COMMUNITY POLICING 14
Running head: COMMUNITY POLICING 1
Community Policing
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Abstract
The effect practices which are being done by the police robbery cases in the community can only be estimated by a set of well-formulated simultaneous equations. The measures on the police activities and resources on the streets are exceedingly precise than anything else. Therefore, this paper aims at determining the connection between Community Policing Strategy and the individual components the perception of a crime risk, fear, incivilities, and frequency in the sense of safety. The research encompassed approximately 1000 respondents who are over 18 years old. The field research combined two main quantitative research methods, that is, face-to-face interviews and telephone interviews in households. This research paper synthesises the empirical evidence on the participation of the police in the community initiatives using a variety of practices. An overview of the community policing is provided with mild attention to the essence and objectives of the approach. Similarly, prior studies about the effectiveness of community policing have been reviewed as well as assessed in terms of their scientific merit and methodological rigour. A discussion and research method considerations are presented to provide a cohesive incivility perception and police activity in the community.
Introduction
The primary role of the police in every society is to provide safety, one of the fundamentals of human needs. However, in doing so, seeking the most appropriate methods to address this demand on the police requires a proper organisation which includes various concepts and approaches. Similarly, to strengthen democracy with mild emphasis on the rights of all community members especially the vulnerable ones, it necessary to develop a comprehensive community-oriented policing to create a shift from the purported traditional policing which is still being celebrated by many. This means that the functions of the police in the community are to control all the traditional policing that most society again depends on for their protections.
The role of the police is not only to provide care to the control citizens but also to provide adequate care for them. This is the most significant meaning of police in community policing that has been dramatically promoted on such occasions. Preventive police activities are adversely gaining significance due to their nature of care provision among the citizens. The prevention measures have become significant police activity because most citizens have considered the efficiency of the police in preventing and solving criminal offences faster than before.
Generally, community policing is one of the most essential considered trends in the history of police history. The guarding has been developing consistently for years thereby creating a new role and form of policing in the society. Although this new approach has been widely spread and accepted by many, it should aim at emphasising that the policing which are based on community cooperation should not be applicable in all the case where the engagement of the police is necessary. For example, undercover police operations in criminal cases that deal with hostage related situations. For this reason, it is prudent for the community policing to lead in abolishing the traditional policing methods as well as the specialised and individual police units. As a result, this approach provides an alternative way in which the community, other social control institutions, and the police will work together constructively and legally in numerous cases to prevent crime and incivilities.
Literature Review
Through my literature search, some relevant sources of the study found a mild correlation between police and the community. According to Torres (2017), the concept of community policing was first introduced in the early 1970s by the United States police department to boost the police-community contact while reducing the fear of crime among people (Torres, 2017). The practice became a clear policing strategy in other parts of the U.S with the introduction of more than 100,000 new police officers for community purposes. The deployment presented a new focus that encourages community engagement and problem solving as opposed to the traditional reactive policing
It was realised that every article had significant information which corresponds to the number of law enforcement practices on issues related to arrest for an offence or the impact of the crime among the people of a given community (Silver, 2017). The results of these studies broadly suggest that behaviour of the police behaviour within a community set up can only be measured arrest rates, clearance rates or the affect-lithe crime rate which relies on other independent social factors of the society.
Some researchers believe that community policing came to existence as a result of several social movements and trends such as civil rights and victims’ rights (Nagin et al. 2017). This resulted in mild demands for them to be accountable to the society in a more connected and responsive manner which will not hinder the embraced engagement. According to Crow et al. (2017), the higher the rate of clearance in the perception of policing, the lower the overall rate of index crime among community members (Crow et al., 2017). The authors argued that the difference between the perceptions of the police practices among a given community is the leading cause of fluctuations on the crimes which are being reported. The study further reveals that the participation of the police in criminal justices and behaviour cases has a significant impact on fears, privacy, performance, and fairness. Other studies show that the involvement of police in the community activities has led to the adoption of specific law enactments which are useful in creating superb correlations (Torres, 2017). There were numerous critical policing developments during the late 1800s. For instance, one research study suggested that the roles of the patrol officers will only improve upon designation of motivators from the community. However, this concept was later used to divide police officers into small teams under a permanent geographic area.
