History of Community Policing - Research Paper Example

 History of Community Policing Introduction The-Crankshaft Publishing defines the word ‘police’ as the plans made in all civilized countries of making sure that the residents obey the law and keep the peace. The word also refers to peace officers or police force hired for this reason. Met.police.uk (2011) quotes Richard Mayne’s 1829 writing that ‘crime prevention is the primary aim of an effectual police, the next aim being crime detection and punishment of criminals. Police must direct all their efforts to these ends. Richard Mayne further states that whether those efforts by the police have been effective or not and whether the police have achieved the purposes for which were appointed will only be proven by the absence of crime, protection of property and life, as well as the protection of public calm.’ Community policing, also referred to as problem-oriented policing or community-oriented policing has to do with re-identifying the role of the police as a facilitator in the community. It refers to the change in philosophy regarding police duties versus community responsibilities to a team idea of complete quality management of the community (Worts, 2000). Arrington (2006) cites the ‘most often agreed upon’ definition of community policing by the United states Department of Justice (1997) as a philosophy of policing, which supports and promotes organizational strategies of dealing with the causes decreasing social disorder and crime fear by means of problem-solving techniques as well as community policing partnerships. He adds that proper community policing occurs cooperatively with the community being equal partners. Improving residents’ life quality as well as making them feel safer should be the main objective of police. This idea led to the development of several diverse police tactics and strategies intended for the improvement of the relationship between the police and the community. The idea of community oriented policing lies on the premise that reducing the fear of crime by citizens while at the same time forming a partnership between the community and the police is a meaningful police organizations’ goal (Community oriented policing services, 2011). Samaha explains that in its description of community policing, the Community-Oriented Policing services 2004 (COPS) states that the focus of community policing is social disorder and crime by delivering police services, which includes facets of traditional law enforcement and prevention, community partnerships, and engagement, and problem-solving. COPS further states that the model of community policing creates a balance between reactive responses to call s for service and proactive problem solving focusing on disorder and crime’s causes. The joining of both the citizens as well as the police as partners in recognizing and addressing those issues effectively is very important. COPS’ definition of community-oriented policing adds up to three elements. To start with, it entails the identification, analysis, response to, as well as the evaluation of community problems evaluation by focusing not only on specific crime and disorder incidences but also on their causes. Secondly, it entails incorporating other agencies of the government in addition to private community resources community service organizations as well as businesses with the aim of working on problems. Thirdly, it entails the working together of the police and the community to achieve the task of maintaining order, controlling crime as well as other social services to the social services to the public (Giles, 2002). The primary concern of community-oriented policing (COP) is developing a working relationship with the society. The idea behind it is that if the community partners with the police, increased security and crime reduction can result. COP stresses the fact that residents are the main line of protection against fear, crime, disorder as well as the worsening of life quality in their vicinity. Therefore, residents, in community-oriented policing, detect and take part in providing solutions to the problems that exist in their environs. Apart from controlling crime, community-oriented policing also aims at attaining harmony and satisfaction in the community. However, although the police listen to the demands of the neighborhood residents in community-oriented policing, they do not and should not automatically follow every of their demand. Additionally, residents cannot just put forward a problem and wait for the police to resolve it alone – they have to assist in providing solutions (Jrank.org, 2011). Although the roots of community policing movement extend throughout police history, its birth, according to the majority of analysts, is attributable to several prominent US social forces in the 1960s. According to police historians, American policing was rather a ‘closed’ institution until early 1960s. Politicians at both the federal and state level did not habitually run for elective office on platforms associated with crime and policing. Apparently, the average American national did not have much knowledge of what police work involved. Courts did not dedicate much energy toward scrutiny. Altogether, policing remained closed to public and their representatives’ ears and eyes. For example, in a landmark study by a group of American Bar Foundation-commissioned legal scholars in early 1960s, the scholars were astounded to find out about police wide-ranging discretion when making important decisions such as whether to carry out a search, make an arrest, detain a suspect, or apply force (Giles, 2002). During the 1960s, a number of conditions converged to expose American policing to external