POLICING TRENDS AND ISSUES

Policing Trends and Issues

Policing Trends and Issues

Part I - Policing Research

When public policing was first formally instituted in London in 1829, the emphasis was on preventing crime: The public and officers themselves regarded successful policing as the "absence of crime." The first U.S. police were also "peace officers"; however, a distinctly American style of policing began to emerge in the United States following the end of the Civil War. As settlers populated the West, they found there was no safety unless they provided it. This led to vigilante committees that would pass a set of town laws and often hire a "gunfighter" as town sheriff in hope of a modicum of protection. In time, the American system replaced preventing crime by keeping the peace with catching and punishing law violators, a "law enforcement" model that prevails and is emulated in many other countries to this day.

Many credit the return to community-oriented policing for the downward trend in street crime that began in 1994. This approach has worked well where it has been implemented, especially when combined with modern research techniques, such as psychological profiling, and technologies, such as high-tech surveillance, to help anticipate and prevent crime.

Part II - Scenario Responses

The twenty-first century has put policing into a whole new milieu--one in which the causes of crime and disorder often lie outside the immediate community, demanding new and innovative approaches from police. Most ordinary street crime involves perpetrators and victims from the same or nearby communities; thus, prevention involves closely watching and analyzing activity in the immediate area and taking action to head off problems (leading to what some call "problem-solving policing"). As street crime has diminished, new and more insidious types of offenses, especially terrorism and Internet-assisted crimes, have replaced it.

Here, offenders are often thousands ...