The Office of Community-Oriented Policing Services (2014) indicates that the primary elements of community policing include government agencies, community members and groups, nonprofit organizations, private businesses, and the media. Community policing is crucial in enhancing crime prevention activities as it supports the systematic use of collaborations and partnerships to design collective problem-solving strategies that proactively address public safety. As a result, community policing effectively enhances police and community members’ relations in the joint mission to eradicate crime and social disorder as a whole. In addition, community policing effectively promotes police and community relations by informing formal and informal crime prevention networks. Usually, community policing programs encourage joint partnerships between formal and educated police agencies and informal members of society who serve cooperatively to construct realistic remedies to presented issues. As a result, community policing promotes public trust and confidence in the police, leading to affirmative relations. Therefore, aligning the community and law enforcement organizations to support a common agenda encourages positive relations between police and the community.
Furthermore, community-policing initiatives are founded on the basis that neither the public nor the police can adequately solve public safety problems alone, encouraging interactive collaboration with all stakeholders in the community to respond to safety issues cooperatively. When the public gets the chance to take an active role in addressing and prioritizing public safety issues, they share in police experiences and outcomes of the process, enhancing police legitimacy.
Moreover, significant community policing partners such as the media represent a powerful tool for communicating law enforcement recommendations with society. The media can help publicize community and police concerns and available solutions. Besides, the media relays new laws and services from law enforcement agencies and the government that need enforcement. As a result, the media significantly impacts public perceptions of police, crime problem recognition, and the presentation of available solutions to large masses, encouraging partnership and improving police-public relations.
However, there are significant challenges in implementing community-policing programs effectively. HPCR International (2008) indicates that police face significant challenges adapting community-policing programs into actual practice since it is difficult to define a community in the modern globalized world. Communities have developed to be complex entities regardless of the defined jurisdictional boundaries. Community policing requires a thorough analysis of every stakeholder to ensure an effective program. However, most community policing leaders perceive the community as a homogenous and collective entity. On the contrary, modern neighborhoods are complex, heterogeneous, and without cohesive cultural elements. In addition, most modern communities are fragmented, with constant communal tensions and pre-existing differing ethnic and religious groups. Furthermore, some communities do not have a designated central representative who can speak for the community and direct collaborations with the police. In addition, the formal versus informal reactions between the police and community members cause idea conflict affecting the actualization of community policing initiatives.
Additionally, ineffective strategic planning affects efficient community policing initiatives. According to HPCR International (2008), most community policing initiatives lack a systematic approach that can map the goals with the steps required to achieve the desired outcome. Besides, law enforcement agencies responsible for community policing initiatives express poor coordination all too often. For example, those involved in police coordination are often unaware of what community groups are planning. Lack of coordinated planning results in poorly designed community-policing programs that do not fit police and public needs. Moreover, leaders hardly evaluate the efficacy of community policing programs to determine what works and what poses limitations. Mainstreaming regular assessment is beneficial in understanding and amending emerging challenges in the programs. Therefore, lack of or insufficient evaluation denies community policing leaders valuable learning and improvement opportunities, leading to failed community policing programs.
Overall, community policing effectively enhances police and community relations since it supports a collaborative partnership between the people and law enforcement agencies in crime control. Community policing integrates crucial social elements, such as the media and private and public sectors, who mutually cooperate in building safety structures in the community. Mutual cooperation enhances accountability and transparency, promoting positive relations between the parties. However, effective implementation of community policing programs and activities is challenging due to the complex nature of modern-day communities. Besides, the parties involved hardly integrate strategic planning when developing the program leading to failed goals. Further, failure to assess the program’ effectiveness hinders the actualization of functional community policing changes.
References
HPCR International. (2008). Implementation challenges. Peace Building Initiative – Default. https://www.peacebuildinginitiative.org/indexeca4.html?pageId=1871
Office of Community Oriented Policing services. (2008). Community Policing Defined. COPS OFFICE. https://cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/Publications/cops-p157-pub.pdf
write