Community and Police - Essay Example

Community Policing Community policing goes hand in hand with the fact that high community and police collaboration work toward improving people’s lives at the communal level. This consequently reduces the crime fear. This paper looks at how community policing model can help fight against criminal activities in a community that lacks clear mechanisms on how to eliminate criminal activities in any given society. Communities need to live in harmony. The best way to ensure this is to practice self-policing and discipline. There is dire need for people within a communal setting to embrace the privileges that come with community policing. There exists a relationship between the fall in crime fear and community policing no matter how implementation process is carried out (Schnebly, 2008, p. 273). The public is usually never satisfied with the fact police can offer protection from injustices that exist within its setting. For example, the youth and the community at large have always had a misunderstanding between the police and them. This is probably caused by the fact that police harass the public during normal patrols and arrests. There is need to protect arrest victims no matter their degree of crime. Accordingly, the police must not harass or intimidate people in the process of discharging their duties. There should not be a major commotion in the arrest process even in cases where the arrestee gets unruly. However, some police officers lose their emotions and act with speed to encounter such wild behaviors from their victims. This in most cases leads to public fear towards police presence (Schnebly, 2008, p. 279). If a person is suspected of any crime and is detained by a police officer, he/she might be faced with a circumstance of lawful detention. However, an attempt to resist arrest may lead to additional accusation. It is also very possible that an overenthusiastic police officer might attempt to use excessive force against a suspect to allege that the suspect tried to resist arrest. It is very important to understand the actions that constitute the law for one to have knowledge of the difference between prosecution and arrest for the lawful accusation of resisting arrest and the rare police officers’ abuse cases. The police force is meant to maintain law and order and as such must protect the rights of the community. The assumption that suspects that resist arrest are always on the wrong side of the law is simply a myth and should never be taken lightly. Police brutality and intimidation are some of the causes of arrest resistance. In protection of crime victims, it is fair to argue that the victims are human beings and as such, ought to be treated fairly. In every country for example, there is a law that that requires the police force to protect the rights of its citizens in the fairest way possible (Gowri, 2003, P. 593). This is an example of a good proposal for community policing. The police force in every country should have the constitutional back up to safeguard the rights of its citizens because the constitution exists for the protection of citizens. The security network should derive its full force from the constitution, which declares that there should be a proper police force in every country mandated with security provision by and for the people. The community policing should be in full force in any given country and there must not be any reason for its absence. The major instruments of police force should include; Police/Community Relations Committee. This should be an existing committee created by the police force. It involves cooperation of the different community members and the police force. With the objective to improve the relationship between the local community and the police, enhance a relevant community policing culture and promote good basis of dignity, respect and understanding between the police and the community in general. The Police/Community Relations Committee should be operational in most parts of a country. For example, in the United States, California has had the introduction of Community Safety Partnerships in its top Divisions. This has seen the involvement of Local Government’s senior officers. Some supportive agencies have pledged support for the course to ensure fully functional community policing in the United States of America. The major subject of discussion has been how the local safety concerns affect the different communities and the way good working relationships can provide amicable solutions to their security concerns. The police force works as a team to promote the relationship between the local community and the police. This is conducted with the objective to eliminate criminal activities. The Police Force calls for regular meetings with the local community with local government playing the role of hosting these meetings. The halls for local councilors are known to accommodate various meeting audiences and could as well provide shelter for such meetings. The major objective of holding such meetings away from the police force is to promote crime prevention partnership instead of paternalism in which case members of the community are given the perception of sheer informants (Rufai & Adigun, 2011). Participants in such meetings include representatives from all parties to criminal prevention at the communal level. The meetings should be consistent and conducted on a regular basis. Community safety and security forums is one move that work towards enhancement of relationship between the police and the community. This will similarly work for community policing in terms of reduction of criminal activities in a given society. The police should hold periodic meetings with the local community to promote this process of community policing. A community is a setting that is circumscribed, geographically. These include villages and neighborhoods. A virtual society is a setting of persons or business individuals who work around an interest that is shared (Gowri, 2003, P.613). The interaction in this case should be embraced by technological advancements and guided by the set ethics and regulations. Virtual societies should have a dedication towards a given topic. They also bring people with similar ideas together. Communication remains to play same role; sharing information. Virtual communities are different from ordinary ones in the sense that they are geographically dispersed. Characteristics of a virtual community include; shared ideas and organized around similarities, support for communication, graphic based communication that supports multimedia content such as animations and formatted texts, and non-geographical boundaries. The features of a virtual community demonstrate the way community members can benefit a lot from community policing (Somerville, 2010 p. 261). As mentioned earlier, a good community policing initiative should involve proper interaction between the police force and local community members. However, it could be difficult to interact with community members on regular basis. The virtual community plays an important role in ensuring that this objective is properly fulfilled as bridges the gap between community members and the police. The virtual community in this case will be a web-based model that will help facilitate communication between the police force and the civilians in any given setting. The major objective here is to help police reach the local community on matters of similar interest like security concerns. The virtual work place locality explains the entities that comprises of members of the community, the way they are reflected in the virtual community and their access statuses (Somerville, 2010, p. 279). Members of community category comprises of the following: 1. The police 2. Agencies for inter-security 3. Businesses 4. Community 5. Mass Media, and 6. Non-governmental organizations. The major concern is that there should be a flow of information between every community member and the police (Rufai & Adigun, 2011). Even though, members are required to send member applications to the officials prior to attaining membership status. The police force is the center of communication in this case. Every member is expected to send their mails to the police through virtual community. Either community members or the police are at liberty to communicate with each other. Members must however not communicate with one another for the reasons of confidentiality and protection of information given by community members. There is centralization of the system to enhance good communication between the two parties. The police representative has administration work force that approves registration of members. They can also suspend a member from the system if the situation calls for such action, and they coordinate communication between the two groups. The communication elements that exist between community members and the police are; registration, meetings, trainings and opinion polls (Roh &Willard, 2005, p. 676). The major communication tools used to facilitate interaction between the police force and community members are email and chat. These require members to enter their basic membership identities such as name or email address and password. Chatting can be conducted through text messaging or voice mail chatting. A central webpage should be developed to act as medium for mission statements of the police. The following steps should be followed keenly for better interaction processes; Members should seek help from virtual environment in any case they want to communicate. The virtual environment should grant members access to various available types of communication. It must also offer basic communication tools to demonstrate seriousness with which this initiative is pursued. It should be user friendly. Community policing is a good way of eliminating criminal activities within a society. Subsequently, developing an effective tool/policy to enhance community policing is a positive achievement. The relationship between the police and the community is also vital in restoring sanity as far as criminal activities and security measures are concerned (Roh &Willard, 2005, p. 681). The virtual community is an integral part of the initiative because it not only enhances community policing but also addresses the needs of community members. References Gowri, Aditi. (2003). Community Policing is an Epicycle; 26, 4; ProQuest Criminal Justice. pg. 591. Rufai, M. and Adigun, J. (2011). International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security, Vol. 9, No. 11. Roh, Oliver., Willard, M. (2005). Effects of Community Policing upon Fear of Crime: Understanding the Causal Linkage; 28, 4; ProQuest Criminal Justice pg. 670. Schnebly, Stephen. (2008). The Influence of Community-Oriented Policing on Crime-Reporting Behavior. Somerville, Peter. (2010). Understanding Community Policing Department of Policy Studies, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK. Read More