Controversy impacts the community and community policing - Research Paper Example

Since its establishment, NYPD has done a lot to ensure that New York City is safe for all its residents. In particular, the department has been very effective since 1994 when William Bratton became the commissioner of the department. He introduced one of the policing strategies; proactive policing or otherwise publicly called the Stop and Frisk policy, which has improved security in the city vis-à-vis a lot of criticism from citizens (Ron, 2009). With the proactive policy, Bratton focused on combating crime in all crime hotspots and taking care of victims.

This operation entailed the use of police undercover, decoys, relying on informants, raiding, shadowing offenders, and saturating streets with police officers. Note that criminal acts are not evenly distributed with the city (Ferreira, 1996). To handle this challenge, Bratton ordered police officers to patrol certain areas more than the other areas. Another key factor that proactive policy used is encouraging good relationship between the police department and the people. This strategy incorporates the people into security issues.

Citizens were encouraged to call the police using the public number; 911. Although many citizens are of the opinion that the presence of police officers in the streets cannot deter crime, but proactive policy has proved that aggressive patrol makes a lot of difference. However, the citizens seem to like this policy but object the way the police officers stop and frisk them yet they are not crime suspects (Franklin, 2012). The credits of Stop and Frisk policy can be justified by the tremendous reduction in crime incidence in the city.

In January 2013, Ray Kelly the New York police commissioner reported that the strategies used in proactive policy has helped the police department to keep crime cases in New York at very low rates. In addition, this policy