How would you define community policing, and what are some of the major ways this concept differs from traditional policing?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Community policing (CP) is a concept that attempts to address crime control by creating a working partnership between the police and the community. It sees community institutions as key partners with the police in creating safer, more secure communities. CP moves away from incident-driven policing and emphasizes proactive and creative resolution to the problems of crime and disorder.

Community policing differs from traditional policing (TP) in many ways. TP sees the police as a government agency principally responsible for law enforcement while CP views the police as the public and the public as the police, seeing police officers as members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to the duties of every citizen. In TP, the priorities of the police often conflict with those of other public service departments, which CP sees the police as one department among many responsible for improving the quality of life

According to TP, the role of the police is to focus on solving crimes while CP encourages police to take a broader problem-solving approach. TP measures police efficiency by detection and arrest rates while CP measures efficiency by the absence of crime and disorder. The highest priorities of TP are high value and violent crimes, while CP focuses on whatever problems most disturb the community. In TP, the police deal with incidents; in CP, they deal with citizens’ problems and concerns. TP measures effectiveness by police response time while CP focuses on public cooperation as the primary measure of police effectiveness.

In TP, police view service calls as something to be handled only if there is no real police work to do but in CP, the police view them as a vital function and important opportunity. Police professionalism is viewed by TP as responding swiftly and effectively to serious crime while CP sees professionalism as keeping close to the community. Under TP, crime intelligence is considered to be the most important while CP emphasizes criminal intelligence. TP sees police accountability to be highly centralized; governed by rules, regulations, and policy directives; and accountable to the law while CP places the emphasis on local accountability to community needs. In TP, the role of headquarters is to provide necessary rules and policy directives while in CP headquarters’ main role is to preach organizational values. The press liaison department in a TP organization focuses on keeping the “heat” off operational officers so they can get on with the job; in a CP organization, the press liaison department’s purpose is to coordinate an essential channel of communication with the community. Finally, in TP, the police see prosecutions as an important goal while in CP they are seen as only one tool among many.