audiences’ scrutiny and attention. A generation of youth rebelled against mainstream society’s conventions due to such social forces as widespread discontent regarding Vietnam’s military action, the civil rights movement, among others. Being the mainstream society’s concierges, the police came face-to-face with the rebellious, protesting and riotous citizens’ civil unrest during this time. During this period, the use of force by the police as well as minority citizens’ maltreatment became very common – researchers of that time noted increased racist attitudes by most police officers toward the minorities. Of the riots that engulfed American cities during this time, several were a result of such police actions as raids, shootings, or traffic stops that were taking place in minority neighbourhoods. A study by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968) indicated that a key determinant of the urban riots was poor or violent discriminative police action/ intense ghetto communities vs. Police hostility (Giles, 2002 & The-Crankshaft Publishing, n.d). With television news’ growth during that period, millions of citizens could watch most of the confrontations between citizens and the police. Images of the use of extreme use of force against the residents were common in classic news stories of that period. Americans, for the first time, were able to watch immense beatings of the public in civil rights marches in such cities as Alabama, Chicago, Selma and Birmingham, among others. For the first time, the nationwide broadcasted Chicago Democratic Convention along with the riots that followed in Newark, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and in other places depicted the police as having lacked institutional accountability. All these depicted a crumbling social structure, often caused by police action. In other words, the police were at once the source and the solution to social conflict – according to conservatives, they were the solution to problems while according to liberals, they were the cause of the same. This, according to National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorder (1968) is how the country was divided and the police found themselves between considerable ideological shifts taking place in American social and political life (The-Crankshaft Publishing, n.d). Samaha (2005) explains that the increased late 1960s’ social unrest in addition to the crime boom shook practitioners’ confidence and made them cast doubts on the efficiency of the police as well as wonder whether disorder and crime were beyond law enforcement’s control as it functioned in the reform model. Police records show that in American cities, the number of serious crimes more than tripled. Putting it more explicitly, increases in the rates of violent crimes, which more than tripled, outpaced the percentage increases in overall crime rates – rose to nearly 4.8 from 1.5 violent crimes per a thousand populations. Scholars also drew attention to the weakening of the most extensively used strategies of reform model, shaking police professionals’ confidence further and stimulating them to make a reassessment of their strategies. Along with their questioning police equity and fairness, Americans also doubted their efficiency at deterring as well as responding to crime. A combination of all these factors culminated into an epidemic crisis of authenticity for the American police. Giles (2002) further explains that the courts started posing considerable challenges to the police – they started scrutinizing their activities and in several landmark cases, they limited the police power of stopping detainees from talking to attorneys, their power of carrying out searches, or obtaining confessions. Although some people made complaints that the new rules thwarted police ability to curb crime, civil libertarians paid tribute to this ‘due process revolution’ as they called it. From the year 1968 to 1971, there were recommendations from three national commissions concerning sweeping reforms. For example, in 1967, one of the three commissions recommended police agencies’ establishment of community relations units as well as citizen advisory committees. This is in addition to increasing education and training opportunities, improving training on community relation units, adoption of policies limiting officers’ use of firearm, expansion of minorities’ recruitment among other suggestions geared towards improving the relationship between communities and police. The need for carrying out both internal and external reforms on communication in police organizations is implicit in majority of those recommendations (Giles, 2002). It is important to note that virtually every nation globally at one time or another faced the crisis of confidence in police as an institution – this crisis was not restricted to the 1960s or to the American police. The location, size and form of government not withstanding, nearly every nation globally has experienced a considerable crisis in the association between citizens and police, which is mostly owing to police action, and in many instances ensuing into collective violence. In most instances, poor police community relations over and above aggressive policing sets off riots (Giles, 2002). Several developments laid the foundation for community policing emergence. Samaha notes that during the 1970s and 1980s, there arose a hot debate between the professors and cops as well as among the cops regarding what the new community policing should look like, whether it was real or just talk, and whether it could work. While scholars who did not support community policing said that it could never work, those who were for it referred to it as a quiet