History of Community Policing - Term Paper Example

History of Community Policing Introduction According to The-Crankshaft Publishing (n.d), the word ‘police’ refer to the arrangements that all cultured nations make in the endeavor to ensure that their populace adheres to the law and maintain peace. The word is also used to refer to peace officers appointed for this purpose. In his writing, Richard Mayne points out the fact that an effectual police’s principal aim is crime prevention, the next goal being to detect crime and punish law offenders. Richard Mayne believes that police must concentrate all their powers to these ends. He further notes the fact that lack of crime, the preservation of public calm, over and above the protection of life and property are the only things that can prove whether those police endeavors have been successful or not and whether the police force have attained the goals for which were hired (Met.police.uk, 2011). Community policing, also known as community-oriented policing (COP) or problem-oriented policing concerns itself with the re-identification of the task of the police as facilitators in the society. Community policing refers to the transformation in philosophy with regard to police duties against community responsibilities to a team notion of complete quality organization of the society (Worts, 2000). Arrington (2006) presents the United states Justice Department’s “most often agreed upon” description of community policing – community policing refers to a philosophy of policing that upholds and endorses organizational policies of managing the causes diminishing social disorder as well as the dread of crime using problem-solving procedures and community policing affiliations. Arrington (2006) adds that proper community policing happens co-operatively with all members of the community participating as equal partners. The most important objective of the police should to make the life quality of residents better as well as to ensure that they feel safe. This has led to the establishment of a number of varied tactics and strategies by the police aimed at enhancing the relationship between the police force and members of the public. According to the Community Oriented Policing Services (2011), the concept of community-oriented policing is based on the principle that the reduction of citizens’ fear of crime while still establishing collaboration among the members of the community and the police is a momentous objective of police organizations. The Community-Oriented Policing services (COPS) (2011) further describes community policing and states that its focal point is social disorder as well as crime by conveying police services, which consists of aspects of traditional law enforcement as well as prevention, community engagement, and partnerships, and problem solving. The model of community policing establishes a balance connecting reactive rejoinders to calls for assistance and proactive problem-solving concentrating on disorder as well as the root of crime. Partnership among the citizens and the police in making out and attending to those issues successfully is crucial. COPS’ description of community-oriented policing amounts to three elements. To begin with, it entails the recognition, investigation, response to, in addition to the appraisal of community problems through concentrating not only on particular crimes and disorder episodes, but also on their particular causes. Secondly, it points to the group effort of other government agencies, community service organizations, private community resources, and businesses with the intention of solving problems. Thirdly, it calls for partnership between the police and members of the community in the achievement of the mission of preserving order, managing crime over and above other social services to the community (Giles, 2002). As mentioned earlier, community-oriented policing (COP) majorly concerns itself with building on a working rapport with the public. The notion behind this is that if the members of the public agree to collaborate with the police, there would be improved security as well as crime reduction. Community-oriented policing stresses on the fact that the locals are the most important line of protection against disorder, fear, crime, in addition to the degeneration of life quality in their environs. For that reason, in community-oriented policing, members of the society are actively involved in detecting the problems that are present in their neighborhood and providing solutions to them. Aside from crime control, another aim of community-oriented policing is ensuring the existence of contentment and harmony in the society. It is however important to note that even though the police pay attention to area residents’ demands in community-oriented policing, the police do not and are not supposed to follow mindlessly all their demands. Moreover, members of the community cannot merely present a hitch to the police and wait for them to settle it alone – they should also to participate in coming up with solutions (Jrank.org, 2011). Despite the fact that the roots of community-oriented policing movement stretches out throughout the history of police, the birth of the movement, according to most analysts, is accredited to a number of well-known United States’ social forces back in the 1960s. Police historians note the fact that in the United States, policing was a relatively ‘closed’ institution until the early 60s. More often than not, the federal as well as state level politicians were not used to going for elective office on platforms relating to crime and policing. Actually, America’s average nationals had little knowledge of what policing entailed. Courts failed to devote much of their energy towards inspection and in general, policing stayed closed to members of the public and to the ears and eyes of their representatives. As an example, in their historic study during the early 1960s, a group of United States’ Bar Foundation-commissioned law scholars was dumbfounded to discover the wide-ranging discretion of the police when coming to vital decisions, which include whether to perform an investigation, whether to apprehend, detain a suspect, or whether to apply force (Giles, 2002). All through the 1960s, several States joined hands in exposing the Unites States of America’s policing to scrutiny as well as attention by external audiences. A group of youths revolted in opposition to conventional society’s rules owing to social forces including general disgruntlement as regards