Answer: Community Policing brings police and citizens together to prevent crime and solve neighborhood problems. With community policing, the emphasis is on stopping crime before it happens, not responding to calls for service after the crime occurs. Community policing gives citizens more control over the quality of life in their community. Community policing means police become part of the neighborhood. This helps police get a better sense of resident’s needs and helps residents to develop greater trust in the police. In essence the community joins the police department. Those “who believe that community policing is practiced in their neighborhood are more likely to express favorable opinions of the police.”(Weitzer & Tuch, 2006, p. 45) Together, in partnership, the community and police department work together to achieve a common goal of a safer, better place to live. It is “democracy in action.”(BJA, August 1994, p. 4).
Community policing is seen as an effective way to promote public safety and to enhance the quality of life in a community. Community policing plays a pivotal role in the two defining elements of policing: police-community relations and problem-solving. “First, it should broaden police organization goals …Second, it should alter the way police are organized to accomplish their goals.” (Weisburd & Braga, 2007, p. 47) Active participation is required from the local government to the average citizen in order for community policing to work. Everyone is responsible for safeguarding the welfare of the neighborhood. Unlike traditional policing methods, the goals of policing are expanded and the perception of community is changed. Traditional policing assumes that the problems of society are not within the realm of the police department. Traditional police departments are strictly reactive and don’t look beyond efficiently resolving the immediate incident at hand. Police officers are tied to the dispatcher and rarely have time to do more than answer one call after another. The police department, as an organization, separates itself from the city’s infrastructure and from city services.
Implementing community policing changes the structure of policing and how it is managed. Community policing helps build up and strengthen the community. It also links the police and the community together. The partnership that develops over time can ultimately help the police find the underlying causes of crime within the neighborhood. By getting the community involved, the police have more resources available to them to help in crime prevention. By familiarizing themselves with the members of the community, officers are more likely to obtain valuable information about criminals and their activities. Also they are more likely to obtain a reliable evaluation of the needs of citizens and their expectations of the police.
As previously stated, community policing plays a major part in police-community relations and problem-solving. In order to develop a partnership with the community, first the police must form a great relationship with the neighborhood. The police must try to involve the neighborhood in its pursuit to control crime. Most community concerns and solutions are identified through problem-solving. The objective is to to lessen crime and disorder by diligently examining the attributes of concerns in communities and then applying the most suited problem-solving solutions.
With any method of policing there are going to be advantages and disadvantages. One of the main advantages to community policing is that it reduces fear in the community. With an increase in police presence in the neighborhood the residents feel more secure. This feeling of security helps the police establish trust within the community. As citizen become more active in taking care of their community, they start to understand what officers actually do on a day-to-day basis. This improves police-community relations. Ultimately, quality of life for the community improves and crime is reduced. Another advantage is that community policing is flexible and capable of changing. The solutions and strategies change as the community changes. If a plan works in one community it doesn’t mean that it will work in all communities. Community policing allows the community to come up with solutions that will work within their own neighborhood and to change or eliminate those that do not work. Community policing can be implemented in a limitless number of ways. This is also true of problem-solving. They both are only limited by one’s imagination. Community policing offers a myriad of benefits. Making effective use of the talents and resources available within communities will help extend severely strained police resources. Also, reduced levels of crime will allow more police resources to be allocated to services that have the greatest impact on the quality of community life.
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