Community Policing

Community policing may be the most important development in policing in the past quarter century. Across the country, police chiefs report that they are moving toward this new model of policing, which supplements traditional crime fighting with prob-lem-solving and prevention-oriented approaches that emphasize the role of the public in helping set police priorities. What police departments are doing when they do community policing varies a great deal. Agencies point to a long list of projects as evidence that they are involved. These range from bike and foot patrols to drug awareness programs in schools, home security inspections, storefront offices, and citizen advisory committees. In some places, community policing is in the hands of special neighborhood officers, whereas in other places, it involves the transformation of the entire police department. In some cities, residents participate in aggressive neighborhood watch patrols as part of their city's program, although in many more places, public involvement is limited to being asked to call 9-1-1 quickly when they see something suspicious. Agencies have mounted sophisticated public relations campaigns to sell their programs, and they compete hotly for national awards for innovation. Assistant chiefs get promoted, and chiefs move to more visibly prominent cities because they are said to have made a success out of community policing.

So, what is community policing? Although it is often described by the things that police officers do (including the examples just mentioned), community policing is actually a strategic rather than programmatic innovation. Its advocates characterize it as transforming the “professional” model of policing that has been dominant since the end of World War II, shifting in a fundamental way to one that is proactive, prevention oriented, and community sensitive. It seems to mean different things to different people because the range and complexity of programs with which it is associated are large and continually evolving. At root, however, community policing is not defined by a list of particular tactics. In its fullest expression, community policing affects the structure and culture of police departments, not just their activities. Police departments embracing community policing tend to adopt at least three new, interrelated organizational stances: They involve the community, they decentralize, and they adopt a problem-solving orientation. In turn, these changes reverberate back, reshaping the mission and methods of policing.