revolution. Additionally, police agencies started experimenting with several reforms, some of the most prominent ones during the 1970s including an increased emphasis on hiring minorities and females, police officers’ college education programs, efforts of improving police ability in solving community problems. Worthy noting is the fact that early evaluations of these efforts appeared to be less than promising. Many communities for example instituted what they called ‘team policing’ strategies. These strategies involved assigning police officers with extensive responsibility for bettering situations in particular indigent and socially disorganized regions with high rates of criminal activities. This team policing directly gave rise to community policing (Giles, 2002). Evaluation research also brought uncertainties on the three major policing strategies namely retrospective criminal investigation, random preventive patrol and rapid response to calls from citizens for service. These evaluations collectively made several police leaders, reformers as well as scholars to question the basic policing strategies. This led to the birth of police research industry, with doctoral programs producing researchers whose specialties are in the study of police as well as the founding of influential think tanks such as the Police Executive Research Forum and the Police Foundation. The Congress allocated money to support research in different studies. Examples of some of the evaluation research studies that were conducted included a field experiment known as the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment, which discovered that randomized patrolling had little effect on crime or the attitudes of citizens. It therefore made the leaders of the police to start considering other ways of using the patrol police. There was also another study by the Kansas City Police Department, which evaluated the significance of fast response by police and came with the conclusion that rapid response, in most cases, did not assist in providing solutions to crimes. According to the study, rapid response does not deter a great portion of serious crimes. The crime sample analyzed in the study indicated that of these crimes, almost sixty-seven percent were not reported fast enough for speedy response to be effectual. Even though a quick police response can raise the possibility of making an on-scene arrest, the time that a citizen takes to report a crime mainly predetermines the effect of police response time on the outcome. This study showed the need for official call-screening procedures that would help in distinguishing between nonemergency and emergency calls. Dispatching calls more efficiently could create additional time for the interaction between patrol officers and the community (Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1994). This study by the Kansas City Police Department brought about further research, which also showed the value of response strategies, which made certain that the most expeditious dispatch as well as the highest priority were given to the most urgent calls that the police received. Researches on alternative responses to service calls revealed that if community citizens were well enlightened concerning the kinds of alternatives used, they would accept responses save for the instant attendance of police on the scene (Eck & Spelman, 1989). The Birmingham, Alabama, Department of Police also scrutinized differential police response strategies with the aim of raising the effectiveness of managing calls for service as well as improving citizen contentment with police service. Other important research studies carried out in that period included a study conducted by the San Diego Police Department; another one conducted by the Rand Corporation examining detectives’ role; the Newark Foot Patrol Experiment, which proposed that if they spent time on foot in their communities, police could gain positive attitudes toward community members and vice versa. There were also fear reduction studies that presented empirical data on the efficiency of chief community policing tactics in the enhancement of police image, community conditions’ improvement, and fear reduction among residents (Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1994). The era of community policing was born during this period of professional reassessment and scholarship assessing the reform model policing effectiveness. Conclusion It is important to note that in recent years, the movement toward community policing has gained momentum as community leaders and police look for other effective ways of enhancing life quality in neighborhoods in addition to promoting public safety.  Community policing is very popular and major political parties give it a wide support (Samaha, 2005). Apparently, the roots of community policing derive from the policing history itself and is inspired by many of the lessons that this history teaches. As the-Crankshaft Publishing (n.d) records, in the modern society, community policing and its variations underlie much of police practice and have become the operating philosophy. Furthermore, it has become an influential organizing theme, which still shapes police departments’ service delivery, principally at the local level of government. The variety and intricacy of programs connected to community policing are extensive and often, they have escaped methodical scientific investigation. However, in the US and other places, community policing has transformed and continues to transform modern policing. References Arrington, R. (2006). Crime Prevention: the Law Enforcement Officer's 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. 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