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The philosophy adopted to promote organizational strategies for synchronous roblem-solving to proactively answer emerging issues of crime and social disorder is called as community oriented policing and we will garnish information on communities based on this concept. Introduction Community policing emerged in the light of public efforts as a tie-up between community and government agencies to eradicate neighborhood crime and improvisation of policies and to lower delinquency rates in youth.
This term has been constantly associated to public-private partnership and the core principle behind community policing is the working of law enforcement gencies with local communities to find real-time solutions to local problems. The mechanism adopted has gained momentum due to many reasons such as requiring greater accountability from government institutions of policing and general dissatisfaction with public law enforcement agencies. We will ascertain the importance and recognition of partnership between community members and enforcement agencies in leading a proactive role to decrease crime rates (Segrave and Ratcliff, 2004).
After the clearing of the 1994 Crime Act, in a span of 10 years the concept of community policing was nstitutionalized. According to the bureau of justice statistics, sixty two percent of the sheriffs offices in the IJnited States had its staff performing community policing. The strategy was widely evaluated for its due diligence at a later phase and some key insights that emerged are as follows. The problems of communities were resolved at a fast pace and with higher satisfactory levels through the use of innovative approaches in specific situations and thus it helped to eradicate few local problems.
Those problems were solved due to constant inputs from local and community members. Areas where sheriffs were not able to take a hold of community policing or drive its implementation brought a decrease in public trust and hindered further advancement of objectives. The areas that reported higher commitment of stakeholder partnership and a steady rise in performance of community policing officials were asserted with support from locally elected officials who were committed to the success of this Initiative.
After noting down these observations, we want to emphasize that to have a formidable affiliation of police with the community, where the community is in charge of eading the forces against local crimes, community policing is seen as a possible solution to this problem area (Peak and Glensor, 1999). It is due to note that many police services around the globe tend to disregard community policing as a comprehensive police strategy and label any such similar policies under community policing (Edward, 1996). It has also been recognized that there is yet to be a clear and concise definition of community policing.
Cordner (1998) has elaborated the four pillars of community policing. The first is philosophical, where the role of the community is fundamental in carrying ut its objectives and the role of police is extended furthermore from traditional police duties. The second facet is strategic, the ground rule is to obtain ideas from community policing experiences and improvise them into proven strategies in practice. Third methodology is tactic, which works around implementation of strategies developed and fourth is the organizational aspect that encourages promotion of community policing initiatives.
Strategies The basic adoption strategies are fairly standard such as provision of storefronts within problem neighborhoods and increasing face-to-face ontact of business owners and residents with enforcement officers. The observation gathered from implementation of community policing was that there was not a single right way of providing solution to community problems and every community required customized solutions to address their concerns. To resolve issues in neighborhood, community officers have to liaison with residents, community groups, youth organizations and other government agencies.
As a possible strategic solution to skateboarding on sidewalks and streets, community officers brought forward the idea of using n empty car parking area into a skateboarding park. This method not just resulted in increased safety for skateboarders and pedestrians but also strengthened ties between police and community. Progressive strategies of community policing has provided substantial results in the past decade and continually grows to strengthen ties between police and community. Suggested police initiatives can be establishment of a special unit, neighborhood center or any other community policing initiative.
This is the first stage of involvement of public enforcement agencies with community. To educe crime rates and delinquency, community policing will be handled as special assignments and not as a part of regular patrol. The core responsibility of police will remain the same as towards rapid response to emergency situations. With an established community policing effort, at the next stage there will be a concentrated intervention program to target severely affected neighborhoods with higher rates of specific crimes.
The priority will be to protect storehouses, people and all the assets of the community from unscrupulous elements. At the next level of a closer focus owards interventions, small projects will be initiated with the help and guidance of residents and expertise of community officers to address specific local concerns. The problems that have a greater likelihood of eradication will be given priority. The locally invented initiatives will also find cross-agency support and community wide coalition plans with a higher priority on collaboration through long-term programs.
A substantial effort is required to be in place for community and residents of affected neighborhoods. High priority needs to be given to make community policing a sustained, community-based approach. This practice will be implemented throughout the department and across the city once community policing is institutionalized. Benefits The advantages of a streamlined program on community policing can be beneficial to the society in many ways. Some of the benefits are listed below according to three areas in which they can be categorized.
Community Benefits This program will lead to mobilization and empowerment of communities and addressing of concerns that can be identified and resolved. The immediate benefit community policing will be to result into an improved local, physical and social environment. The community will usher an increased level of confidence, commitment and positive attitude towards law enforcement agencies and experience a reduced level of crime in the community. Benefits of Government Well established community protocols will lead to improved police- community relationship.
The partnership will have a direct impact on the perception of community and to the accurateness and legitimacy of work that is carried out along with an increased level Of personal satisfaction Of officers in the work carried out. Shared Benefits The agreement of police and citizens to enable community based policing will ead to lesser conflict between citizens and police as well as a substantial reduction of crime rates. The overall result will be a higher level of cooperation and communication between police and the community.
It will lead to a higher quality of crime control due to the pursuit of mutual goals (Segrave and Ratcliff, 2004). It has to be noted that any community policing activity or initiative may or may not achieve some or all of the activities listed above or the mentioned desired outcome. The study suggests that part of the problem of documenting success relies on strategies and any strategy will not lways have positive effects. Although, on an international level many community based policing activities have been documented and standardized.
