Community Oriented Policing Paradigm - Research Paper Example

The federal government creates a law enforcement agency whose function is to enforce rules and apprehend those who violate them (“Police” 1). History of development of formalized government goes back to the Roman Empire, and during that time Roman legions and Praetorian guards were responsible to maintain order and peace in the society (Palmiotto 1). The contemporary model of a police force that we know today came from the UK with the formation in 1820 of London’s first municipal police.

Sir Robert Peel is considered to be the founder of the police force model that exists until this day (“Understanding Community Policing” 5). Among many principals, set forth by Sir Peel, one states that the police is the public and the public is the police (“Understanding Community Policing” 5). This principle can be considered as the seed, which eventually grew to community policing concept.Though the term policing was not in use until the eighteenth century, but the practice could be found in England as far as in 1066 with the Norman invasion of Anglo-Saxons (Palmiotto 3).

Policing at that time only took care of the king’s peace. The peacekeepers at that time were called “frankpledge”; by the end of the thirteenth century Normans introduced other peacekeepers and named them as “constables”. The “constable” peacekeeping mechanisms collapsed by the latter part of the seventeenth century due to the contempt by the people and corrupt justice system (Palmiotto 4-6). The birth of the term “police” as today’s concept may be contributed to Henry Fielding.

In 1848, Fielding who was a magistrate at that time conceived the idea of crime prevention as the principal task of the police force.