Community Policing and Counterterrorism: A Hybrid Model

Addressing Escalated Threat Levels

The nature of police work must ensure that it is as adaptable, sophisticated, networked, and transnational as the criminals and terrorists it fights. A modern approach to policing must contain elements of traditional, mainstream efforts to fight crime along with a set of tools for carrying out an effective community policing approach. This paper provides a brief discussion of what such a hybrid model looks like in practice and touches on elements of complexity in police work within an increasingly global arena.

Some dynamics of society seem inevitably linked, moving in tandem as though some invisible lynchpin had been driven through their respective cores: poverty and crime; violence and counter-violence; wealth and indifference; frustration and destruction; fanaticism and irrationality. Naturally, there are exceptions. Some Buddhists live in poverty but are peaceful and law-abiding. Where culture or religion calls for acceptance of one's fate, where the resources to change one's station remain unattainable, or where the penalty for self-elevating action is too great, there is little ongoing struggle between people in different socioeconomic groups. Certainly this is not an exhaustive list of factors that influence the ability of people to make social and economic changes in their lives, but the list is relevant to conditions in the U.S. today. These shifting dynamics, whether named or implied, pose increasing risks to police officers.

When visiting other countries — in Europe, for instance, or in less developed nations — a tourist's first reminder that they are not in the U.S. often comes from the police stationed at the airport. Police in foreign countries are substantially armed, and their demeanor is qualitatively different from that of their peers assigned to airports in the U.S. The tourist will have no sense that the officer is a friend who can be casually asked for directions or is in any way concerned with their individual well-being. There is everywhere the sense that, at any moment, dangerous conditions could prevail. Of course, the venue has a lot to do with the stance taken by an officer working in an airport — a place that has become a gateway to incidents of terror. Depending on where the tourist goes after leaving the airport, this experience of heightened watchfulness could fade into the past, or it could be reinforced no matter where the tourist ventured. The bottom line is that police in other countries have become, on the whole, more watchful and more cautious because they have had to be.

Bombing incidents take place with greater regularity in Europe than they do in America, and European society has adjusted accordingly. In the U.K., for instance, it is nearly impossible to find trash cans on sidewalks. A person can walk around with a crumpled snack wrapper or sandwich packaging or a takeaway coffee cup for a long time before finding a place to dispose of it. The reason is clear: a trash can makes a perfect place to conceal a bomb. People naturally deposit items into trash cans, so the behavior goes unnoticed. Yet trash cans remain on streets in every city in the U.S. — in part because Americans generate more waste than Europeans who are committed recyclers — and also because the public does not want to be inconvenienced.

Escalating threats in the U.S. call for changes in the way Americans address day-to-day safety at home, not just as tourists abroad, and they especially point to needed change in the way police officers carry out their work. The death of four officers in Parkland, Washington, at the hands of a paroled felon is instructive. These officers were sitting at their laptops in a coffee shop, catching up on paperwork at the beginning of their shift. They were, ostensibly, preoccupied and relaxed — doing precisely what ordinary citizens do every morning of every working day. This was a deadly mistake, yet it was in alignment with the conventions of community policing, a practice that has become increasingly difficult to defend given the growing number of attacks on police officers.

Each time an officer is killed on duty, something is learned. The way officers address their beat changes — or can change. Analyzing even this single incident near Tacoma, a number of changes with the potential to increase officer safety in community settings emerge. This paper offers a few ideas, which have been given short labels for ease of reference only. These names should not be construed as flippant or as in any way diminishing the significance of strategies designed to keep officers safe in the community.

Friendly cop, aloof cop. One out of every pair or group of officers on duty must maintain a high level of alertness and must resist casual engagement by community members and distractions of any kind that would diminish his or her acute watchfulness. It is simply not possible to alert fellow officers to potential harm or to protect them in an escalating situation while completing paperwork or stirring creamer into a coffee.

Bond, James Bond. Officers should assume, like every capable secret agent, that the environment they are presently in can quickly turn dangerous, or that the next environment they enter will be set with hazards of all kinds. The article on the Hemet police (Watkins, 2010) reported that someone "attempted to booby trap" an officer's unmarked car while he was inside a convenience store. A more skeptical officer would know that his vehicle could draw an attempt on his life, would not get into the car without inspecting it, and would not leave it unattended. Even if he had, he would not assume the setting was innocuous. Perhaps standard police equipment could include telescoping mirrors to check the undercarriage of vehicles.