The results observed have indicated positive and negative effects. Two specific examples will bring more light to the subject. In the case of community policing in Hong Kong, it was observed that our concept led to a stronger relation between the public and law enforcement agencies of Hong Kong involving conscious crime prevention protocols by the public but at the same level the program was found incapable to promote an integrated community-police partnership.
In our second example, a US community policing study by Hawden (2003) concluded that the perception of residents in communities grew with time when they saw a higher number of law enforcement officials patrolling the streets however it failed to improve general consensus on police effectiveness. Challenges Despite an increasing popularity of this partnership and working of community based policing, the growing number of studies have assessed and started to show evidences of the pitfalls and challenges of such programs.
To ascertain our statement we will focus on the three areas of intervention that s associated to community policing. Community policing is not a comprehensive solution for all crimes and prevention strategies but a concept that can be implemented to suit a specific demography. Pitfalls in Police Services Irrespective of an increased commitment of police in helping community policing take a stride in achieving organizational goals of law enforcement agencies, many police organizations are cognizant about the barriers that exist from within the organizational climate (Giacomazzi et. l 2004). This is a direct indication of lack in leadership and management of police services and uch absence in encouragement of community policing strategies can impact community policing practices (Robinson 2003). It is clear that police leadership can be inadequate in many regions for the people; further there are less noticeable but significant obstructions in the progress of undertaking community policing. In some occasions, the police itself was reluctant in making community policing a priority (Segrave and Ratcliff, 2004).
This perceived notion was the birth Of an idea that community policing was far distinct in procedure from regular police work leading to reinforcement of the oncept that this wasn’t ‘real’ police work. Pitfalls in Community The idea of using community policing activities to eradicate crime and lower delinquency rate will be greeted in every community can be a misdemeanor. It is a romanticized opinion, or a perception of the community that they will embrace community policing methods.
In reality, some community members were seen in forming a formidable tie-up with their local law enforcement agencies (Long et. al 2002). This is a direct indication of lack of trust in people with their local enforcement agencies. Another consequential problem rising rom communication constraints was the hindrance of community policing success. This was noted with greater precision in areas belonging to minorities or people with special needs (Schneider 1998).
Research also found out that cohesion between community and police on the problems and solutions that are present in the social context were inept. This lack of cohesion was capitalized by minority stakeholders (Bohm et. al. 2000). Implementation In this section we will concentrate on all the necessary procedures and mechanisms that can be used or prove helpful in making a community olicing a positive and progressive effort to reduce crime, address community issues and community development approach, security and safety of assets belong to community, businesses and residents pertaining to that community.
As it was communicated earlier that community policing lacks a uniform model and adoption of western or international model will fail to address community challenges of developing countries in the form of lack in adherence to professionalism, instances of disrespecting law enforcement and lack of community organizations (see Davis et. al. 2003). Countries that ave an already established notion of high levels of public safety will fail to use community policing methods for betterment of services.
This demonstrates a necessity of practicing community policing initiatives with proper accounting of different cultural contexts to result in a positive successful community implementation program. The subject of our paper is to understand the development and challenges of community policing and without understand the community we will not be able to benefit the society in any possible way. To break it down, we will look at two intervention ethods for influencing and achieving developmental goals for a society.
Directing Community Facilitating Community The first approach adopted by government agencies is to prepare a holistic community in accordance with ideas, plans and requirements through direction and guidance. It can be regarded as technical assistance approach or top-down approach. F-acilitating community is seen as one of many approaches that lead to willingness of society to contribute itself towards positive changes and improve the quality and wellbeing of community members.
It was found in our research that for bridging the context of overnment led initiatives of community policing with the aim of facilitating community development, the latter can survive with an active involvement of all stakeholders such as the police department, local authorities, non- government organizations, panel of experts or community leaders, media as well as other interested parties in providing assistance, feedback and information in a forum or a discussion table..
Discussion Recognizing the fact that policing approach can no longer be concluded on only reactive actions, we want to see a more dynamic concept of prevention nd it must be organized by the police force. Five year strategic plan was laid out for strategizing and providing clear directions in handling crisis situations and addressing concerns of the community pertaining to crime. Therefore the concept of community policing was introduced and has been implemented as a police philosophy for implementing crime prevention.
Community policing will require equal engagement from police and the community in identifying corrective actions and addressing issues related to crime. This can be a small step forward to address and work closely with the community to build trust nd partnership. Community based policing will provide a consistent platform for officers to engage with community members. In Summary there are three identified challenges towards community policing implementation.
The foremost and most important is to build community partnerships, which can be an equally daunting task for law enforcement agencies. The next approach is to resolve the issues surrounding community policing building an integrated approach to policing with other complementing policing strategies. Suggested approaches can be problem-oriented policing initiatives or ntelligence-based policing. There is also a significant developmental need for strengthening research in to community policing strategies and to develop this approach into a productive program (Segrave and Ratcliff, 2004).
The consensus is that policing objectives and approaches of intervention with the community may vary from nation to nation or it may be state specific and the community or law enforcement agencies shouldn’t raise their hopes on immediate results after laying down community based policing protocols. It should be observed that community policing will require significant financial nd organ izational investments and therefore the organizations wishing to implement such initiatives should work around proven successful methods and use only those mechanisms that are suited in local context (Brogden, 2004).