Community Policing

Community policing is critical social science in action and is based on the assumptions of normative sponsorship theory. The theory of community policing is based on normative sponsorship and critical social theory. Normative sponsorship theory declares most people are of good will and willing to cooperate with others to satisfy their needs. It proposes that a community effort will only be sponsored if it is normative (within the limits of established standards) to all persons and interest groups involved. One of the major considerations when attempting to initiate community development is to understand how two or more interest groups can have sufficient convergence of interest or consensus on common goals to bring about the implementation. Each group involved and interested in program implementation must be able to justify and, hence, legitimize the common group goal within its own patterns of values, norms, and goals. The more congruent the values, beliefs, and goals of all participating groups, the easier it will be for them to agree on common goals.

The participating groups, however, do not necessarily have to justify their involvement or acceptance of a group goal for the same reason. In community policing, critical social science is practiced and it assists police and citizens to gain an understanding of the quasi-causes of their problematic situation, which aid citizens to solve their own problems. History& Professionalism As you should know now Sir Robert Peel was the first man to form a police force. The London Metropolitan Police District was established in 1829. One of the innovations introduced was the establishment of regular patrol areas, known as "beats." Before 1829, the police whether military or civilian only responded after a crime had been reported. Patrols occurred on a timely basis. Peel assigned his "bobbies" to specific geographic zones and held them responsible for preventing and suppressing crime within the boundaries of their zones. He based this strategy on his belief that the constables would become known to the public, and citizens with information about criminal activity would be more likely to tell a familiar figure than a stranger become familiar with people and places and thus better able to recognize suspicious persons or criminal activity, and be highly visible on their posts, tending to deter criminals from committing crimes in the immediate vicinity.

By the turn of the century, the progressive movement began to promote professionalism in law enforcement as one of the basic components of rehabilitating municipal politics. Concern about corruption and brutality in local police forces resulted in State takeovers of some city departments and led to the creation of new State police organizations removed from the corrupting influences of local ward politics. Critics also questioned whether professionalism really was being practiced at the local level. Police departments installed civil service Merit systems for hiring and promotion. They adopted a general code of ethics and formed a professional association. They supported their practices through knowledge based on experience. But these local law enforcement agencies conducted no true scientific research, nor did they require a college degree to work in the field.

In 1962, the San Francisco Police Department established a specialized unit based on the concept that "police would help to reduce crime by reducing despair by acting as a social service agency. Some of the difficulties encountered by minority group persons." Members were not sure what methods they should apply to serving which minority population. The unit also faced the dilemma of "how to maintain its identity as a police organization and at the same time to win the confidence of the minority group population...ordinarily considered a police problem." Eventually, the relationship of trust between the unit and the community led to formal complaints of misconduct against other police officers, sealing the unit's alienation from the mainstream of the department.

The program soon perished in the politically charged environment it inadvertently helped to create. In the 1970s, a new strategy emerged team policing. Advocates of team policing recognized that "in recent years, due in part to changes in the social climate and in part to changes in police patrol techniques (more patrol cars, less foot patrol), many police agencies have become increasingly isolated from the community. This isolation makes crime control more difficult." The team policing concept assigned responsibility for a certain geographic area to a team of police officers who would learn the neighborhood, its people, and its problems much like the old cop on the beat. Community Policing is the most widely used term for a loosely defined set of police philosophies, strategies, and tactics known either as problem-oriented policing, neighborhood-oriented policing, or community- oriented policing. Like the police-community relations movement, community policing stems from a view of the police as a multifunctional social service agency working to reduce the despair of poverty. Like team policing, community policing is rooted in the belief that the traditional officer on the beat will bring the police and the public closer together. At the same time, it maintains the professional model's support for education and research. Instead of merely responding to emergency calls and arresting criminals, community-policing officers devote considerable time to performing social work, working independently and creatively on solutions to the problems on their beats. It follows that they make extensive personal contacts, both inside and outside their agencies.

Community policing apparently has received widespread support at the conceptual level from politicians, academicians, administrators, and the media. It also has strong intuitive appeal with the general public. Yet, community policing has encountered significant stumbling blocks at the operational level nearly everywhere it has been tried. Evolution of community policing, should be considered within the context of two somewhat more generally applicable principles. First, the crime problem appears to have changed little since the Industrial Revolution drove the urbanization of Western culture in the early 1800s. Objective measures of the true prevalence of criminal activity in our cities remain as elusive today as they were when the British Parliament began debating the "Act for Improving the Police In and Near the Metropolis" in the late 1820s. Similarly, modern surveys of public opinion still have difficulty "separating fear of crime from disapproval of conduct deemed immoral or alarm at public disorder."

Second, organizational change in police agencies has been a constant Theme of academicians, policymakers, and practitioners from the very beginning perhaps only because it is one factor among the many complex Issues facing the police over which these groups can exercise some control. However, changes in policing strategies are not always determined through rigorous testing. Every new movement in law enforcement from the establishment of the first organized police forces, to the reforms of the Progressive era, to community policing has been touted, with little supporting evidence, as the one true solution to the problem of crime in society. To date, none of them has lived up to such unrealistic expectations. Community Policing is a very huge deal these days. Before when it just started officers basically had to find time to get involve with the community, sometimes even without pay. Those times has change. There are countless number of programs out there aimed specifically towards the community. One of the largest is called the 2000 MORE program. According to the budget for the fiscal year 2000/2001 Up to $81 million in grant funding was available to U.S. law enforcement agencies for the purchase of information technology systems. The money is intended to support an increase in the amount of time that an agency's officers are deployed in a community policing capacity due to technological enhancements, and subsequent gains in efficiency. The program was called 2000 MORE.

In a direct response to requests from grantees who asked for additional guidance in implementing their COPS MORE grants, the Office began offering a number of new tools designed to provide training and technical assistance. To date, 555 officers were provided training for COPS MORE grantees at 18 of the Regional Community Policing Institutes. In the form of This training focused on program assistance, including issues such as redeployment calculations, redeployment tracking, and basic grant maintenance requirements. In addition to the Regional Community Policing Institutes training, five COPS MORE Technical Assistance Mini-Conferences were held for grantees and included workshops on topics such as procurement, installation, integration, and utilization of technologies. The COPS Office hopes to provide additional training opportunities for MORE grantees in fiscal year 2001. A proposal for the continuation of the MORE training is currently under consideration by the COPS Office.

Other programs included Adopt-a-Cop which basically is Residency-type program in which community residents get to take care of and know the beat officer like a family member not only that officers are put inside the community usually a small community and eventually be wide known, respected, and trusted within the community. ASAP is After School Activities Programs; hobby, sports, or other activities. Makes use of school facilities late into evening, sometimes called "Midnight Basketball" programs run by officers usually at night and/or during peak crime times to encourage people from the community to participate instead of being victims of crime. Another program is called the Awards Program, it basically is Special awards given to Good Citizens who perform honorary deeds or assisted with law enforcement, or were just simply observed displaying good manners while driving. This is intended to tell citizens that officers are not always out there to find trouble/violations, but instead they see good also, and by rewarding local community with awards honoring them would have community members have trust in the officers job.