Roy and Dale and Trigger. In all good Westerns, somebody waits behind a rock or at the corner of the saloon. Surveillance by a sidekick saved many a sheriff from being blindsided. Both the Hemet gang attacks (Watkins) and the Monfort/Seattle (McNerthney, 2009) incidents point to an increased need for improved oversight of police property that is vulnerable to attack or tampering. Jurisdictions are now asked to provide supervision and protection to schools, events, and shopping centers — all while available resources are decreasing due to budget cuts. Campaigns to increase public awareness of this issue could help maintain a higher level of vigilance in the community. Airport security has taken this approach by encouraging travelers to monitor those around them and report anything suspicious.

The Inherent Tension of Community Policing

There is an inherent tension between retreating from the tenets of community policing and adopting policing strategies intended to maintain a safety buffer between the police and the community they serve and protect. Research includes work from authors who believe that a shift toward what could be characterized as paramilitary policing occurred even before September 11 (McCulloch, 2001a; Weber, 1999, p. 2). Describing how community policing works in the Australian environment, McCulloch (2001b, p. 4) referred to an "iron fist" covered by a "velvet glove." Murray (2005) presented a comparison of the transitions that have occurred between traditional policing and community policing, including a comparison of the cultures of both approaches. Murray's conclusion is that the two orientations are not incompatible; he proposes a hybrid model that would enable both approaches to coexist.

Murray suggests that community policing continues to be the best way to prevent crime and acts of terrorism. He bases this conclusion on the enhanced capacity of a community to effectively communicate concerns and observations when there is a basic level of trust between citizens and police. The challenge is that it is increasingly difficult to distinguish those with malevolent intent from those who must be protected from malevolence. When community members see themselves as partners in the efforts of the police to keep them safe, the efficacy of community policing is both possible and enhanced.

The pressure on a police force currently operating in a community policing mode to transition back to a traditional policing model is substantial. This pressure comes from citizens who want to see evidence that the country is taking effective steps to fight the war on terror, and from politicians for whom crime fighting and homeland security are "election-sensitive" issues. Paramilitary approaches to national security are readily visible in other countries, as discussed above, and it may be difficult for the general public to understand how community policing strategies can be more effective in the long run.

A third vector encouraging movement toward traditional policing and away from community policing is mainstream police culture. Several characteristics of traditional police culture have emerged from the literature on police practice. Studies indicate that police work leads to a sense of "suspiciousness, internal solidarity, social isolation, and conservatism" (Skolnick, 1966) and that "the core of the police outlook is this subtle and complex intermingling of the themes of mission, hedonistic love of action and pessimistic cynicism" (Reiner, 1992, p. 114). Reiner further concluded that "most policemen are well aware that their job has bred them an attitude of constant suspiciousness which cannot be readily switched off" (pp. 114–115). In fairness, Chan (1997) and Prenzler (1997) point out that such research has been used pejoratively to conveniently label negative practice norms among officers of the law.

If community policing is to be effective, it is important to counteract the social, political, theoretical, and cultural forces that would undermine efforts to maintain the approach for prevention of crimes and acts of terrorism. At the same time, it is essential that police officers be confident that the practices they employ will keep them as safe as possible in the community. The tactics proposed above speak directly to this dual requirement.

"Friendly cop, aloof cop" is perhaps the purest distillation of the hybrid approach that Murray (2005) proposes. Traditional policing strategies based on long-held convictions about officer safety are permitted to guide the behavior of at least one officer in every pair or group. What this approach demands — and it is not an insignificant demand — is that every officer be required to switch gears according to the role being played on any given day. This is precisely the kind of behavioral flexibility that U.S. military personnel are asked to practice in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan — an effort to win hearts and minds for strategic purposes, whether for peacekeeping or "safekeeping," as the case may be.

"Bond, James Bond" can best be characterized as capitalizing on any inherent tendency of an officer to be skeptical of community members and the surrounding environment. Skepticism is the opposite of naivety and therefore a desirable attribute in any environment. It is a tenet of the scientific method and of empirical thought, and it carries an essentially positive dimension. A redeeming quality of this tactic is that an officer can emulate the calm, collected manner of the eponymous Bond — who never revealed his hand — while remaining completely on guard. What is essential for successful adoption of this tactic is that one's internal alertness must not be outwardly evident while engaged in community policing.

"Roy and Dale and Trigger" presents a tactic that generally must be addressed from both a budgetary and a managerial standpoint. Officers cannot ask citizens to put themselves in harm's way as lookouts or unofficial security guards for police property. However, it is a basic tenet of effective community policing that citizens will look out for officers whom they trust or think of as partners in keeping them safe.