Roberts (2018) argues that the emergence of community policing was to respond to two distinct unintended consequences of an advanced policing profession (Roberts, 2018). Notably, technology, like patrol vehicles and the police radio maximally changed the relationships between the community and the police. Previously most police officers developed several personal relationships with the intentional community to a rapport that enhances willingness to share information (Brooks et al., 2015). Similarly, police also applied scientific management approaches to policing to create a perception about the police and associate them with the responsibility of keeping the community safe. Additionally, a study on the Bureau of Police and Research and Development has also lifted high the position of the police to a more top notch as opposed to the standard sample basis. However, according to McClure et al. (2017), in their study about ‘Police and Society,’ they examined the reaction of the society to the performance of the police as well as the police work appraisal (McClure et al., 2017). The study confirms that it hard for the police to rise to society’s expectations if no proper observation is made on their practices. Similarly, the theoretical background of the community policing also reveals that the theory of “Broken Windows” which suggests the broken window is not a crime (McClure et al., 2017). As a result under professional police, the argument can be ignored by police officers.
Moreover, the Sage Dictionary of Criminology also defines community policing as a stable philosophy of police participation and practice which promotes a community-based strategy for problem-solving (Leibold et al., 2015). This definition also addresses the common underlying factors that cause crime, a disorder as well as fear of crime among people with the possible solutions for each. Additionally, some definition also shows that community policing is a process where crime control co-produced or shared with the public as a way of developing stable communication with the public, thereby building police legitimacy and quality life among the local communities.
Ariel et al. (2016) article, shows that the need for most societies is changing over time. This forces the police a new way of gauging their capacities about the changing aspirations of people (Ariel et al., 2016). It is also evident that most expectations are equally changing and over a given duration I will turn to the goals of the people. This is a change is gradual and may take time to be realised.
One researcher also suggested that for a success correlation between the police and the community, the four community policing dimensions must be identified to help in exploring the construct structures in the society. The study also reveals that each proportion which is used in representing underlying policing elements must be generated for valid content while assessing the subject matter (La Vigne et al. 2017). The study further explored the management programs for policy implications which are used for interpreting the dimensions in the community policing practices.
Methods
The method of the study problem lies in the truth that most police are regularly held responsible by the community as not only managing the safety of the citizens but also for solving crime and incivilities that are associated with their practices. The question that remains unanswered is the extent to which the police truly fulfil their promises. This is the most particular method of interest of the study in the context of implementation strategies of Community Policing in most nations across the world. By the sample sizes and the intended methods of research, this paper aims at providing important procedures for identifying the relationship of different variables in creating hegemony in the study process.
Sample
The study included a total of over 1000 respondents of ages 18 years and above. Notably, the example was used as a representative according to the county, gender, settlement size and age.
Data Collection Methods
The survey is the commonly used research method for this in polling out important public opinion concerning their attitudes towards the public. All the collected questionnaires were compiled based by multidimensional crime fear concepts which use cognitive, behavioural and emotional or affective components to measure dispositional fear which is associated with criminal activities in the community (La Vigne et al. 2017). Similarly, to variables used in the study to measure; the level of fear of crime, the intended questionnaire addressed mild police visibility, demographic characteristics as well as the cooperation between the citizens and police. Similarly, estimation of crime frequency, informedness of the police, police effectiveness, incivilities, problems present in the police, prior victimisation, the confidence level in institutions and personal vulnerability in community policing. Significantly, the variables which were used in the questionnaire were based on the theoretical models which previously described the fear of crime. However, the data statistical processing method of the collected information was conducted on the part of the questionnaire which is related to the safety sense, cooperation and policing between the local community and the police. This also included all the data which are similar to the respondent’s sociodemographic characteristics of respondents while on the other hand, data on confidence in institutions and prior victimisation were not used for the study.
Factor Analysis
Using factor analysis method, it was determined that the approach is the most valid measurement instrument in the cooperation between the local community and the police, surveying safety and the police dealings. It is the most interpretable, reasonable method by the several theoretical concepts which are related to community policing and the fear of crime.
Questionnaire
The questionnaire covers two critical areas which include the components of community policing and the sense of safety. Similarly, the computer-assisted telephone was used for interviewing in approximately 2000 questionnaires which are related to the intense nature of the community policing, while face-to-face interviews were also used for an additional survey where 2,500 responses were retrieved. Notably, both samples were multi-stratified about the available variables such as the settlement size, gender, county, settlement and age. As a result, many quotas set for the county on a study about the size of the arrangement of a given locality according to gender and age.
