Effectiveness of community policing approaches

¶ … community policing effective? Yes or no?

Is Community Policing Effective?

Community policing is not a novel idea. It is done in other countries and it has been done in this one in the past, it just was not called the same thing. It involves putting an officer or officers into a neighborhood or designated area of the city on a permanent assignment, instead of just sending that officer where ever he or she needs to go on each specific call that comes in. Once the officers are in the neighborhood, they spend time there, just patrolling and watching to see what kinds of things are going on in the community. They stay on that assignment indefinitely, and the people of the community get to know those particular officers. While many people are distrustful of police officers even if they have not done anything wrong, as time goes on they begin to get more comfortable with those particular officers that they see every day.

It is similar to seeing a police officer when one is driving a car. If one is driving down the road and one sees a policeman, one usually takes one's foot off of the gas pedal. Even if the car was moving along at the speed limit, it is a natural reaction for most people. However, if one has a friend who is a police officer and that officer happens to be riding in one's car, one might still speed because one is comfortable with that officer and feels that he or she does not pose any threat, even if one is breaking the law in a rather small way. Issues that are of utmost importance would be different. If one caused a traffic fatality because of the speeding, any officer, whether friend or not, would do his or her job.

Issues of community policing are much the same in that the residents come to trust the particular officers that they see every day, but they will never trust them completely because they know that under all the pleasantries, those officers still have a job to do, and they will do it, even if it causes a friend of theirs to have difficulties like jail time or large fines for whatever crime that they were involved in.

II. Presentation of Position "A"

Community policing has become more popular in recent years as police forces around the country strive to make communities safer, and their officers more trusted and understood. They are looking for ways to get their officers out there into the community and get the citizens used to seeing police officers patrolling the streets in the hopes that not only will crime go down, but citizen comfort around police officers will go up, making citizens much more likely to report a criminal that they are aware of. If they feel safe and protected by the police, they will likely turn to them in times of need instead of just assuming that the neighborhood criminal is not their problem as long as he or she leaves them and their family and belongings alone in favor of someone else's. Some people are not comfortable talking to a policeman that they have never seen before, but they are all right in dealing with the policeman who is always on patrol during a certain time each day in their neighborhood.

By having community policing, the police get to know the neighborhood and the people in it, and the people get to know the officers. If they are not friends, they are at least acquaintances, which is good in the prevention of crime and the comfort and safety levels of both citizens and police. This is especially true in some of the more dangerous and crime-ridden neighborhoods where people are often afraid to open their doors, even for the police, because they never know who is going to abuse them or cause them problems next. They are frightened and alone. Residents in the poorer neighborhoods, especially the minority neighborhoods, are scared. They often live that way most of their lives. The argument from some is that community policing can change all of that. The argument from others is that it will only make things worse by breeding distrust among neighbors as to who is telling what to the police, and who is being watched out for.

One of the main strengths of community policing is the fact that the same policemen are in the same area each day (Clearwater, 2001). They work a particular neighborhood or area on their shift, and sometimes they walk or ride a bicycle instead of driving a squad car and keeping themselves isolated from the rest of the world by their guns, bullet-proof glass, and radio equipment. They become more accessible to citizens by doing this, and they encourage more open communication when they are not in their squad cars, which often make police officers look very official and also very unapproachable. Community policing lets the officer really see the neighborhood, from the same kind of angle that a resident would. In some neighborhoods, especially those that are crime ridden or have other anti-law issues, community policing may be seen as a nuisance by the people who are not interested in being caught by police. This is actually good, because it works to protect the residents of the neighborhood who might otherwise not feel safe at all, especially at night, or if they live alone.

Another strength of community policing is that the neighbors get used to seeing the police around. It may not be the exact same time each day, but they will be seen on every shift, and it will be the same policemen. That is a good thing for the residents. Not only are they assured that help is not far away if they need it, but they also get to know the specific officers. Once they know the officers, they see them as being real people, instead of just seeing the uniform (Clearwater, 2001). In addition to giving the residents a higher feeling of security, it also allows the police to get more information from them about suspected criminals in the area. When the neighbors feel comfortable confiding in a policeman about some of the things they have seen go on in the neighborhood, the police department has gained a valuable tool in the fight against crime. Without the help of residents, little work gets done. Community policing is designed to be a team effort between police and residents.

Community policing is not just for fighting crime, however. Another reason for it is to give the policemen a little morale booster, which many departments around the country really need (Manning, 1998). When policemen patrol different places and work different shifts all of the time, they start to feel like they do not really belong anywhere. This is not good for their sense of self-worth or their morale on the job. They want to do everything they can to fight crime and protect the community. If they are good policemen, they truly want to make their city a better place for everyone to live in.

