Case Study: The Miami Police Department

Today, many police officers are out performing patrols on foot and on bike, interacting with the public through meet and greets, and participating in community service projects to help make the city a great place to live (Roufta, n.d.). Furthermore, this method of policing also allows the community to get involved with their local law enforcement. Through initiatives such as block watches, police officers can now answer calls from the neighborhood. Overall, today’s policing has created a method of policing known as Community Oriented Policing. Community Oriented Policing is a style of policing that involves police officers partnering with their communities to help solve problems and to attack the core problems that lead to crime in the first place (“Law Enforcement and Community Relations,” (n.d.), para. 24).

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.

The Resident Officer Program of Elgin (ROPE) is a program in which officers live and work in distressed neighborhoods of the city to help solve the community‘s problem and improve the quality of life for the residents of Elgin. This is not a quick fix program. In neighborhoods that have deteriorated and in which crime has risen over the years, reversing the situation will take a long-term investment in time and personnel. However, numerous resident officer programs have sprung up around the nation since the early 1990’s. Supporters of these programs believe resident officer programs capture the essence of community policing: improved relationships between police and their neighbors, who team together to fight crime and address

There are many reasons why the police have a difficult time interacting with the communities they are supposed to protect and serve. These issues did not occur overnight however the string of police involved shootings throughout the United States seems to wedge a bigger gap between the pubic and the police, along with poor communication skills and lack of positive engagement with the community. Police officers deal with many types of people from different cultures and age groups and should be able to adapt no matter where they are. When these officers take an interest in the communities they patrol, there is generally a sense of peace, when officers don’t care and aren’t in sync with the residents residing in the communities the disengagement is apparent. By finding ways to improve the relationship and actually applying them, there may be a chance to bring a positive light back the police-community relationship.

Officers also have an important role in outreach programs to help prevent crime. For example, officers may go to schools to speak about how to avoid drug use and staying out of gangs. They also administer volunteer programs to get juveniles involved in their communities. The International Association of Police Chiefs notes that these programs can include recreational activities, internships and law enforcement scout explorer groups.

The negative experiences that African Americans and police have had with each other has made it difficult for both sides to trust each other, which then leads to resistance by African Americans when encountered by police and higher profiling of African Americans by police. The article that I analyzed presented a solution for this problem, The Outward Bound Police Insight Program, an afterschool program where children are interacting with the police and creating a stronger bond with them as well. It also helps the police better understand the population that they are serving and improve trust with the two communities as

An advocate of Community Oriented Policing (COP), he has been diligent about sharing the message that “policing is a partnership.”

Some that I will mention are Santa Cops, Community Watch, Lunch Buddy and National Night Out. All of these programs are designed to bridge the gap between the community and the police. Let’s start by looking at each program.

The Houston Police Department has is one of the best known police departments in the state of Texas. It was first formed in 1841 by the first City Marshal. According to the Houston Police Department, “The mission is to enhance the quality of life in the city of Houston by working cooperatively with the public to prevent crime, enforce the law, preserve the peace, and provide a safe environment.”

As City of Miami Police Explorers Jonathan Dave Felix and I (Jerry Paret) are allowed to participate in ride-a-longs and respond to 911 calls as we ride in the passenger seat with police officers. On our ride-a-longs, we realized that many juveniles that were being arrested were either black or Hispanic. These teenagers would retaliate, and racially bash each other. These juveniles were being arrested because of their ignorance and lack of knowledge with race relations. We determined this was a reason of their misconduct, but the main reason was their lack of positive involvement in in the community. Beginning in 2015, we conducted in recruitment of teenagers in Liberty City. Our target was black and Hispanic teenagers, but we accepted all

G.R.E.A.T. (Gang Resistance Education And Training) was developed in 1991, by Phoenix Police Department to reduce teenage participation in criminal behavior and gangs, so “a combined effort was created with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Phoenix Police Department (PPD), and began as an eight-lesson middle school curriculum” (“History of the”,n.d.). Additional instructors, officers and law enforcement agencies where added help manage the program. These agencies were: Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Police Department; La Crosse, Wisconsin, Police Department; Portland, Oregon, Police Bureau; Federal

Reactive patrols and proactive patrols are mainstays of American police agencies. Reactive patrols provide the required rapid law enforcement response to citizen requests for assistance and other emergencies. Meanwhile, proactive patrols provide the necessary planning and allocation of police resources to effectively respond to specific, ongoing problems such as "white collar crime" and the "victimless crimes" of drug transactions behind closed doors. Careful examinations of each patrol type and the effects of using exclusively reactive patrols or exclusively proactive patrols show that a balanced approach using both types of patrols gives the best law enforcement response to the needs of the community.

Attorney’s Office and District Attorney’s Office, actively work to stop or curtail criminal acts as they are occurring (BPD, n.d.). One of the intervention tactics discussed involves working in areas of high gang violence to ease tensions and directly address ongoing disputes, in an ultimate attempt to curb the violence associated with gang disputes (BPD, n.d.). This is an example of an intervention method because it attempts to tackle a problem that already exists by directly injecting law enforcement into the situation. Another innovative intervention approach used by the Boston Police focuses on a joint effort between the police and the probation department, wherein the two groups work together to encourage at-risk youth to stay in and maintain curfews, while also violating more dangerous offenders as soon as they break the rules (BPD, n.d.). A final example of an intervention technique is the unique Youth Service Providers Network, which allows police to refer at-risk children for services like counseling, emergency housing and tutoring (BPD, n.d.) In doing so, Boston police can intervene in a child’s life without having to arrest the youth. As Siegel and Welsh (2012) point out, youth crime rates often stem from a lack of other important supportive services, so this type of program is an incredibly powerful response to intervene in the lives of children who might otherwise simply be arrested and funneled into the justice

This program would be developed in a manner that the community can come and address the issues in their community with law enforcement, as well as get to know the officers patrolling their neighborhoods. This could show the community and the officers that there are no differences that can’t be solved with communication. A similar program has been used by the nearby department in San Jose. The program goal “is to help our residents learn about issues and challenges, share their ideas, and help propose collaborative solutions that can lead to long-term relationships between police officers and our community that are more trusting and productive for everyone.” (Newsroom,

There are multiple approaches to engaging a police force with the community in order to most effectively prevent and respond to crime, and considering the relative strengths and weakness of each of these strategic models will demonstrate how models can impact the operation of daily policing practices and activities. The model under discussion here is called community oriented policing (COP), and focuses on building relationships and rapport between officers and the community in order to more effectively prevent crime. It is augmented by a model called problem solving policing (PSP), and depends upon rank-and-file officers identifying community problem areas through direct observation and analysis. Each model excels at slightly different things, and in practice most police agencies deploy a mix of models. By examining the Miami-Dade Police Department's handbook for school resource officers, it will be possible to view a COP/PSP policy in action in order to better understand how these models practically affect policing.