Community Policing

Defining Community from a Policing Perspective

Some scholars view community policing as a return to policing's British origins in London in 1829, when Sir Robert Peel devised the first modern police force. Rather than viewing the police as an extension of a governing body imbued with the authority to legitimately [Page 297]use force to preserve order, similar to the British military, Peel hoped that the public would see police officers more simply as citizens in uniform. From Peel's perspective, the public represented a community of ordinary citizens who were bound together in a societal existence at a specific time in a specific place and needed an assurance of public safety. But does a group of people living together in a city like London in 1829 really constitute the same kind of community that we speak of today when we refer to the idea of community policing?

German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936) used the term gesellschaft to refer to a loosely connected society at large in which people lived in close proximity to one another merely for convenience and safety. In contrast, he used gemeinschaft to signify a community made up of a closely knit group of people linked by ties of kinship and friendship, who live near one another and remain dependant on one another over time for a sense of belonging, safety, and economic well-being. Tönnies saw large, urbanized European cities (much like 1829 London) as examples of the former and viewed smaller medieval European towns as examples of the latter.

Auguste Comte (1798–1857), the founder of sociology, preceded Tönnies in linking the demise of European communities to increasing urbanization. Comte suggested that to the extent that society is made up of groups of closely knit people tied to one another by bonds of kinship and friendship, it can be composed of many communities, which in turn are made up of smaller, familial units. Cities, however, can suffer from a lack of community if their residents fail to seek and sustain mutually beneficial social relationships. Sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) noted that while city life held many advantages—greater individualism, for instance—over less urban environments, the tendency also existed for greater isolation, alienation, and crime.

The community of ideas proposed by Amitai Etzioni (b. 1929) probably comes closest to the type of community in which modern-day community policing might be found. In a community of ideas, groups of people are bound together by their principles and opinions regarding issues such as how best to govern and the prioritization of important social values. To this might be added the important dimension of geography. After all, “policing by its very nature assumes a community setting, or a place where community activities occur. In a nutshell, policing requires someone and somewhere to police”” (Thurman, Zhao, & Giacomazzi 2001, p. 43).

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