Effectiveness of Community Policing - Essay Example

Metropolitan Police believes, “One of the key principles of modern policing in Britain is that the police seek to work with the community and as part of the community” (web). As a strategy, community policing combats crime by creating a mutual relationship between the police force and the public (Kennedy, et al., 1990). Community policing promotes a good relationship between the public and the police enabling them to report criminal acts to the police. This has resulted in to decrease in the crime rate in Britain. On the other hand, the police force can obtain important and crucial information from the public. Sir Robert Peel confirms that cooperation between the police and the public determines the proportion of force that police require to combat crime (Nazemi, 2009). So far, community policing has made it possible for the British police to use less brutal force in combatting crime, at least in the residential areas.

Although community policing has been effective in some areas, it has also failed to some extent due to the failure of the community to cooperate. The public has always sympathized with the criminals especially when the criminals are family members. This reduces the effectiveness of community policing (Farrington, 1994). The public has always seen the police as a public enemy and therefore declined to volunteer any helpful information in fear of victimization thereby reducing the effectiveness of community policing (McKnight, 1995). Additionally, witnessing murder and crime scene cases is quite hectic and involving. Sometimes these cases take years to solve. Criminals might threaten the public into witnessing against them. This makes the public shy away from assisting the police in their efforts to do community policing hence compromising the effectiveness of community policing.  

By closing the gap between the public and the police force community policing has enabled criminals to learn tactics applied by the police and this has resulted in an increase in crime (Clifford, 1998). In addition, the policy has increased the public power to deal with criminals which has led to an increase in cases of social and mob justice.

Conclusion

The British police have been using community policing as a way of combatting crime. It has been effective in promoting crime reporting and spotting criminals within cooperative societies where the use of brutal force to fight crime has reduced dramatically. However, it still faces stiff hurdles. The community hides their relatives, fear being victimized, avoids witnessing court procedures, and is afraid of threatening criminals. This has compromised the effectiveness of community policing. This calls for campaigns that are more elaborate in promoting community policing.