The Pros And Cons Of Community Policing

Sadly, during the last few years the relationship between the community and its police has significantly deteriorated. This has been due to the way some officers have handled certain situations in which the use of violence or deadly force could have been avoided. Because of this, some sectors of the community no longer trust their police; such distrust has gotten to the point that they rather take matters into their own hands than calling them for help. Although not all officers misbehave and abuse their power “it only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch”. The media has also contributed in promoting the idea that most cops are bad by transmitting, over and over, videos of police officers abusing their power. So is there a solution to problem

As suggested by some experts, the most feasible solution to reduce crime and at the same time create a better police-community relationship is community policing. First of all, in order to understand more about community policing, one must recognize the true definition of such law enforcement strategy. Community policing is considered an organizational strategy in which the community and law enforcement are expected to work closely together in order to solve problems that affect everyone equally; such problems are fear of crime, physical and social disorder, and neighborhood decay. The main idea of community policing is that those people considered to be law abiding citizens should be allowed to have some kind of input in what involves the police work, in exchange for their participation and support (Jenkins, 1995). This type of interaction is encouraged by the idea that police alone cannot solve all the crimes that affect our communities. In other words, the future of police work depends

According those in favor of community policing, there are certain characteristics about this practice that make it a good crime fighting strategy; one of those is characteristics is called community partnership. Community partnership, to some experts, is one of the most effective ways to fight crime and reduce the deterioration of communities because it creates a trustful association between police and the community. The idea behind community partnership is that having a close relationship with the community allows police to access information that otherwise would be difficult to acquire (Walker & Katz, 2011). In all honesty, nowadays it is extremely difficult for the community to trust police officers. As mentioned before, with all the recent cases of police brutality and the killings of unarmed civilians the community is kind of hesitant in trusting its police; however, building a strong partnership could be tremendously beneficial, not only for the police, but for everyone in a specific community because it can help solve crimes and at the time rebuild an already deteriorated relationship. Under community partnership, comes the idea of consultation which is usually done through meetings between the police and the community. Consultation involves allowing the community to express their concerns and needs; it allows the police to provide information to its citizens about crime and disorder in their