Introduction
Law enforcement officers play crucial roles in serving communities by protecting all persons against illegal activities. To carry out these noble activities, policing department draws its mandate from the constitutional order with a defined degree of responsibility as the profession. Since the introduction of the police and law enforcement department, policymakers and management scholars in the security docket continue to develop different strategies to increase the safety and security of populations.
The use of technology and the introduction of sophisticated crime detection mechanisms continue to revolutionize the role of the police department. In the US, the introduction of community policing strategies and engagement of the public in crime reporting and detection strategies help to improve security measures in the country.
Even though community policing remains a relatively insignificant phenomenon in many parts of the world, the US continues to perfect it through several community-based programs and liaison security committees.
Origin
With the aim of decentralizing the large police department, community policing in America started in the 1990s with the introduction of community relation strategies in combating crime within the New York’s Police Department. Primarily introduced to increase public confidence in the police and report cases of racial discrimination, community policing continues to spread across the US with community residents and police working together in addressing crime and illegal acts in the society.
With research and other development initiatives to improve community-policing strategies, the involvement of members of the public in combating crime continues to help people understand policing programs and methods of preventing crime. Similarly, community policing helps both the police and Sheriff departments learn vital insights on societal policing needs (Alpert 43).
Tenets of Community Policing
Community partnership and problem-solving
To develop proper community policing, community partnership remains paramount. Developing community partnerships, help in creating positive relationships with community members, thus developing an insatiable desire to combat crime and improve security. Community partnership helps in developing initiatives for pooling resources for addressing urgent security needs.
Through community partnerships, the police department and the community members develop problem-solving programs through which communities develop a remedy for specific community concerns (Hagan 23).
Hagan (27) argues that even though community policing maintains the authority and the primary duty of maintaining law and order of the police department, it taps into skills, knowledge, and expertise within the community members in pooling resources for the United policing pact. The program relieves the police department of conventional job specification burdens.
Through community policing, local government officials, social workers, community leaders, religious leaders, opinion leaders, and business groups share the responsibility of finding amicable solutions to problems that necessitate crime and other heinous activities in the society.
How community policing works
Patrol officers boast of extensive contact with members of the society due to their constant movement within their areas of jurisdiction. In community policy across the US, patrol officers remain vital in providing invaluable information and daily community policing needs.
From intelligence gathering through minor dispute resolution to police discretion practices, patrol officers form the backbone of community policing connection to the formal police departments. Management levels and senior officers in the police department hold the responsibility of ensuring that information patrol officers collectively help in creating a safe and secure society (Shusta 13).
Patrol officers depend on community members to carry out their mandate. This implies that effective community policing initiative must take into account adequate positive contact between these two groups of personnel.
In order to ensure close and positive contact with the community members, the formal police department must ensure close and adequate movement of the patrol officers within the community. Apart from the conventional police patrol cars, scooters, horses, and on-foot patrol officers enhance movement within the communities, thus helping in creating a sense of membership within the society (Shusta 14).
Keeping community interest at all times forms a vital phenomenon in community policing. Since communities consist not only of the local government and community residents, but also of churches, schools, social centers, and other public agencies, such mixed compositions call for more concern on the plight of different users, residents, and visitors in the community. Integration of the plights, concerns, and interests of such groups of people in community policing initiatives helps in creating a sense of security in the society (Shusta 16).
Emerging trends and problem-solving in community policing
Inclusion of community value
Community policing depends on the articulation of law enforcement strategies that value citizen and stakeholder engagement in decision-making. With rising democratic space within the US setting, the inclusion of community values, interests, and concerns in decision-making process continue to spur community-policing programs to success. In the end, the creation of a harmonious relationship between the uniformed police officers and members of the public improves public confidence in the police units (Miller, Hess, and Orthmann 73).
Notably, the inclusion of community values in community policing strategies helps organize and manage departmental programs in a manner that respects the cultures and beliefs of the citizens, thus reducing chances of frosty relationships among community members and the police department.
Increased transparency and accountability
Different communities suffer from different types of crime in the US. Burglary, rape, racial abuses, murder, and other heinous acts in the society call for different approaches to address. Such differences necessitate difference in the demands, priorities, and desires for policing strategies. In order to address these differences departments involved in community policing require an adequate understanding of the neighborhood priorities in crime.
Developing this understanding requires adequate first-hand interaction between the formal police department and the community members. According to Hagan (31), continuous interactions between the police and the community members do not only keep the law enforcement with updated crime levels and trends but also create a cordial relationship between the police department and community members, thereby reaffirming accountability of the police department to the community.
Decentralization of authorities
Decentralization of command, authority, and decision-making continues to gain importance in community policing strategies across major cities in the US. Police roles in combating crime such as burglary and minor crimes become relatively minimal as decision-making responsibilities spread out from central command systems.
Even though the police department maintains the top-bottom approach in command, engaging members of the community in developing crime detection and reporting strategies alter organizational functions throughout the department, thereby increasing efficiency in service delivery as Whitzman (63) points out.
Power sharing and stakeholder engagement
Before the introduction of the community policing initiative, policy formulation on crime combat and reduction strategies remained the sole responsibility of the law enforcement units. Many communities considered the police department unavoidable simply on the ground that it served when needed most. However, with the introduction of community policing, decision-making and policy formulation calls for full involvement of the affected community members.
Through this process, there exists a sense of ownership to all the laws and regulations that pertain to maintaining safety and security among the members of the community. Active participation of citizens in the development of these laws and regulations helps community members learn a wide range of tactics in collecting information that can help the police department with combatting crime.
Since the laws prescribe involvement of community members in law enforcement programs, the outsider feelings exhibited among members of the communities in conventional police setting recede, giving the police the much important public confidence and support in combating crime (Whitzman 65).
Abolishment of rotational beats
In community policing, community members need close contact and sense of membership in the patrol and beat officers. In order to ensure complete abolishment of rotational beats, police departments in the concerned communities post patrol and beat officers on a permanent basis. This gives an officer ample time to integrate into the community, thereby becoming a vital part of the system.
In case of transfers and redeployments, the immediate former patrol officer in charge of a community takes the incoming officer through a series of orientation programs to ensure the new officer understands the setting. This continuity and uniformity in policing help build trust between the police department and members of the public, thus increasing chances of cordial relationship (Whitzman 67).
Conclusion
Unlike traditional policing departments whose focus revolves around strategies of reacting to criminal incidences in the society, community policing appreciates a pro-active system that seeks to engage the whole society in crime prevention. Community policing boasts of inclusivity and adequate public trust by enjoying total support from community members and the entire society, thus offering amicable solutions to criminal activities in the society.
Greater citizen support, improved public confidence, and unwavering stakeholder engagement in the development of community policing strategies offer the best viable alternative to combating crime since most criminals hail from the affected societies.
Works Cited
Alpert, Geoffrey. Community Policing: Contemporary Readings. 2nd ed. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland, 2000. Print.
Hagan, Frank. Introduction to Criminology: Theories, Methods, and Criminal Behavior. 6th ed. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2008. Print.
Miller, Linda, Karen Hess, and Christine Orthmann. Community Policing: Partnerships for Problem Solving. 7th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2013. Print.
Shusta, Robert. Multicultural Law Enforcement: Strategies for Peacekeeping in a Diverse Society. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education/Prentice Hall, 2011. Print.
Whitzman, Carolyn. The Handbook of Community Safety, Gender and Violence Prevention Practical Planning Tools. London: Earthscan, 2008. Print.