The philosophy of providing personalized policing can be termed as community policing. The policing model emphasizes creating ties between patrol officers and the citizens aiming at the identification of challenges and provision of amicable solutions (Manning, 2015). Community policing has changed especially with the ‘Broken Windows’ theory which postulates that low-level crime brews serious crimes in the society. The beginning of community policing was influenced by the feeling that ignoring a little incident of a broken window by regular policing will trigger more crime if no action is taken.
Bill Clinton gave community policing a major boost with several acts such as the Violent Crime Control act that acted to provide funds for community policing. With funding to community policing, the general public was better involved in solving small crimes that are indicators of disorganization in the society but cannot attract information of regular police officers. As compared to traditional policing, modern evolved community policing has assisted the public in modeling and maintaining orderly and safe social environments (Murphy, 2015).
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Benefits of community policing
Community policing has brought many advantages to the modern society that had not been realized before implementing community policing. One major advantage of community policing is the bringing together of citizens and regular police officers to solve the crime. Since community policing is involved with solving the low-level crimes before they escalate into major crimes, the citizens and law enforcers have been able to stop crimes rather than respond hours after a crime has already occurred as had been the culture. By initiating community policing, citizens are accorded increased control over the community’s quality of life.
Secondly, the joining together of the police and citizens acts to boost the understanding of a community’s need subsequently responding appropriately. A continued relationship of citizens and regular law enforcers boosts the public’s confidence in police officers subsequently making every individual responsible for ensuring the community’s welfare is safeguarded. Given that community policing brings a change into the structure and management of policing, the community is strengthened. The linkage created in community policing assists the police to identify the underlying crime causes since the police can gather valuable information about criminal activities and their perpetrators.
Community policing lessens fear in neighborhoods with the increased police presence. The flexibility of community policing enable the community members to provide strategies and solutions to criminal activities (Ariel, Weinborn, & Sherman, 2016). Since the community offers a pool of talent and resources in combating crimes, the strain on law enforcers is reduced impacting more on the effectiveness of policing.
Obstacles to community policing
In spite of community policing being established and effectively supported by local administrations, community policing suffers some setbacks. According to Dunham and Alpert (2015), one notable challenge of community policing is a police culture of resistance. Police officials in some cases do not honor confidentiality and discretion from their source of information thus putting such source in risk of retaliation from organized criminals. In many instances, the law enforcers tend to continue with laxity as was experienced in traditional policing. Laxities of police officers kill the morale of society members who report cases of crime or provide valuable information, but it is not acted upon (Weitzer, 2015). Additionally, in areas that have seen hostilities between the police and citizens, building mutual trust has proven a challenging task.
According to Thurman and McGarrell (2014), the understanding of basic community policing principles acts as another impediment to effectively apply community policing. The police and society members need to be adequately trained to have an effective structure and organization of community policing.
References
Ariel, B., Weinborn, C., & Sherman, L. W. (2016). “Soft” policing at hot spots—do police community support officers work? A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Experimental Criminology , 12 (3), 277-317.
Dunham, R. G., & Alpert, G. P. (2015). Critical issues in policing: Contemporary Readings . Waveland Press.
Manning, P. K. (2015). Democratic policing in a changing world . Routledge.
Murphy, K. (2015). Does procedural justice matter to youth? Comparing adults' and youths' willingness to collaborate with police. Policing and Society , 25 (1), 53-76.
Thurman, Q., & McGarrell, E. F. (2014). Community policing in a rural setting . Routledge.
Weitzer, R. (2015). American policing under fire: Misconduct and reform. Society , 52 (5), 475-480.