Vietnam’s martial action, the civil rights movement, and so on. The police, being the mainstream concierges of the community, were confronted with the civil unrest of the protesting, rebellious, and unruly populace during this time. At the time, police officers’ use of force as well as ill-treatment of minority citizens became the order of the day – scholars recorded an increase in racist attitudes on the side of most officers of the police towards the minorities during that time. A number of the insurgences that engulfed the United States’ cities during this period were a culmination of police actions including raids, traffic stops, or shootings that were going on in the neighborhoods. According to a survey that the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968) carried out, poor/vicious discriminative action by the police, along with intense ghetto communities versus police aggression was a major contributor of the urban unrests (The-Crankshaft Publishing, n.d and Giles, 2002). During that time, there was growth in television news and a great number of citizens were able to witness most of the altercations between members of the public and the police. Classic news stories presented images of police application of excessive force against the citizens were common. For once, in civil rights protests cities such as Alabama, Selma, Birmingham, Chicago, among others, people were able observe severe police beatings of the citizens. For once, the Chicago Democratic Convention aired countrywide, together with the riots that ensued in Philadelphia, Newark, Los Angeles, and Detroit, among other places depicted the police as people without institutional accountability. All these portrayed a degenerating social structure, frequently triggered by police action. Put differently, police were once the cause and the answer to social conflict. Conservatives held the view that, the police were the answer to troubles while the liberals believed that the police were the cause of problems. This, as the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorder (1968) stated, was the way in which the nation was divided and police officers found themselves stuck between extensive ideological shifts happening in the social and political milieu of the United States of America (The-Crankshaft Publishing, n.d). Apparently, increased social unrest towards the end of 1960s’ as well as escalation in crime quavered the confidence of professionals and gave rise to doubts on the effectiveness of police officers and made people wonder if crime and disorder went past the control of law enforcers as they operated in the reform model. According to police records, the amount of serious offenses more than tripled in United States’ cities. In particular, raises in violent crimes’ rates outpaced the percentage raises in crime rates in general – there was a rise to almost 4.8 from 1.5 vicious crimes per one thousand populations. Researchers as well called attention to the declining of the most expansively employed reform model strategies, which further shook police force professionals’ confidence and kindled them to conduct a re-evaluation of their tactics. Together with their doubting police forces’ equity and fairness, the United States’ nationals also cast doubts on their competence at preventing and responding to crime. All these factors combined led to an epidemic crisis of dependability for the United States’ police force (Samaha, 2005). Giles (2002) explains further that courts began presenting great challenges to the police force – they began examining their actions and in a number of landmark instances, they regulated the power of the police force of averting prisoners from consulting attorneys, their power of obtaining confessions, or conducting searches. Even though some individuals protested that these new rules curtailed the ability of police officers to restrain crime, civil libertarians praised this move, terming it as a ‘due process revolution.’ Beginning 1968 to the year 1971, three national commissions made recommendations concerning sweeping reforms. In the year 1967 for example, one of the commissions advocated the founding of community relations divisions as well as citizen advisory committees by police force agencies. This is over and above enhancing education as well as training opportunities, enhancing education in community relation units, taking up of rules that limit the use of firearms by police officers, the development of minorities’ recruitment, among other propositions aimed at the improvement of the relationship between members of the public and the police force. Inherent in the best part of those proposals was the need to execute both internal as well as external communication reforms in the police force (Giles, 2002). It is worth noting that globally, just about every country faced a confidence crisis in the police force at one time or another – in other words, this predicament was not only limited to the American police or to the 1960s. In spite of any country’s size, location and form of government, almost all countries all over the world have gone through a sizeable crisis as regards citizens and police force relationship, which is mainly in consequence of police action, and in several instances resulting into group violence. Most of the time, aggressive policing, in addition to poor police-community relationships trigger insurgences (Giles, 2002). A number of developments brought about the emergence of community policing. A hot deliberation took place among the cops as well as between professors and cops in the 1970s and 1980s. These deliberations had to do with how the new community policing should look like, whether or not it was real, not merely talk, and if it could work. While scholars who were in support of community policing termed it as a quiet revolution, those who did not support it believed that it could never work (Samaha, 2005). Furthermore, police agencies began trying out a number of reforms, with some of the most well-known reforms in the 1970s consisting of a greater emphasis on taking on minorities as well as females, college education programs for the police, efforts enhancing the capability of the police force in tackling community hitches. It is important to point out that early assessments of these endeavours did not appear promising in any way. Several communities, for instance, founded what they referred to as team policing strategies, which had to do with assigning extensive responsibilities to police officers in order to make