Problems Facing Agencies Hoping to Implement Community Oriented Policing Programs

Traditionally determining whether police or policies are effective or not, may be done by evaluating the crime rate for a geographic area. A crime rate in the United States is determined using the FBI’s "Uniform Crime Reports" (UCR) or "National Incident Based Reporting System" (NIBRS) as well as the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ "National Crime Victimization Survey" (NCVS). Community policing is more complicated than simply comparing crime rates and there is also no universally accepted criteria for evaluating community policing. However there are some commonly used structures. One possible way to determine whether or not community policing is effective in an area is for officers and key members of the community to set a specific mission and goals when starting out. Once specific goals are set, participation at every level is essential in obtaining commitment and achieving goals. Street-level officers, supervisors, executives, and the entire community should feel the goals represent what they want their police department to accomplish. Using this evaluation I looked at the community programs the Conover Police are currently involved in.

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.

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

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 was born in the late 1960’s. Between the 1930’s and the 1960’s law enforcement used a professional policing model that was based on hierarchical structures, efficient response times, standardization, and the

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

Community policing is where law enforcement officers become familiar with the surrounding community and the surrounding citizens that live there. This was created so that the surrounding community and law enforcement officers can become sort of like a family unit of closeness in order to create a safe environment to live in, to try and reduce the crime rate within the surrounding area, to try and reduce the fear of law enforcement officers, gain the respect and trust that is needed/wanted and lastly to try and reduce the fear that citizens may have towards the community they live in.

Using a different goal (improving community quality of life issues), agents of COP rely on close involvement with the community to proactively address issues of community concern. However, the professionalism movement as it may be was to turn policing into a profession,

Community- Oriented Policing (COP) is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques, to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime. (http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Community-Oriented+Policing). Community based policing is comprised of three key components;

Community policing is a philosophy. It uses organizational strategies that support the use of partnerships and problem solving techniques to address issues of public safety.Community-oriented policing is collaboration between the community, organizations within the community, and the police that identify and solve community problems. Police officers work with the community to help solve problems related to crime, fear of crime, social and physical disorder, and neighborhood conditions. They do this to enhance the safety and quality of neighborhoods. Officers spend time in these neighborhoods getting to know the residents and business owners by talking to them about the problems that the community is facing or individuals who are causing problems. They are responsible for reducing crime in their beats.

For the police to achieve positive goals within the community they must know the three main components of community policing. The three main components of community policing are community partnership, problem-solving, and change management (Bohm & Haley, 2014, p. 227). Chapter six states that community partnership is the first and main component that must be installed because officers want mutual trust between them and the community. Problem-solving is stated in chapter six to be the community and officers working together to point out an issue and implement a solution. The last component listed, change management, is trying to find something that will work a flexible style of management.

Community oriented policing is a working partnership between the police and the community, in which the community must play an active role against crime and disorder. Community oriented policing is a long term process that holds the views of the community members at a higher status than traditional models. With police officers being more proactive this causes a fundamental institutional change in the whole department. Problem oriented policing uses proactive police techniques while using the COP philosophy by examining the causes for recurring incidents. Problem oriented policing often causes officers and departments to think outside the box with its four stage problem solving process. Community oriented policing and problem oriented policing

The success of implementing a program like this requires that both parties be well informed and well educated on the changes that will take place. One of the first steps is to market the concept of community policing both internally (within the department), as well as externally(within the community).  Marketing community policing internally often involves collapsing the existing structures of authority that are in place as well as the specialization within the department.  The case study mentioned that although the senior administrators in the department played a critical role in the reform, it was also necessary that line level officers be active participants in the process.  After all, two important components of community policing are empowerment and ownership.  Officers were given ownership of certain areas that were

To begin, it is necessary to explicate the concept of a policing model, in order to better contextualize this discussion of community-oriented and problem-solving models in particular. Policing models are used by researchers and police departments alike in order to describe the complex set of motivations, intentions, and strategies used to determine policing policy. Police models "are central entities of thoughts and ideas on policing," and for the most part

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.