The Pros And Cons Of Traditional Policing

In traditional policing, most of what the police do is incident-driven form of early policing. They respond to incident after incident, by dealing with each one and then responding to the next call. Through the traditional policing strategy, police gained pride in their profession. Additionally, the law enforcement focused on traditional crime fighting and capturing criminals and cracking down on organized crime. Traditional policing model is also considered as the “reform era”, which began around 1930s and lasted until 1970s. The police’s role and responsibility under the traditional policing model represents more of a government agency and the top priority is focusing on solving crimes. Additionally, the essential nature of police accountability

is centralized; governed by rules, regulations and policy directives, which are all accountable to the law. The biggest transition from traditional policing model to community policing is getting communities more involved with solving crimes, by coordinating effective channel of communication with the community. Under the traditional model police was separated from the politics and they were held accountable for enforcing the law (Miller, Hess, & Orthmann, 2011).

The newest strategy is community policing model and it is an attempt to involve the community as an active partner with the police in addressing crime problems in the community.

Additionally, this involves a true, trusting partnership with the community and a willingness to accept and use input from the community. Community policing sought to replace the traditional policing model of police patrol with a more holistic approach. Additionally, community policing mandates that the police work with the community, rather than against it, to be effective. The foot patrol is one of the methods that were mandated under the community-policing model. The foot patrol was to build trust between police and citizens in a community by gaining awareness of the communities’ needs. One of the critiques of the community policing is the dissatisfaction of the law enforcement’s shift of focus on social work; therefore fewer arrests were being made. According to Delaware’s chief of police, a successful community policing program requires officers to be well versed in cultural diversity and competent to perform tasks needed to accomplish their duties. In 1994, the United States Department of Justice created the office Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), permitting 10,000 community-policing officers to our nation’s streets. The community policing plays an important role on homeland security, allowing police to collect data on terrorist suspects (Miller, Hess, & Orthmann,

2011).

Ultimately, it is important to bridge the gap between law enforcement and communities, specially after all police brutality that has taken place these past few years. For example, the events that took place in cities such as Ferguson and Baltimore displayed a gap between law enforcement and those communities existed. Activists have called for reforms in police departments across the country and for a larger emphasis on community-oriented policing, where law enforcement agencies build close ties with the communities they serve. Part of the issue is whether police should focus more on crimes that communities care about rather than enforcing every law on the book.

References
Jonsson, P. (2015, Mar 05). Ferguson report taps into debate: Should police enforce law or protect people? The Christian Science Monitor
Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1660828001?accountid=33337

Miller, L. S., Hess, K. M., & Orthmann, C. H. (2011). Community policing: Partnerships for problem solving (6th ed.). Clifton Park, NY: Cengage Learning.