Why Do Community Policing Officers Violate More Rights?

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A measure of success for police is their protection of citizen’s constitutional rights. In one study, it was shown that community policing officers violate more constitutional rights of citizens than traditional police officers (Gould & Mastrofski, 2004). Why do community policing officers violate more rights? Procedural rights may be violated when the police investigate issues that are not criminal in nature since they lack the probable cause requirement.
Some departments train the patrol officers and but not the supervisors. The Chicago Police Department had problems with the hierarchy in accepting community policing training (Skogan & Hartnett, 1997). Without support from the high ranks of the department, there is limited ability for community policing to be properly implemented. …show more content…

The confidence in the police and the satisfaction people have did not increase within the community-policing era but stayed stable and has decreased at times, which has been lowest in minority, especially African American, communities (Gallagher, Maguire, Mastrofski, & Reisig, 2001).
Traditional-policing techniques still need to be maintained and improved during community policing implementation. Not all issues can be dealt with by community policing such as private and cyber-crime (Demetriou & Silke, 2003). Certain crimes are best handled by more traditional policing tactics such as directed stings that were shown to be effective to decrease crimes involving firearms (Sherman & Rogan, 1995).
Citizens’ involvement with police has shown that it results in reduced fear of neighborhood crime and fear of being a victim (Wycoff & Skogan, 1986). Citizen involvement also helps improve police legitimacy (Tyler, 2004). However, citizen involvement and support come mostly from white neighborhoods (Tyler,