Settlements, as well as individuals, were also randomly chosen for the study. Similarly, during the telephone interviewing numerous telephone numbers were fed into the computer, which makes a random choice to the numbers to be used for data collection and scrutiny. During the household face-to-face interviewing, 180 settlements were randomly selected for further analysis. However, settlement size that was used in the sample acted as a representative of the numbers chosen based on the common variables which are shared by the inhabitants in each category of the settlement size. Up to 2000 inhabitants to 10,000 inhabitants among other recognisable number were used for the settlement size categorisation to give an adequate response regarding the amount of information to be collected. Conversely, not more than 15 respondents from each sampling point were interviewed.
As a result, each interviewer was subjected to quotas for the sampling point which consist of the exact number of respondents who fall between the recommended age and gender of the study. Additionally, interviewers also received street names which are randomly selected for each sampling point especially at the beginning of the interviewing process. Then, according to the standard rules of GfK, the respondents were sorted in the given settlements for further analysis. After the data processing based on the field research information, all the response that was collected from the respondents were removed from the sample. Consequently, a final sample which consisted of 1,000 respondents was obtained. Later, the respondents were proven according to the sociodemographic characteristics as a representative of the whole study process.
Results
The relationship between variable sets which consist of components of the Community Policing Strategy in different societies were tested on the one side while on the other hand, fear of crime, sets of variables, perception of crime frequency and risk as well as incivilities which are related to various risk and deviance groups who together form the sense of safety. Besides, to determine the actual relationship between the feeling of security and the Community Policing Strategy components of a society, a square matrix of covariances of spectral decomposition between the set of variables which were mentioned was conducted.
The results show that a comprehensive quasi-canonical component of the variables was extracted which was seventy per cent of the covariance amounts. This represented a medium correlation with the results indicating that the first factors of the sets of variables in the pair of quasi-canonical have unified relationship importance for their common variance which is approximately 15 per cent of the of the whole study component (Maguire et al., 2017). Notably, all the significant quasi-canonical correlations were calculated from the quasi-canonical components. Furthermore, the significant variables for the sense of safety variables create at a quasi-canonical part of the Community Policing Strategy in a given community set up.
Discussion and Conclusion
The results indicate that a complex relationship exists between the cognitive and affective perception of the safety of citizens and community policing concerning their practices. While some extracted components positively influence the safety perception, others are contrary related to the community expectations (Leibold et al., 2015). For example, the quasi-canonical correlation analysis results speak in favour of perception and opinions of police effectiveness in detecting and preventing crime as other factors of the community policing play the most significant influence on the safety sense. Conversely, the perception of incivilities is regarded as the initial perception of safety characteristic which influences the practices and actions of the police in every community (Nagin et al. 2017). To put it differently, all community policing efforts that lead to strengthening the confidence of the citizens in the police to increase police visibility and build positive opinions are crucial in achieving the intended success in different terms and approaches.
Although some authors have argued that the opinions of the citizens and the fear of crime have no direct relationship on the police, this research maximally refutes this claim by indicating that there is a both direct and inversely proportional relationship between the two parties (Silver, 2017). However, the effort to increase the satisfaction and improve the opinions of the citizen with the police should not only be viewed in fear of crime context, but also to recognize other related benefits which they are associated with, such as increased participation and willingness of citizens to work with the police in informing them about crimes and perpetrators.
It is also important to remember that the perception of the community is the estimation of police effectiveness and their sense of safety. Therefore, it should be emphasised that the efforts of the police in reducing the fear of crime and the perception of incivilities are not successful if they are noticed by the citizens. Similarly, the success of the police in solving and preventing crimes are usually stable categories without the availability of larger oscillations which are related to the present trends, particularly at the community level.
At the local level, the police are associated with influencing crime through preventive interventions as well as the projects which address causes of local corruption. For this reason, the component of public relation is critical in presenting direct communication within the target community (Silver, 2017). However, by being open in the general practices and involvements, paying attention to the public relations within a given society is possible for justification.
Additionally, based on the previous discussion, the direct contact between citizens and the police has numerous significances which confirm the importance of educating and training the police officers officials in applying their models to the community. Finally, Community Policing in most societies is significantly related to the feeling of safety among the citizens and any further developments in this practice should be based on police tactics and strategies that promote positive attitudes making police effectively visible to the general public.
Reference
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