Community Oriented Policing
Introduction
The police are usually charged with the great responsibility of ensuring that citizens are living quality lives that are free of crime and fear. In order to effectively perform this duty, the police need accurate and deeper knowledge of the citizens and issues they encounter in their daily lives. This knowledge will not be easy to come by, if the police work independently from the citizens. Over the last several decades police agencies have been working to gain the respect and the cooperation of the communities they serve. Community Oriented Policing was introduced to bring a closer working relationship between the citizens and the police.
Community Oriented Policing
Community Oriented Policing (COP) is a concept that involved offering personalized policing services that are closer to the people and that involve a proactive partnership with the citizens (Pontiac Police Department, 2008). This concept enables a closer collaboration between the police and citizens in identifying and solving problems. The focus of COP is not on responding to crime but is rather on preventing crimes and solving community problems. COP is based on the philosophy that, the police and citizens should partner and combine effort to solve contemporary challenges facing the society. The main aim of COP is reduce the rate of crime and fear among communities.
COP recognizes that community involvement in law enforcement issues is very vital in achieve significant progress in the fight against crime (Pontiac Police Department, 2008). Community participation provides the police with new perspective of crime and means for controlling crimes. While without community participation the police may remain fighting the handle of responding to crimes, cooperation with the citizen gives the police access to resources that enable them (the police) to expand their focus on crime. Through this cooperation it is possible to modify the environments that promote criminal behaviors.
The Concept of COP is almost similar to that of Problem Oriented Policing (POP) apart from a few differences. POP is a concept that involves critically examining pieces of community issues with the aim of learning something new from the problem identified that will lead to more effective strategies for dealing with crime (Zarka, 2007). POP is designed to identify and eliminate causes of reoccurring crime and disorder that harm the community. Just like COP its main goals is to reduce crime and maintain social order. POP replaces the traditional incident driven policing strategies and therefore gives rise to the concept of Community policing (Reno Police Department, 1992).
COP and POP designs involve a more open relationship between the citizens and the police with the aim of giving the police a more proactive role in community issues (Mirsky, 2009). Under community policing, police are empowered to engage citizens in providing solutions to community’s problems. COP involves tactics such as foot and bike patrol, mini-stations and beat meetings among many others. It also entails changes in police and community structures among a few other external changes. These may include formation of community squad division and geographical organization.
COP and POP recognize that crime may be associated to micro-social conditions (Mirsky, 2009). Micro social conditions refers to problems such as; inadequate education, economic disparities, feeling of oppression and conflict over resources. These micro-social conditions affect micro-social relations within a community. COP enables the police to identify existence of such conditions and contribute towards efforts of eradicating them, leading to a permanent solution to the problem of crime rather a quick fix solution such as arresting offenders. POP is also concerned with the influence of social and environmental factors on crime (Reno Police Department, 1992).
The concept of COP can be based on three crime theories; routine activity theory, suitable target theory and the absence of guardian theory (Mirsky, 2009). Routine activity theory states that, there are individuals who are criminals in nature and looks for the slightest opportunity to commit a crime. Suitable target theory suggests that there are crimes that happen because prevailing circumstances have presenting a good opportunity for the crime. For example leaving your car unlocked.
The guardian theory argues that, there are crimes that occur because there are no guardians to prevent them from happening. These three crime motivation exist in societies that are disintegrated and less organized (Kerley and Benson, 2000). The aim of COP is eliminate these three motivations for crime by creating a more organized society. The role of police under community policing is to create and enhance the feeling of community in a community setting containing people who do not share the same values. When stronger bond and organization structure within the communities are created, the ability of the community to institute social control mechanism and to protect itself against crime is enhanced.
Community policing improves the fight against crime through facilitating; community education, communication between police and communities and efforts to prevent crime. In COP, the police work closely with community groups and other organization to enlighten community members of the potential hazards they are likely to encounters. This assists in reducing the likelihood of members of the community to become victims of crime. It is also one of the major goals of COP to identify problems, concerns and fears of community members. Through close cooperation between the police and members of the public, which has been enabled by COP, the police can easily identify problems, fears and concerns of communities. This is possible in two ways. First, as there is a good relationship created between the police and citizens, members of the community will be at ease to share such issues with the police.
