COMMUNITY ORIENTED POLICING

Community Oriented Policing

Community Oriented Policing

Introduction

The concept of policing has been in existence for many years. For many of these years, the view of the police has remained pretty much the same. In countless books, movies, and television shows, the public has been presented with a view that romanticizes police officers as fearless crime fighters who think little of their own safety as they engage in daily shootouts with drug dealers, serial killers and organized crime hit men. But how close is this portrayal of crime fighter is “real life”?

Police officers are expected to deal with many calls for serviced each year. But the number of calls police officers receive that are directly related to enforcing the law is a small part of their day. According to Senna and Siegel, “studies of police work indicate that a significant portion of a police officer's time is spent handling minor disturbances, service calls, and administrative duties. Studies conducted over the past two decades have found that social services and administrative tasks consume more than half of an officer's time and account for more than half of the officer's calls. In contrast crime related calls fall in a range, depending on the department, of between 5 and 20 percent of a police officer's total activity”. (Pg. 261)

Background

Crime fighting, no doubt, is truly a façade. The great bulk of police patrol is devoted to peacekeeping. Police may want to be proactive crime fighters, but the truth is that most officers remain reactive, responding to citizens calls. The police are expected to perform many civic duties that in earlier times were the responsibility of every citizen: keeping the peace, perform emergency service, dealing with family problems, and helping during civil emergencies. But now the police officer has become a “social handyman” called in to solve these social problems citizens create. Due to this role conflict, more departments are adopting new models of policing that reflect this changing role.

Literature Review

Many administrators now recognize that police officers are better equipped to be civil problem solvers than effective crime fighters. Rather than ignore, deny, or fight this reality, police departments are being reorganized to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. What has emerged is the community policing movement, a new concept of policing to bridge the gap between police agencies and the community they serve.

Many police officers feel unappreciated by the people they serve, and for years they have tried to gain the cooperation and respect of the community that they serve. The realization that has happened is that the philosophy of reactive incident driven approach must be changed to a more proactive problem solving style. This new approach requires that police departments develop a new relationship with the law-abiding people in the community, thus allowing them a greater voice in setting local police priorities and involving them in efforts to improve the overall quality of life in their neighborhoods. This concept shifts the focus of police work from handling random ...