Community Policing Essay

Going back to the origin of community policing. In the 1820’s, In England, where the structure of Community Policing was created by Sir Robert Peel, who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Home Secretary. He came up with Nine Principles of the Policing that every Police Enforcement must follow in order the community policing would become successful. Here are some principles.

In the 1800s, America became extremely industrialized. Due to all of the new upbringings there was a need for organized policing. Policing in America went through many different stages beginning with organized American law enforcement, to formal policing. Michael Moore and George Kelling inferred that there were three eras of policing; political era, professional era, and community era. The political era came first along, as that era began to go downhill, the professional era arose. As the professional era began to take drawbacks, the community era started up and is still going on in present day. There are many positives and some negatives in today’s society living in the community era.

Community policing is explained as a collaboration of community and the police working together to help identify and solve criminal activities. Additionally, the whole concept behind it is to promote public safety and to enhance the quality of life within the neighborhoods in which we reside in. Community policing is composed of two major components which are community partnership and problem solving. Community policing is a program that was initially started in the 1940’s. All of the support that was released for this program was materialized actually in the 1980’s. One of the main goals if not the most important goal was to bring in the law enforcement closer to their local public to help

The Community Policing era has been one of the contemporary police activities in the last 30 years. It is more of a decentralized approach to reducing crime by involving the same officer in the same community on a long term basis, so residents will develop trust and then provide information and assistance to the officer. Community Policing does not replace motorized patrol or other police tactics but instead compliments them with community partnership and problem solving (Bailey, 2011).

Community policing has evolved to be the most used strategy for policing. “It is an approach to crime detection and prevention that provides police officers and supervisors with new tools for addressing recurrent problems that plague communities and consume a majority of police agency time and resources” (Peak, 2012, 65). It has been defined by various people differently. But all the definitions have similar principles (Chappell, 2009). They focus on proactive problem solving and create relationships with the community to address any issue that may arise. Community policing is a combination of client-oriented and problem-oriented policing.

Community oriented policing is a policing strategy based on the notion that community interaction and support can help control crime and reduce fear, with community members helping to identify suspects, detain vandals and bring problems to the attention of police. It is a philosophy that combines traditional aspects of law enforcement with prevention measures, problem-solving, community engagement, and community partnerships (Ref. 1).

Although many may find community policing and problem-oriented policing to fall in the same category, there is (surprisingly) a difference between the two. For one, community policing has many definitions. For some, it means instituting foot and bicycle patrols and doing acts pertaining to the ideal bond between police officers and their community. While for others it means maintaining order and cleaning up neighborhoods in desperate need of repair (Dunham & Alpert, 2005). However, an idyllic definition of community policing is altering the traditional definition of crime control to community problem-solving and promising to transform the way police do their job. Within the past two decades, there has been much research on community

In reviewing Peel’s Principles of Law Enforcement, the first principle listed states, “The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder as an alternative to the repression of crime and disorder by military force and severity of legal punishment.” This principle basically means that the police are in place to prevent crime from happening with the use of military style enforcement, and to punish such criminals swiftly and severely by legal means. This relates to community policing today in that the police are in place to curb criminal behavior and maintain order in the community.

Community policing is one method that police forces use to enhance public safety. According to the textbook Race and Crime, “It [community policing] was touted as having benefits over the traditional policing strategy because it is a proactive approach that

The methodology to be adopted in community policing may be highlighted as: creation of crime curbing projects, increased number of police to the community through creation of nearby police stations or using foot patrols, establishment of community-police committees, initialization of programs that assist crime victims, and using the community to get feedback on crime rate prevention and satisfaction.

By mid-1800 American police copied Peel’s principles and update them to social conditions in American communities.Community policing was officially started in the USA starting in the 1970s to 1980s, Peel’s principles were still present. Community policing is an organizational strategy that attempts to reduce crime by improving quality of life.This strategy creates new policies, recruits different type of officers, change in primary objectives, type of services delivered, updated training as well as a change in supervision of street officers. This included bringing

Community Policing is a value system which infuses a police department, in which the main organizational goal is working helpfully with individual citizens, groups of citizens, and both public and private organizations to identify and resolve issues which possibly effect the livability of specific neighborhoods, areas, or the city as a whole. Community policing can be beneficial to communities. Community policing can help prevent crimes from occurring. As officers get to know a community, they also get to know what is right and wrong with it. Typically, officers remain entitled to an area where crime happens often and as such they are left with fighting it as it is going or after it happened. In community policing neighborhoods, the officers are able to tell what might happen and as

Police departments use Community Policing approach because it enables police officers to engage in problem solving. In community policing, the police and the community work together to identify issues, address the underlying causes, to choose the right solutions to the issues, then evaluate its effectiveness (Ortmeier, 2006). Unlike traditional policing which is reactive and incident-driven, community policing focus on problem solving in addressing disorder. Throughout the years, community policing has evolved and created a new dimension called Intelligence Led Policing.

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.

Approaches of both community policing and traditional policing models differ in a variety of ways. The characteristics of the policing models are quite different from each other, and community based policing was considered laughable when suggested for the new approach in the early 1970s. Due to community policing’s new operating beliefs, new and unfamiliar expected officer behaviors, and that officers were being held legally responsible for their actions and inactions; the idea and implementation wasn’t widely accepted until 1980’s. Traditional policing was primarily dominated by rampant corruption and lawlessness that affected all levels of the police administration; therefore citizens had little trust if any, in the police officers of the time.