Second, COP will encourage closer interaction between the police and citizens and through this interaction the police will be able to observe and relate to most community issues. COP also aim to prevent crime by identifying and eliminating hazards that may motivate crime and disorders. Community policing help in developing self-sufficient and strong communities thereby creating an atmosphere in which crime cannot thrive. This is possible through measures such as education of the community and information sharing between community and the police. This is also possible through the collaboration between the police and the citizen to identify innovative solution to community problems.
COP has various benefits. First is that it brings the police closer to the citizens (Pontiac Police Department, 2008). Prior to community policing, the police were so detached from the citizen giving the citizens the feeling that the police are out of reach. COP brings law enforcement right into the citizen neighborhoods promoting a greater sense of security in the process. The second benefit is that, COP may make use of available talent within the community to offset the resource deficit by the police. Police usually experience limited capacity in terms of manpower and resource for gathering information. Cooperation with the community may help fill these gaps. COP will also lead to reduce rate of crime which may translate to greater satisfaction by the citizens and better job satisfaction by the police. Reduction in crime levels would also mean that resources currently channeled towards fighting crime will be diverted to other projects that will have greater benefits for the community.
Structural Problems in COP and POP
There are few structural problems of the COP and POP concepts that reduce their effectiveness. The first one is that most police officers feel that COP and POP duties are not real policing (Kerley and Benson, 2000). There are reports of officers requesting to be assigned other duties and others quitting their jobs because of being assigned community policing duties.
The other structural problem has to do with limited community involvement (Kerley and Benson, 2000). It appears that there is a problem in sustaining community involvement in policing issues. Many members of the community seem preoccupied with their own activities and have little time for community issues. This is especially so in cases where the police are setting the agenda for community policing programs.
Challenges
There are various challenges that hinder the COP and POP concept from achieving their objectives in law enforcement. The first one is Bureaucracy in the police system (Mirsky, 2009). Police have to follow so many bureaucratic processes in order to come up with a decision or way forward. In order for COP to work these structures need to change. Police officers must be innovative and be empowered to make prompt decisions on problems that occur to make them well prepared for community policing
Another limitation is inadequate skills and technology to implement COP and POP. Few officers have the skills required to meet the demands for modern community policing. Most police departments still maintain the traditional paramilitary system that does not incorporate training of officer to deal with citizens in a friendly manner. Continual change in organizational formation and adjustment of attitude is necessary for these concepts to prosper. There is also inadequate technological history to enable the shift from reactive strategies to preventive strategies. This shift requires technologies and skills that will enable the police to analyze community situations, identify problems and come up with innovative solutions.
Skeptics have also argued that community policing is likely to promote abuse of law by enforcement officers as they are given more power to act on discretion. Since community members have inadequate training on procedures involved in law enforcement they may pressure the police to by pass some of the procedures in efforts of preventing crime or apprehending criminal.
Another challenge involves developing the capacity to tailor the COP concept to the unique needs of each community (Mirsky, 2009). It is very important to note that different communities have different needs. The cooperation between the police and the community shall continue if the police pursue policies that respond to the specific needs of the given community.
In conclusion, COP was introducing to bring closer relationship between the police and members of the community. The aim of this concept is to reduce crime and fear by focusing on crime prevention strategies. Though there are few structural limitation and challenges to the realization of the goals of COP concept, the concept is likely to have a huge impact on the society and how people view law enforcement issues.
References
Pontiac Police Department (2008). What is Community Oriented Policing?. April 14, 2011. Available at http://www.pontiacpolice.com/Community_Policing/what_is_cop.html
Kerley K. and Benson M. (2000). Does Community- Oriented Policing Help Build Stronger Communities? Police Quarterly: 3 (1)
Mirsky I (2009). Community Oriented Policing. Internet Journal of Criminology. April 14, 2011. Available at http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/Mirsky_Community_Oriented_Policing.pdf
Reno Police Department (1992). Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving. April 14, 2011. Available at http://www.popcenter.org/library/unpublished/CaseStudies/130_COPPS.pdf
Zarka H (2007). Community Oriented Policing vs. Problem Oriented Policing. April 14, 2011. Available at http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/267335/community_oriented_policing_vs_problem.html?cat=17
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