Community Relations Ideas to Build Rapport Between Police and Residents in a Community

The police force is ultimately accountable to the public in one manner or another. Therefore, not only must the police justify its policies and actions relative to the public service of the community, but the community will also be the most important critic of their actions as well. Various policing organizations have come under intense scrutiny and have received a great deal of negative publicity through the mainstream and social media channels. The relationship between a police force and the community they serve is often tense, but with the massive spread of smartphones and portable cameras, the levels of animosities have reached new heights in some jurisdictions due to improper use of force in many cases. The friction between public servants and the community are experiencing vast amounts of friction because of such instances and the publicity they have generated, whether deserved or not. However, whatever the case may be, it is absolutely necessary for police departments in all areas to work to bridge whatever divides there are in the perceptions of the larger community in which they serve. These tensions not only make policing more difficult, but it can also lead to further escalations of violence from both sides. When the police are not trusted by the community, then there will be decreased cooperation at best, and could also led to far worse...

Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) was tasked to conduct a federal level assessment of the St. Louis County Police Department. This group found that the department "lacks the training, leadership, and culture necessary to truly engender community policing and to build and sustain trusting relationships with the community" (Gest, 2015). Although the case of Michael Brown erupted in mass levels of social instability throughout the St. Louis area, but in also many other urban areas in throughout the country.
One of the issues that the report that the DOJ produced relative to this investigation, was that blacks are "significantly underrepresented" in the ranks of police officer and police sergeant and "moderately" underrepresented in the ranks of lieutenant and captain (Gest, 2015). The police force should be roughly equivalent in racial demographics as the communities that they serve. In Ferguson, the officers were predominantly white, while the community was largely composed of African-American…