Community Based Policing Essay Research Paper From

Community Based Policing Essay, Research Paper

From: prestindo@hotmail.com To: QUICKPAPERS@TOTALLY.NET Subject: Submit a paperDate: Tuesday, November 04, 1997 2:34 PMTitle: Community based PolicingCategory: otherDescription:Body of paper: Does community-based policing reach societies desired outcome and expectations. This is one of many questions we may have about the fairly new and controversial subject of community policing. To best answer some of these questions we must define community-based policing. As stated by Zhao (1997) community policing is both a philosophy (a way of thinking) and an organizational strategy (a way to carry out a philosophy) that allows the police and the community to work closely together to create ways to solve crime and better yet, to prevent it from happening at all. The philosophy rests on the belief that people deserve input into the police process, in exchange for their participation and support. It also rests on the belief that solutions to today s community problems demand freeing both people and the police to explore creative, new ways to address neighborhood concerns beyond a narrow focus on individual crime incidents. While traditional methods of policing fail to provide desired levels of crime control and public safety, police departments across the Nation search for new and innovative ways to provide law enforcement services to their communities. In recent years, community-oriented policing has emerged as the method of choice for many law enforcement agencies (Springer, 1994). As part of the conversion from traditional policing methods to community-orientated policing, agencies have become more reliant on a “new breed” of police officers better suited for performing proactive, citizen-oriented policing functions in their communities (Trojanowicz, 1990). Traditional policing focuses on reducing crime by arresting the bad guys. Not only does this risk demonizing everyone who lives in high crime areas, it requires relying on rapid response which makes it almostimpossible for the police to avoid being strangers to the community. This concept also suffers from reducing the role of the law-abiding citizens in the community primarily to that of a passive by-stander. As briefly stated earlier, Trojanowicz (1990) explains that community policing takes a different approach to crime, drugs, and disorder, one that can augment and enhance traditional tactics such as rapid response and undercover operations. One of the most obvious differences is that community policing involves average citizens directly in the police process. Traditional policing patronizes the community by setting up the police as the experts who have all the answers. In contrast, community policing empowers average citizens by enlisting them as partners with the police in efforts to make their communities better and safer places to live and work. Many people may say that community policing is a program, but it really is not. A program has a beginning and an end as community policing should not. According to Alder & White (1994) community policing produces improved relations between people and their police as a welcome by-product of delivering high-quality decentralized and personalized police service to the community at the grass roots level. To summarize, community orientated policing is a matter of giving people what they deserve. The innocent deserve the highest level of protection we can provide, they have the right to feel secure and that feeling may be as important as actually being secure. The guilty on the other hand must feel that the criminal activity and acts will be discovered and prosecuted and that they will become the object of unremitting attention (Silberman, 1992). To better understand today s debate over community policing, law enforcement administrators should study their history (Patterson, 1995). History shows that perhapsthe most enduring and influential innovation introduced was the establishment of regular patrol areas, known as “beats.” We seemed to steer away from these in America after the invention of the patrol car and two-way radio. Trojanowicz (1990) says that community policing must be a fully integrated approach that involves everyone in the department, with community policing officers serving as generalists who bridge the gap between the police and the people they serve. The community policing approach plays a crucial role internally by providing information about and awareness of the community and its problems, and by enlisting broad-based community support for the departments overall objectives. Once community policing is accepted as the long-term strategy, all officers should practice it. It is estimated that this could take as long as fifteen years (1990). The role of the police is to enforce the law, not to question it. This means that the police have been used to do societies dirty work. Lord (1996) explains that the police often assume that people worry most about the serious index crimes of murder, rape, and robbery only to find that people in the community care more about a totally different list of concerns. He also explains that community policing takes a proactive approach to crime and disorder, while traditional policing is reactive. Studies confirm that what people really want is crime prevention to be spared from becoming a victim (Fink, 1974). Community policing focuses on solving the problem, and arrest is obviously one of the most