Community and Problem-Solving Policing Axia College of University of Phoenix CJS 210 Community and Problem-Solving Policing The relationship between police and the community is extremely important. To have a trusting relationship between the two gives our communities a sense of security. The police deal with problems that most of us are not aware of on a daily basis.
There job to serve and protect our communities. In doing that there are problems and struggles police face. Having the communities support help make out streets safe. There are many who are not willing to helpin fact, some may have a negative outlook on the police.Reducing crime and improving quality of life is the goal.
In order to make that happen there must be problem-solving tactics and strategies to improve. Some believe that community policing and problem-solving policing may be the key strategies to use in policing our nation. Involving the community with policing is an attempt to get the community involved. The goal is to get the community to be an active partner with the police in dealing with crime problems. In the 1960’s the police were no longer seen as members of the community, but were more seen as an invading army or an army of occupation.The lack of communication and mistrust between communities seemed to occur when crime increased, technological advances, and changes in police management.
These changes led to foot patrol being taken off the streets and replaced with mobile police departments. With little help and communication problems began as quick moving police often had to quickly assess a situation and take quick action before racing to the next emergency. The rapid response led to police being viewed at as not trusting and out of touch with the situation at hand. It may have seemed the officer was not interested in the people in the community.It may have seemed the officer was there to do a job, do it quick and leave. One of the reasons for the lack of communication was the quick and what seemed to be an unattached officer taking care of business.
In addition to this problem, there was a change in many urban communities and this caused a problem. Residents that lived in the communities for many years were leaving to newly opened suburbs. As these residents fled to new communities the older communities were replaced by rural areas and Caribbean and Latin American countries. The new residents were not accustomed to urban life and the culture.These people often had a language barrier and made it difficult to interact to older members of the community.
These drastic changes in communities not only caused severe social problems to our cities but with the police also. Due too the problems between the communities and police many police departments began to create community affairs units to focus on the problems. The goal was to address the communication gap within the communities. This goal was unsuccessful because they often only attended these communities after a problem arise. Keeping good communication with the communities is a job for every police officer and not a small group.
This is how we practice our police in modern policing. Overcoming the strain between police and community is vital to keeping our streets safe. Robert C. Trojanowicz, director of the National Center for Community Policing in East Lansing, MI indicates that having community police can decrease three kinds of violence. (1) Individual violence, (2) civil unrest, and (3) police brutality. There is still a struggle gaining relationships with communities and police.
But with help from both we will find proactive, innovative solutions to crime and disorder on our streets.Problem-solving policing or problem-orientated policing pushes the police to focus on the problems that cause the incidents instead of dealing with incident after incident. The problem-oriented policing strategy consists of four separate parts: scanning, analysis, response, and assessment. This problem-solving technique is called SARA. The scanning process is when officers discuss in groups specific problems rather than as specific incidents.
For instance a robbery used to be considered a single incident. When officers are in the scanning process the robbery is evaluated as being a part of a pattern, which may be related to another problem.As the officers dissect the problem they are able to analyze it and come up with options for a solution. The response process may consist of working with citizens, business owners, and public and private agencies to prepare a program of action to help correct the problem at hand.
Once the response to the problem as been established the police assess the effectiveness of the response. At this time of the process they may need to collect more information or even reevaluate the problem. New technology helps our law enforcement’s to reduce crime by creating data that will assist in analyzing certain crimes.Having this data at hand can help our law enforcement address the problems and create a solution. The federal government has made remarkable contributions to the state of community policing strategies throughout the nation. There are several programs created to promote community-orientate policing.
The Office of Community Oriented Police Services (COPS) is one of those programs. The COPS program works to increase the number of officers on the street, encourage partnerships between police and the community, promote innovation in police, and developing new technologies to help reduce crime and its consequences.The COPS program seems to be successful. One of the goals COPS had was to put 100,000 new cops on the beat but that did not happen.
However, it did raise the number of police officers in the field. The type of policing I believe is most effective is the problem-solving policing strategy. This is a strategy implemented by the Baltimore County, Maryland, Police Departments. They call this strategy SARA. This strategy consists of four parts: scanning, analysis, response, and assessment.
This program is effective because it forces or officers to look at the problems at hand rather than passing it off as just another incident.As the officers dissect the problem with the programs guidelines it creates a way of looking at the problem at many different angles. Which in turn may result in understanding why these problems occur, who is committing them and what areas are targeted? With this information crime may be prevented and this will make our streets safe. The technology that we have now at the tip of our fingers can work hand in hand with the SARA program. The data that can be created on certain crimes and reviewed in groups such as the SARA program can only help create a solution to the problems.
Keeping our communities safe and reducing crime is something that seems to be a never-ending battle. Having a good relationship between our communities and police is something we need to increase so that we can improve the quality of life in our communities. The different problem-solving, programs and help from the communities has many positive aspects. Working together to do what we can as a nation to fight crime can be accomplished.
There are so many avenues to work with to increase our safety and let our communities feel less threatened. The police departments in our nation have worked hard for us and continue to work hard for us.
