies that support the use of partnerships and problem- solving techniques that are proactively address conditions to rise public safety issues like fear of crime, social disorder, and crime. There are three components to community policing, they are community partnerships, organizational transformation, and problem solving. The four elements of community policing are community involvement, problem solving, a community base, and redefined goals for the police.
Community policing is a policy and a strategy aimed at achieving more effective and efficient crime control, reduced fear of crime, improved quality of life, improved police services and police legitimacy, through a proactive reliance on community resources that seeks to change crime causing conditions. This assumes a need for greater accountability of police, greater public share in decision-making and greater concern for civil rights and liberties.
Community policing is a law enforcement strategy that encourages interactive partnerships between law enforcement agencies and the people they serve (Berlin, Michael M. "Encyclopedia of Community Policing and Problem Solving.") These partnerships help communities find solutions to problems with collaborative problem solving and improved public trust. Through this model, the public plays a role in prioritizing public safety problems (Berlin, Michael M. "Encyclopedia of Community Policing and Problem Solving.")
Community crime prevention programs play a vital role across the world in regards to the “community” style of police service. These types of programs heavily involve participating members of the community along with the police to achieve community and police oriented goals to improve the quality of life for all members of the community.