Understanding Community Policing

Book excerpt: The movement toward community policing has gained momentum in recent years as police and community leaders search for more effective ways to promote public safety and to enhance the quality of life in their neighborhoods. Chiefs, sheriffs, and other policing officials are currently assessing what changes in orientation, organization, and operations will allow them to benefit the communities they serve by improving the quality of the services they provide.Community policing encompasses a variety of philosophical and practical approaches and is still evolving rapidly. Community policing strategies vary depending on the needs and responses of the communities involved; however, certain basic principles and considerations are common to all community policing efforts.To date, no succinct overview of community policing exists for practitioners who want to learn to use this wide-ranging approach to address the problems of crime and disorder in their communities. Understanding Community Policing, prepared by the Community Policing Consortium, is the beginning of an effort to bring community policing into focus. The document, while not a final product, assembles and examines the critical components of community policing to help foster the learning process and to structure the experimentation and modification required to make community policing work.Established and funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), the Community Policing Consortium includes representatives from the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the National Sheriffs' Association, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), and the Police Foundation. BJA gave the Consortium the task of developing a conceptual framework for community policing and assisting agencies in implementing community policing. The process was designed to be a learning experience, allowing police, community members, and policymakers to assess the effectiveness of different implementation procedures and the impact of community policing on local levels of crime, violence, fear, and other public-safety problems.