When they get a chance to get out on the streets and get to know people, they start to recognize some of them around town or around a specific neighborhood. They usually work with a partner, so they have someone to talk to in addition to the residents. It is almost as though they have been given a little corner of the world and told that it is theirs and they are to take care of it. They have a purpose to their job when they have somewhere specific to watch over. They get to know the area and they are often good at being on the scene very quickly if there is a problem because they have been around the neighborhood so many times that they usually know the streets by heart (Manning, 1998).

Getting to the scene of a crime quickly and helping out as much as possible is another boost of morale for the officers who do community policing. They do not have to worry about whether they can find the right street, or whether they have turned in the right direction. This is the neighborhood that they work in all of the time. They know where all of the streets are and they know what the landmarks look like, both in the light of day and after dark. It makes their job more fun and rewarding for them, which in turn helps the citizens they watch over by making the policemen better at their job.

Efficiency is also part of the reason that community policing is so important (Manning, 1998). When officers know the people they are dealing with and the areas that they are working in, they become much faster at finding out where they need to be and getting there. Not only do they know the streets and landmarks, as mentioned above, but they know what the shortcut behind the corner store and down the alley looks like in the pouring rain at 2 a. m. Those kinds of things, and that kind of knowledge, is what makes community policing work so well for the citizens of the neighborhoods that are protected and the officers that watch over the people while they sleep.

Some of the efficiency tricks they learn from other officers who have worked that neighborhood before them; some they learn by trial and error and a little bit of exploration; some they may even learn by talking to the residents in the community. One may mention a shortcut, an abandoned house that is a drug lord's hideout, or almost anything else that is important for the efficient running of a community policing operation. The citizens of a neighborhood can be a very valuable source of information for many policemen who are trying to make the streets safer, but only if there is trust between the two groups. If there is no trust between the officer and the citizens, the officer is not going to find out anything from the neighborhood citizens that he cannot find out on his own.

Another point that needs to be made about the strengths of community policing is that it increases the satisfaction that citizens have with the police in their neighborhood (Manning, 1998). Police satisfaction is very important to citizens, and it is also very important to the police, because greater satisfaction with the police department means fewer complaints that have to be dealt with, fewer hassles for police chiefs and others in power who have to make some tough decisions sometimes, and fewer problems for policemen out on the street who do not like to be hassled by citizens who are unhappy about something that another policeman might have done last week or last year in that same neighborhood.

Satisfaction with the police department also goes up when neighbors know that the same policemen are going to be around the neighborhood all of the time, especially if those policemen are well liked by most of the members of the community. To be well liked, policemen have to be lighthearted enough to put up with a little bit of silliness and mischief, but smart enough to know when there is real criminal activity going on that might be masked by something else. Sometimes the antics of one person are not meant to be just fun, but they are meant to distract an officer from doing his or her job while the real crimes are committed somewhere else by someone with a poor sense of humor. The police officers need keen senses for what is going on in a particular neighborhood, and spending a lot of time there on a regular basis is a good way to develop them. They get to have a more enjoyable time at work, and neighborhood residents get to feel safer because they know that the police are out there on the streets doing their job. When community policing is really working properly, everybody wins.

Costs can also be reduced by having a community policing program (Manning, 1998). When police are already in the area, it costs less for them to investigate a crime or stop a crime in progress because they do not have to be sent across town to take care of something. They can take care of whatever problems are appearing right there in the neighborhood and let the other policemen working in other neighborhoods handle the problems that arise there. Occasionally they might be sent somewhere else to back someone up or help out if something major goes on, but mostly they will spend their time in their own corner of the world, keeping costs and crime down.

The crime rate, and consequently the rate of violent crime, usually goes down in an area that has community policing because criminals know that police are nearby (Manning, 1998). When they are aware that police are in the neighborhood, there is an increased likelihood of getting caught in the act if they commit a crime, so they tend to go somewhere else to attempt their unsavory activities. When community policing is all over a given city, then the crime rate will go down drastically because there is nowhere for the criminals to go that they feel they can get away with their crimes. That is not to say that community policing totally stops crime. Almost nothing could do that, but having the crime rate go down is a sufficient reason for community policing to be practiced by all law enforcement agencies. While there are still many who think that community policing is just so much garbage that departments are putting out in an effort to seem more sincere and concerned about citizens, there are many reasons why community policing is good for everyone involved.

