CJ365: Police and the Community-Midterm Exam - Essay Example

The Government consists of people and people should be able to protect their own rights. The Founding Fathers developed this idea as well, and the police are presented as the instrument of the government, which ensures the society of justice, order and domestic tranquility. Alexander Hamilton claimed: “there is one transcendent advantage belonging to the province of the State governments.I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice” (Hamilton). A delegation of authorities of rights’ protection from the government to people is the first step in providing the community’s tranquility and dependence on the efforts of each other.

A community-based approach is an interesting perspective and a challenging choice for the traditional type of policing. It can be said that focus on the individuals is an unavoidable way to the community unification. Moreover, to prevent crimes and socially derogating practices is a perfect chance for the community to prevent occurrence of violent crimes. Q 2 Community Oriented Policing Community Oriented Policing (COP) was developed for crimes’ prevention. Effective cooperation among all members of the community decreases the levels of crimes in the communities and then in the nation in general.

This implies cooperation between the community and the police, when the former is motivated by the latter to take part in police auxiliary activities (Oliver, 2008). There is a need to establish decentralized organizations. Furthermore, the police officers should be able to promote a sense of community in the area of their operation. There is the following definition of COP: “a philosophy and not a specific tactic; a proactive, decentralized approach, designed to reduce crime, disorder, and fear of crime, by involving the same officer in the same community on a long-term basis” (Gianakis & Davis, 1998).

Community oriented policing has the following goals and principles: 1) goals: to reduce a level of fear among citizens; to increase satisfaction of citizen with the services of the police, and to develop techniques to deal with the challenges of the community and 2) principles –to build up a community, establish trust, and cooperation (Liou & Savage, 1996). Officers from the community oriented police can create special bounds within their communities among people, who work in different spheres.

To establish social bounds with people is especially important for COP (Gianakis & Davis, 1998). From the political perspective, there is a clear delegation of authorities from the government’s leaders to ordinary citizens. Common people have a better opportunity to identify problems in their areas and find out the most challenging problems of their community. The police officers have an opportunity to trace the most challenging issues of a certain community from inside. There is a need to prioritize certain problems and set potential aims to reach by the community and by the police, respectively.

There is a strong and a reliable cooperation between police and community work, in the result of which different programs occur. There are the following options to program a common work between the community and the police: meetings of the community, neighborhood watch, bike patrol, police youth league, and police mini-stations in the community (Pfeifer, 2006). It can be said that the underlying central theme for COP is searching for