Use of Communication Skills to Effectively Implement Community Policing - Literature review Example

Heading: Contemporary policing Your name: Course name: Professors’ name: Date Introduction This essay examines the community policing in depth as the major and widely used strategy in the contemporary policing. This strategy is applied all round from the industrialized democracies to perhaps authoritarianism countries and is labeled as the best strategy globally. The implementation of the community policing must engage officers and the public fully in problem solving which must be done thoughtfully. This implies that, all officers are required to listen to the concerns of the community members and address them exhaustively. To facilitate the above requirements, it is essential for the officer to understand both communication and interpersonal skills given the divergent ethnics, racial mix, and religious views of differing cultures. To effectively manage these issues, it is necessary to set up a unit that is highly skilled in handling various divergent issues such as training, critical problems solving and accommodation of all the views. Communication policing also entails the set up of the public units in the police centers to ensure that the facility is accessible by all the citizens looking for its services. This also includes establishment of service etiquettes required in handling all the cases reported via the phones or in person in order to enhance handling all these cases to the expectation of the public. Use of communication skills to effectively implement community policing The tendency to foster communication skills amongst all the stake holders is a good starting point when implementing community policing. This provides initials steps in the establishment of good working relationship between the communities and the police officers. This allows the spearheading committee to effectively utilize the good relationship in addressing security concerns other than preventing crime incubation within that community. According to Deflem (2002, pp. 61-80), community policing is aimed at establishing a good relationship between the police and the community around so as to effectively fight crime. To achieve the above objectives, the community policing must engage intensive communications and dialog amongst the stakeholders implying that communication skills is mandatory in the whole process. It entails both policing philosophy and operational strategy which demands that policemen should be closer and be connected to the public for better service. In the current policing strategy, police distancing from the public is being discouraged while collaboration is being encouraged through numerous forums conducted in public to create a sense of good working environment between the two entities. Brown (2007) explains that community policing majorly employs several social and preventive strategies that revolve around the dissemination of information via various means of communications between the police force and the public. These include values such as association and interactions which focus on partnership, problem oriented, problem solving, responsiveness, being proactive and reassurance. Rainer (2000) states that, if an effective community policing is to be implemented, then both the police units and community must work together to overcome the major challenges hindering crime prevention. As explained by Fleming (2002, pp. 18-24), these challenges include diversity in ethnic groups, communications barriers portrayed by the divergent communities, political climates, race divergent, bureaucracies, cultural values and community flexibility. OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) observed that to overcome all these challenges, both the policemen and the community at large must embrace communication skills that help to overcome most of these challenges. This may include the selection of the core realization committee tasked with the responsibilities of supervising, coordinating and implementing the process of teamwork through forums and conferences with the residences. These strategies go hand in hand with the encouragement and coaxing the civil organization, the public and other government authorities to work collaboratively with the security agencies so as to derive a local crime prevention strategy. The research done by Lau (2004, pp. 61-68) shows that it is also wise to empower the community in solving problems besides from the modification of the police structures to accommodate the community participation in developing a good rapport between the community and the local members. OSCE notes that all the above themes cannot be achieved without effective communication from the participants. As noted by Casey (2010) a good form of education must be implemented to allow the public member to be involved with the community policing. It is also worth to note that is not easy to perform awareness to the public due the diversity in ethnic groups, racial mix, high degree of illiteracy and cultural background all of which pose communication barriers that derail the entire process of community policing and implementation. In real situation, the implementation committee must come up with the modalities to ensure that this challenge is wiped out. The OSCE suggest that political resistance to the community policing can only be counteracted if the political class and the police units continue to embrace the commitment to the crime prevention. This is achieved by involving the public through regular communication and interrelation between the police, political elite and the communities with a common goal of emphasizing the benefit of partnership in problem solving. That is, if the key players leads the process and encourage diversified views and the exchange of opinions between the stakeholders when making key decisions, then the community policing is likely to prosper and bear fruits in the long run. For example, the bottom up approach where information flow from the low rank officers to the supervisors is vital when it comes to the conveying of the community demands at an internal police decision making. This is due to the fact that low ranked officers are relating directly with the diverged communities while undertaking their day to day activities. This is the