Community Policing And The Civil Rights Movement

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An outgrowth of two major forces in the 1960s lead to concerns with the crime rates and the Civil Rights movement. This movement led to increased attention and funding for research and policy development. During the time various crime commissions discovered that most crimes were not reported to police. With this occurring, Congress funded money for research experiments, which led to the Kansas City Patrol Experiment in the 70’s. Law enforcement agencies started to question the value of routine patrol. Kansas City designed an experiment to assess the effects of different levels of patrol on public attitudes, reported crime, victimization, traffic accidents, response time, etc. In the end, overwhelming evidence is that decreasing or increasing …show more content…

There are many different ways of defining and operationalizing community policing ("COPS Office: Grants and Resources for Community Policing", 2016). Some researchers suggest that it’s a philosophy, others think it’s a tactic, and still others consider it a process. As such, some different conceptualizations of community policing are important discussion points. There are three tactical elements to community policing: enforcement of laws, proactive, crime prevention oriented, and problem-solving. What was mentioned most in the articles was problem-solving. Problem-solving describes the process of attempting to solve problems. Police, community members, and other public and private entities work together to address the underlying problems that contribute to crime and disorder by identifying and analyzing problems and assessing the effectiveness of these responses ("COPS Office: Grants and Resources for Community Policing", …show more content…

This also applies to community-based programs such as D.A.R.E., P.A.L, and neighborhood watching. In my opinion, community-based policing is the most effective and most commonly misused technique used by police departments. It definitely has its pros and cons. Community policing is set to prevent crime, build awareness within communities, decrease fear, and build up a relationship between the community and police officers. When it comes to the assessment phase of the SARA model provides a framework for agencies to consistently learn from and improve their problem solving projects. Building that citizen/ officer relationship is very important when it comes to community policing and without it, the technique would not work. Community policing works if the affected community work together with the police and other governmental offices to ensure that it is a success. The biggest obstacle that community policing and the community-based programs have to face it the idea of change. Officers have to change the concept of policing and citizens have to be willing to accept that change (November,

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