III. Presentation of Position "B"

Many of the neighborhoods that are going to community policing ideas are neighborhoods where a large group of minorities live. While not a prejudiced comment in any way, statistics tell society that the crime rate is higher in neighborhoods that have a larger population of black residents or Latino residents, as opposed to white residents. That emphatically does not mean that white people do not commit crimes, or that all minority people are problematic and their neighborhoods are bad places to be.

Nevertheless, one of the goals of community policing is to better the relationship between police and minority neighborhoods. Some scholars do not think that community policing will help this relationship at all. Instead, they contend that it will make it even worse. It has been argued that aggressive community policing of minority neighborhoods is actually racism. The reason for this is because the minority citizens are singled out for being at higher risk of criminal behavior (Roberts, 1999).

While it is still true that minority neighborhoods are at higher risk, racism is a pretty strong claim against the police departments around the country. They have already been accused of treating blacks unfairly in instances such as the beating of Rodney King. Much more on the racism issue is only going to make police officers angry at the minority citizens that they are trying to protect, which could, unfortunately, lead to real instances of racism, instead of the imagined ones that are occurring now.

There is already a lot of distrust of the police force, especially in black neighborhoods. Since a higher portion of young black males get arrested in proportion to crime rates for other races and age groups, that only makes sense. It probably seems to the black people in this country that the police are always coming into their neighborhoods and taking one of theirs instead of taking some rich white man's son. In truth, many of the police officers are only doing their jobs.

Whoever does the crime is the one that must pay for it, and if the black communities are not happy with it always being one of their people, perhaps the police should challenge them to do something about it. When black people say that they do not want police in their neighborhoods, they are effectively saying that they will deal with the problems that they have by themselves. That would be a wonderful idea if they would actually deal with them, but it they do not do anything and the police do not do anything the problem will just get worse until the police are forced to intervene on behalf of some victim. When that happens then they will become the 'bad guys' all over again.

Really, the police are often not as effective in stopping crime as the other citizens in a neighborhood, especially in close-knit neighborhoods like many in the black community. If the neighborhoods would do their part in stopping crimes the police could spend less time patrolling in their neighborhoods. That way both groups would get what they wanted. Crime would come down, which would make the police happy, and the police would spend less time in the neighborhoods, which would make the citizens happy.

Right now, there are not many community policing programs that are very effective in dealing with minorities for the reasons mentioned above. If the distrust and suspicion could be removed from the equation then the citizens and police could likely find a way to work together and much more would be accomplished.

One suggestion to help improve race relations between minorities and police officers is to promote minorities within the police force. It only makes sense that black people will be suspicious of the white police officers. They will likely be less suspicious of a black police officer. While the general distrust of the police still remains, there will not be as many strikes against an officer that is the same race as the citizens of the neighborhood. This could greatly improve minority relations with very little effort, since people are almost always more comfortable talking to those of their own race, especially if the topic is a sensitive one (Banta, 1998).

Ethnic diversity is one of the first steps toward getting a police force ready for community policing. When there are enough ethnically diverse people on the force, it makes it easier to go into different neighborhoods where strictly white males might not be welcome. The goal for the police force is about 15% women, 11% black, 20% Hispanic, and 3% Asian (Banta, 1998). With numbers like this, police would be able to go virtually anywhere and talk to almost anyone without fear of being exiled because of racial or gender differences like they often are right now.

One of the reasons different ethnic groups and both genders are so important is because many citizens will discuss problems that they are having with someone that seems somewhat like them. For example, if a young Hispanic woman is scared and angry because her boyfriend beat her and raped her, she will be much more likely to give that information to a Hispanic female police officer than to a white male officer because she will be much more comfortable talking to someone that she knows will be more likely to understand and sympathize instead of someone she distrusts from the start.

Someone of a different race, and especially someone of the gender that caused her so much trouble in the first place, is likely not going to be very well received if he shows up on her door because she will associate the crime with men in general, and be unwilling to impart much information. The sympathy and understanding of another female, and the shared culture will go a long way toward putting the offending boyfriend behind bars.

If a man arrives to talk about the crime, the victim could easily assume that men are all alike and that the male officer will not do all that he can to make sure that the crime is punished. While this is very likely not the case, it is hard to make people understand that, especially if the victim has had bad experiences in the past with the police.

Minorities who have 'been there' and succeeded in making something of themselves and rising through the ranks are also very important in community policing. When someone can say that they 'know what you are going through', that takes a tremendous weight off of the shoulders of the victim and helps them feel more comfortable with the police. It comes back to satisfaction with the police force, which was one of the reasons many felt that community policing would not work.