only way that the top management can get to understand the demands of the community apart from engaging in public forums that invites participation by the whole community. A good channel of conveying vital security related information to the security agency from the established community security initiative as stated by Goldenberg (2007) is of paramount importance and that this information must be held with utmost confidentiality so as to build trust with the public. It is also essential to foster several routine communications between the community and the police to enhance proper understanding between the police and the involved communities and the spirit of their safety. This will enable the public to understand the right channel to take while apprehending a criminal and present him or her to the policemen instead of taking law into their hands. A good team of implementation must also be set out very decisively by engaging all the groups through an outreach program to allow a mechanism for dialog conducted in open field which enables participation of all the interested parties. A study by Mawby (2003) reveals that conferences and engagement promotes dialogue among the police, government units, nongovernmental organizations and the public. This is an important tool that helps the public to understand the importance of police collaboration and the general operation of the police in curbing the vices surrounding the community. It is also wise for the team to emphasize on both verbal communication and written communication skills from the recruited teams that consist of all the ethnic and race to cater for the divergent cultures. This will also allow the ability to cooperate closely to all the groups of all walks in the conflict resolution and the process of problem solving. It is also wise to set up a customer’s service unit in the police stations to ensure that customers are served with qualified and skilled policemen serving in the customer care unit. The police unit serving the customers must be accessible by the public at all the time apart from solving issues that residence raise amicably. As stated by Silverman (2001), other than solving problems, the officers must be skilled in handling telephone calls from the public and use utmost ethics and etiquettes to answer the calls and make the caller feel that he or she has been fully attended to and that action are being taken to solve the issues raised. All the call takers from the police station must have undertaken a course on communication skills in handling of the calls to avoid bad public view. This involves following the required and laid down standard and protocol of answering all the call emanating from the clients seeking assistance from the police. Lack of qualified and skilled trainers in the department of police also hinders the development of community policing. These training officers are required both in the field and internally to conduct trainings to the officers and the community. For example, it is advisable to train the police on the existence of different and divergent cultural values and belief that that must be taken into account while serving them. At the same time, it wise to inform the communities on the importance of and acceptance of the police into their realm of security concerns. As explained by Thomas (2000), the training must focus on aspects such as how the police handle all the victims, suspects, and witnesses through using simple language that is understood by both parties instead of using police jargons. The focus also is geared towards training officer in handling challenging situation without affecting the community policing. All these can be achieved via training officers’ and the citizen to poses skills such as problem solving skills, communication skills, conflict resolution skills, interpersonal skills and finally sensitivity to cultural diversity. Conclusion In the current community policy, all the participants must work together to come up with amicable solution to deal with problems that face them. These only feasible if the participants understand one another during the discussion, forum, dialogs or conferences which must be accompanied with skills such as communication and interpersonal skills. However, communications skills are sometime limited from the marginalized communities in the sense that most of these marginalized groups are illiterate. To overcome this challenge, the police department, political class, the nongovernmental organization and religious groups must work hand in hand with the minority and marginalized groups to ensure that they are taken care of through proper training. To promote good community policing, the police units must establish a good customer service police unit to tackle issues raised by the citizens and also answer customer’s calls appropriately. References Brown, J 2007, Building Bridges. Community Policing, Relationships and LEOPCHC, Presentation at OSCE Western European Regional Police Experts Meeting on Community Policing, Vienna 14 September 2011. Casey, J 2010, Policing the World, Carolina Academic Press, North Carolina. Deflem, M 2002, Policing World Society: Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Fleming, R 2002, “Community Policing: the Concepts and its Characteristics”, Introduction to Working Session 1, in: OSCE, The Role Of Community Policing in Building Confidence in Minority Communities, Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting. Final Report, Vienna, 28-29 October 2002, pp. 18-24, at: http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2002/10/1792_en.pdf (14 September 2011). Goldenberg, PG 2007, Law Enforcement Officers Training Programme for Combating Hate Crimes and Community Policing, Presentation at OSCE Western European Regional Police Experts Meeting on Community Policing, Vienna 14 September 2011. Lau R 2004, “Community Policing in Hong Kong: Transplanting a Questionable Model”, Criminal Justice, vol, 4, no.1. pp. 61-80. Mawby, RJ 2003, Models of Policing in T.Newburn (ed), Handbook of Policing, Willan, Cullompton. Reiner, R 2000, The Politics of the Police, 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Silverman, E 2001, NYPD Battles Crime, Northeastern University Press, Boston. Thomas, G 2000, Introduction to Political Philosophy, Duckworth, London. Read More