¶ … authorities argue that community policing is a successful and innovative law enforcement concept, while others maintain that the approach has become outdated in the 21st century and actually places officers' lives in unnecessary danger. To determine the facts, this paper provides a review of the relevant peer-reviewed and scholarly literature concerning the success of community policing to date, including an analysis concerning what can be done to increase the chances that an innovation will succeed and a discussion concerning what factors increase the chances of failure. Finally, a summary of the research and important findings concerning the success or failure of the community policing model are provided in the conclusion. Review and Discussion

There has been growing interest in community policing programs since the 1980s, including neighborhood-oriented policing, community-oriented policing, and problem-oriented policing (Pfeifer, 2006). According to Pfeifer, "Although these programs vary in terms of their approach, they tend to share the common theme. That is, attempting to develop an effective working relationship between the police and the community with regard to the detection and prevention of crime" (p. 22). More broadly, Gesualdi (2008) suggests that community policing includes law enforcement, community involvement and community improvement, as well as an overarching tenet that the prevention of crime is better than vigorous enforcement practices. In this regard, Gesualdi adds that, "Community policing represents an organizational arrangement that attempts to cause the police department to focus on community problems as opposed to focusing on symptoms of problems" (2008, p. 72). This definition of community policing is congruent...

It involves identifying, analyzing, and addressing community problems at their source" (p. 15).
Generally speaking, community policing initiatives reflect the overarching philosophy that police are not discrete and separate from other law enforcement agencies and organizations, but are rather part of a larger network of criminal justice system (Pfeifer, 2006). Although the specific goals of community policing initiatives vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and from time to time, they all share the common objective of bringing the police and the community together to identify problems and determine mutually agreeable approaches to solving them (Paruch, 2009). According to Paruch, community policing is "also to get citizens involved, to empower them to take control of their neighborhoods and be active participants in improving the quality of life in their communities" (p. 82).

Despite the enormous amount of taxpayer resources devoted to community policing initiatives over the past 35 years or so, there remains some disagreement in the law enforcement community concerning the efficacy of the approach. In this regard, Paruch (2009) reports that, "The philosophical shift from reactive to a proactive approach to policing in the community has brought mixed messages to the police administrators as well as from their own employees. It also raised questions if community policing initiatives are working and if they should be continued" (p. 82). In fact, Gesualdi (2008) argues that community policing as a "law enforcement…