There are some neighborhoods where community policing is just going to work better than in others. Once these neighborhoods are discovered, they should be utilized to their fullest extent. Resident participation can often help the police tremendously, and word will get around in the minority circles as to whether the police in the neighborhood are doing a good job or just being an annoyance in the opinion of the residents. Word of mouth is great advertising, and if the police are doing something worthwhile for one minority neighborhood, that information will likely spread to other neighborhoods that might then become more welcoming to police helping them out as well.

IV. Critique of Positions

Community policing is not without its weaknesses. Just like in every argument or discussion on which method is best, there are two sides, and they do not agree on anything, except that they disagree about the subject in question. According to those who do not feel that community policing is helpful in the fight against crime, the crime rate has not gone down because of community policing. The crime rate has gone down because crime rates fluctuate (Grisby, 1997).

In other words, the crime rate will come back up, whether community policing stays around or not. The argument here is that criminals are going to be criminals whether there are police in the area or not. They might try to move to another area, or they might stay put, enjoying the thrill that they get by pulling off a crime right under the noses of the policemen that have been assigned to protect a particular neighborhood.

Either way the criminals decide to handle things, the theory is that community policing will not stop them, and the reason for this is that community policing was not the cure-all that police departments claimed it to be. Instead, they just got very lucky and implemented community policing around the same time that the crime rate had come down, which made them look as though they had done something to lower the rate, when in fact it came down of its own accord.

The baby boomer's children are now entering that 14- to 24-year-old age bracket where most of the crimes get started, and because of that there will be more crime on the streets in just a few years (Grisby, 1997). Community policing will be no more effective in combating that crime than regular policing techniques because a lot of the crime will be small-time things like stolen wallets and snatched purses, which can happen almost anywhere. Many times the criminal can be a long way away before police arrive on the scene, even if they are in the neighborhood.

Community policing does not mean that policemen spend their entire shift walking around a couple of blocks, like some people think. Some neighborhoods can be quite large and this will cause police to have a little bit of distance to travel when they are summoned. It is not as though they will be right around the corner. They will be closer to the crimes, but often they will still not be close enough to help out until after the crime has already taken place, the criminal has left the scene, and the victim or a witness has called 911. The response times will be faster, but not by that much.

Some researchers into community policing also feel that community policing only works well in certain areas. For example, when community policing is employed, that usually means that crime control is not the only issue on the police chief's agenda. He or she is also interested in boosting morale, creating more satisfaction with the police department, lowering costs, increasing efficiency, etc.

When police departments become interested in taking care of all of those other pressing issues then the reduction of crime, while still important, ceases to be the main issue. If this is the case then community policing is not a good idea in neighborhoods where the crime rate is exceptionally high because the police there need to be fighting crime, and only fighting crime, not worrying about what their public image is or how much it costs to drive a squad car from the suburbs into downtown three times each night on domestic disturbance calls, traffic violations, or other offenses (Zhao & Thurman, 1997).

Those who have definitely decided against the community policing model say that there is no way community policing could ever work. The reason for this statement is that the whole idea of police is to stop crime. This idea of stopping crime is centered around the authorized use of force. When someone uses force to coerce someone else, even if it is legal force, it undermines the whole 'friendly' relationship that the police are trying to establish with the neighborhood residents (Bittner, 1972).

What Bittner (1972) and others mean by this is that the police are out there trying to say that they are working to become friends and partners with the community so that everyone can work in harmony, and so that the crime rate will come down, among other things. That friendly attitude is fine for police and neighborhood residents when everything is going along at an acceptable pace, but what happens when an officer makes an arrest of someone that thought of him or her as a friend?

The trust that belonged to that relationship between officer and resident will be lost forever, and anyone who was close with the arrested individual will likely cease to be close with the police officer or officers that made the arrest. The whole idea of making arrests and stopping crime is in total conflict with the ideas that community policing is trying to bring to neighborhoods. One cannot do well when it is mixed with the other, like many police forces are currently trying to do (Bittner, 1972).

Another problem with community policing of neighborhoods is that many departments are often shorthanded when it comes to the actual number of officers that they have out on duty in the community. When departments start community policing, they often have two officers working together, which ties up two officers that could be working separately to stop other criminals, issue traffic citations, etc. This can become problematic for the officers as well because they are sometimes asked to work extra hours to cover shifts, and departments are usually short on money as well, so they do not have the resources at their disposal to hire enough extra officers to make community policing work all over a city, especially if it is a large city such as New York or Los Angeles.