situations better in certain indigent and socially disordered areas that had high degrees crimes. It is this team policing that directly brought about community policing (Giles, 2002). The appraisal research as well aroused uncertainties on random preventive patrol, retrospective criminal inquiry, and quick response to calls for service from the public, the three main policing strategies. These assessments culminated into the questioning of the basic policing strategies by several scholars, police leaders, and reformers. This in turn led to the founding of police research industry. Doctoral programs produced researchers whose areas of expertise are in the examination of police and such influential think tanks as the Police Foundation and the Police Executive Research Forum were born. The Congress dispensed the finances that would support evaluation research studies, which included a field experiment referred to as the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment that led to the discovery that random patrol had little affected citizens’ attitudes or crime. This was a wakeup call for police force leaders to begin thinking about other ways of making use of the patrol police. A second study by the Kansas City Police Department that conducted an assessment on the significance of quick response by police came up with the conclusion that most of the time, rapid response did not aid the provision of solutions to crimes. The study revealed that quick response does not prevent a large proportion of severe crimes. The crime sample that scholars examined in this study revealed that almost 67% of these crimes were not reported quickly enough for effective prompt response. Although an instant police rejoinder can increase the chances of making an on-scene apprehension, the time that members of the public take to report a crime generally pre-determines the impact of police rejoinder time on the result. The study revealed the necessity for official call-screening systems, which would assist in telling between emergency and nonemergency calls. A more effective dispatch of calls may possibly create extra time for the communication between members of the public and patrol officers (Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1994). The research conducted by the Kansas City Police Department gave rise to further research, which as well revealed the significance of response strategies. This saw to it that the most pressing police calls received the quickest dispatch and the greatest priority. Scholars on alternative rejoinders to service calls disclosed that if members of the public received proper enlightenment regarding the varieties of options used, they would agree to responses other than the immediate police turnout on the crime scene (Eck & Spelman, 1989). The Birmingham, Alabama, Police Department as well examined differential police rejoinder approaches with the intention of increasing the efficacy of dealing with calls for service in addition to improving citizen satisfaction with police service. Further key studies conducted during that period included the Rand Corporation study, which examined detectives’ duties; a study carried out by the San Diego Police Department; the Newark Foot Patrol Experiment that proposed that if the police force used their time on foot in the neighborhoods , they could develop positive mind-sets towards the public and vice versa. Others included fear reduction studies, which offered empirical information on the effectiveness of key community policing approaches in enhancing the image of the police force, enhancing the conditions of the community, as well as reducing fear among members of the public. Community policing era came into being during this era of professional re-examination and scholarship evaluating the success of reform model policing (Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1994). Conclusion There is need to note that recently, the movement towards community policing has gained power as police and other public leaders search for other effectual ways of improving life quality in the society and upholding public safety.  Apparently, community-oriented policing is very prevalent and it receives a wide support from major political parties (Samaha, 2005). As discussed in this paper, the roots of community-oriented policing originate from the history of policing itself and scores of the lessons that this history offers is inspire it. The modern-day community policing along with its variations greatly underlie police practice and they have grown to be the operating philosophy (Crankshaft Publishing n.d). Moreover, community policing has developed into a powerful organizing theme that shapes service delivery in police departments, primarily at the government’s local level. The diversity as well as the sophistication of programs linked to community policing are wide-ranging and they have frequently evaded systematic scientific exploration. Nonetheless, in the United States as well as other nations, community policing has brought a great change and continues to transform today’s policing. References Arrington, R. (2006). Crime prevention: the law enforcement officers practical guide. Sudbury, Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Bureau of Justice Assistance, (1994). Understanding community policing: a framework for action. Retrieved from http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/commp.pdf Community Oriented Policing Services, (2011). History of community policing. Retrieved from http://rcpinetwork.uis.edu/cop-module1-history-community-policing.html Eck, J. E. & Spelman, W. (1989). A problem-oriented approach to police service delivery. New York: Praeger. Giles, H. (2002). Law enforcement, communication, and community. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Jrank.org, (2011). Police: History - policing in America from the 1970s to the present. Retrieved from http://law.jrank.org/pages/1645/Police-History-Policing-in-America-from-1970s-present-community-era.html Met.police.uk, (2011). History of the metropolitan police. Retrieved from http://www.met.police.uk/history/definition.htm Samaha, J. (2005). Criminal justice. Stamford, Connecticut: Cengage Learning. The-Crankshaft Publishing, (n.d). Community-Oriented policing: history. Retrieved from http://what-when-how.com/police-science/community-oriented-policing-history/ Worts, P. (2000). Community-oriented policing. Retrieved from http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/Community-Policing.htm Read More