Community Policing

Community Policing
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Community Policing
Community policing has been transforming steadily since the 1960s following the Civil Rights Movement. The introduction of this model helped expose the weaknesses of the tradition policing model. While the origin of this model is the crisis in police-community relations, numerous other factors have influenced its development over the past decades (Palmiotto & Unnithan, 2010). The social and political upheavals that surrounded the civil rights movement encouraged the introduction of measures of restoring trust and improving relationships between officers and communities. Moreover, community programs were initiated to deal with the issue of underrepresentation of the minority groups in the police departments. In 1967, the Administration of Justice and the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement proposed that augmented responsiveness in police departments to the challenges facing a promptly changing society.
Structuring police operations by geographic boundaries efficiently established closer police-community relationships. Further, greater decision-making authority was granted to line officers to increase their responsiveness to neighborhood issues. However, these innovative ideas were faced with intense opposition from managers in police departments (Cordner, 2014). Therefore, successful team implementation suffered severely hampering, and the departments soon abandoned team policing. One of the most productive community policing programs was the foot patrol because it vividly challenged traditional policing model.

According to Palmiotto and Unnithan (2010), the assumption that crimes could be reduced by the police on their own aided in the generation of policing alternatives. Notably, the foot patrol program had distinct impacts on different regions. For instance, the program significantly reduced citizens’ fear of crime in Flint and enhanced officers’ morale. Foot patrol enhanced positive interaction between the law enforcement officers and members of the community.
References
Cordner, G. (2014). Community policing. The Oxford handbook of police and policing, 148-171.
Palmiotto, M., & Unnithan, N. (2010). Policing and society: A global approach. Nelson Education.