Community Oriented Policing - Essay Example

Community-Oriented Policing Before going to discuss community-oriented policing and its components, let us get a better understanding of what community-oriented policy actually is. Mirsky (2009) states, “Community policing is the connection between police and citizenry, who work together on safety involving the public in the community”. Community policing gives rise to an open relationship between the citizens and the police which helps them work in proper collaboration with each other to solve various problems, such, social disorder, crime, and fear of crime.

Some of the main goals of community policing include building trust between citizenry and police, working together to address safety issues, reducing gaps between police and public, ensuring safety of neighborhoods, and educating public about services of the police. Community-oriented policing has become integral to solve the issues of crimes and social disorders. Implementation of community-oriented policing requires substantial effort (Walters, 1993). Effective policing is impossible without support of the public.

Therefore, the main intent of community-oriented policing is to breakdown the barrier of mistrust in order to deter crimes in a more effective manner. Community-oriented policing has three main components, which include community partnerships, organizational transformation, and problem solving. Let us discuss all of these components in some detail. Community Partnerships Partnerships are a good way to reduce the gaps that exist between the police and the public by reducing the fear of police in the minds of the people and building strong and friendly relationships between the two components of the society.

Police departments form partnerships with the community to solve safety problems by developing trust and working in proper collaboration with each other. Bobinsky (1994) states, “The community is more involved with the officers, and in turn, becomes the eyes and ears of the department in the neighborhood”. The intent of partnerships is to use the services of different components of the society to deal with the safety issues. In partnerships, the police department and different social components, such as, government agencies, public, and media work together to solve different social disorder problems.

Partnerships help the police officials know the concerns of the public and the attitude of the public towards the issues of social disorder and crime. Organizational Transformation Organizational transformation is another component of community-oriented policing which aligns organizational policies and systems with the public-police efforts to solve social disorder issues. “Community policing should be adopted organization-wide” (Scheider & Chapman, 2003). Community-oriented policing needs organizational support to be effective.

Organizational changes, such as, geographic assignment of officers or well-implemented information systems can provide great help to the law enforcement agencies in dealing with the safety issues. Problem Solving The third component of community-oriented policing is problem solving, which is the process of identifying the problems and taking considerable steps to solve those problems. Problem solving helps police officials deeply analyze the social disorder issues and solve them systematically.

In this process, responses are evaluated to solve the issues more effectively. Problem solving is a five-step process in which police officials identify the problems, research or analyze the problems, develop solutions to the problems, evaluate the responses, and use the responses to address the immediate conditions. References Bobinsky, R. (1994). Reflections on community oriented policing. Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2194/is_n3_v63/ai_15353033/ Mirsky, I. (2009). COMMUNITY ORIENTED POLICING.

Retrieved from http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/Mirsky_Community_Oriented_Policing.pdf Scheider, M., & Chapman, R. (2003). Community Policing and Terrorism. Retrieved from http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/articles/Scheider-Chapman.html Walters, P. (1993). Community-oriented policing: a blend of strategies. Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2194/is_n11_v62/ai_15139856/