The Benefits Of Community Policing

As many immigrant and minority communities see the police as corrupt, community policing could be a step in the right direction to gain their trust and to show legitimacy. Many troubled neighborhoods have poor collective efficiency and police departments can help community 's gain this with community policing. Many times where neighborhoods need community policing the most(high crime spots) there is poor citizen involvement in police events and programs(Skogan 1988).Residents could fear that if they cooperate with law enforcement the criminals will retaliate(Grinc 1994). Even with community policing, minorities, especially blacks do not seem to get the benefit of involvement(skogan 1990). Problem oriented policing can have similar goals

This could affect the efficiency of their units and increase time to get to emergency calls. Research has shown certain unfocused aspects of community police such as storefront offices, meetings, newsletters, and foot patrols do not reduce crime or fear of crime(Weisburd and Eck 2004). The benefits of community policing also go to improving job satisfaction for police and police viewing the community they work in more positively(Skogan this book 2006). Federal funding for community policing was redirected to fund homeland security and counter terrorism after 9-11. Cities like Cleveland had to take away large parts of their community policing units(Butterfield 2004). Since community policing varies and is different in different departments it 's difficult and too broad of a concept to do empirical evaluation(Committee to Review Research 2004 National Research Council). The way to handle this issue is to break down community policing to its various elements such as hot spot policing, broken windows, problem oriented policing, third party policing, and

Many departments inflate their involvement in community policing, especially since the COPS(community oriented policing services) give federal grants to departments who use this. Actually billions have been spent on community policing and millions on researching it, but no definitive evidence of its success on crime has been made by the early 21st century(Weisburd and Eck 2004). It can be very difficult to truly understand how certain cities really implement community policing since it really comes down to each individual police officer 's service. If the actual police officer on an individual level doesn’t internalize community policing than it doesn 't matter how much training and programs the department has they aren 't truly implementing it on the ground level. It 's important to get commitment of each officer, this includes managers, policies of the department, chiefs, and supervisors to embrace community policing. The different members of the hierarchy must reinforce community policing training into the culture for full implementation of community policing. Critique There are many critics of community policing. Mathew(1992) disagrees that there is any causal relations between disorder and crime. New York 's style of community policing had to do with order maintenance, which