Community Policing: Report on Strategies, Challenges, and Benefits

This report provides a comprehensive overview of community policing, a strategy where police actively engage with the community to maintain order and reduce crime. It explores the role of police in society, emphasizing their importance in upholding laws and addressing societal issues, including diversity and social inequalities. The report discusses the core principles of community policing, highlighting its focus on building relationships and partnerships to solve local problems. It also delves into the challenges faced, such as dealing with heterogeneous communities, maintaining trust, and balancing police authority with community input. The report emphasizes the advantages of community policing, including improved community relations, increased public safety, and more effective crime investigation. The report concludes by advocating for the continued implementation of community policing to foster safer, more secure, and responsible communities.

RUNNING HEAD- COMMUNITY POLICING 1
NAME OF THE STUDENT
NAME OF THE COLLEGE
SUBMISSION DATE-
ASSIGNMENT NO 2- COMMUNITY POLICING
COURSE ID-

COMMUNITY POLICING 2
ABSTRACT
This report deals with community policing and the way it works. Police remains a big
part of our society so as to maintain the discipline and order in a community. Legal laws
cannot be directly practiced by courts without investigating them at a lower level. Hence,
police does the job of investigating the problems going on in a society at a smaller level and
dealing with them with the legal laws and codes that have been created for the policing
society. Not only this, police maintains law and order in a society.
INTRODUCTION
Community policing is the part of police where the police is directly connected to the
community and plays an important role in the working of laws and structures in maintaining
discipline in a society. Society is made up of various cultures and communities and too much
of diversity can affect the smoothness of a society. This is henceforth, taken in account by the
police. There are several issues and ways where police department plays an important role.
People with power and money can disturb their lower ones in various ways and act according
to their supremacy but police here pacifies the situation and avoids the exploitation of any
human being living in a society, without paying attention to their class, caste, monetary or
community power(Choi & Lee, 2014).
A community consists of numerous people and a community might be homogeneous
or heterogeneous in nature, hence it is not possible for the society to maintain peace and
prosperity amongst themselves with the present diversity in culture, caste and race. Diversity
leads to a difference in thoughts and creation of communal issues between people so police is
to take care of the communal problems created in a society and keep public in discipline of
not getting involved in activities which are hazardous to public order. Every society is a home
to few miscreants and police is responsible to keep them away from the safety of people and
children and also punish the according to their activities. Hence, we understand that police
plays a major role in a community or a society as a whole. Further, we will discuss the
relation of police with the communities in the report.
Police acts like a first relief factor available to the people in a community who acts
like their protector of rights, solution to their problems and assures safety to them. Safety

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does not just count the protection from theft and murder but also the basic safety provided by
the policemen from bullying, drunk man’s activities and avoiding certain nuisance created by
certain people in a society.
Hence, we get to know that police has a great part in maintaining balance in a
community and it takes diverse ways and laws to abide by them all and work accordingly.
People live in a comfort zone because of police’s presence in a community. Their work
ranges from the smallest actions of discipline to biggest actions of punishing the guilty.
COMMUNITY POLICING
Community oriented policing which is also known community policing is a
strategized kind of policing which focuses on the close working with the members of the
community and it is tend to build ties with the people of the society while working for
them(Choi & Lee, 2014).The idea of community policing allows the same person to have
permanent service in a certain area. Working and patrolling in a proactive partnership with
thee community members to solve problems in a society is known to be as an exact meaning
to community policing. Its goal is to interact with the citizens for a creation of local agencies
with the members from the public and creating strategies and partnerships for reduction of
disorder and crimes. It targets the low level crimes but few theories suggest that it can help in
curbing down the serious crimes too. It is also related to the intelligence led police structure
and deals like a problem oriented police activities(Huey & Quirouette, 2010).
The idea of community policing does not remove the need of reactive policing but it
divides itself from the main policing section and makes a separate kind of policing structure
which can help people in the lowest cases(Sozer, 2010). It makes the policing strategy as a
decentralised structure and breaks down the laws fitting them into each and every strata of
community. It increases the safety and administration of a society.
CHALLENEGES FACED IN COMMUNITY POLICING
As it is already been known, that policing remains a work with high responsibility and
consists of great range of work altogether. So, responsibilities always come up with
challenges and same is the case with community policing(Max, 2019). Policing cannot be a
one way action and has to be taken as a part of two parties together i.e., the community
people and the police. A supportive relation between both the parties adds to comfort in
action and reaction between the two.

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Communities are not stable in a society. They are divided into heterogeneous and
homogeneous communities(Choi & Lee, 2014).Heterogeneous communities refer to those
which have diversity in the presence of humans. This might be of culture, caste or gender.
Diversity in communities tends to grow a verity of ideas and ideologies which differ from
one another so it becomes difficult for an authority to keep a check and work smoothly.
Whereas, a homogenous society has equality of thoughts and ideas with a great influence on
each other so the structure works in extremes. Police action takes an easy turn if the people
present in this structure are supportive towards the police. It is because the mentality of a
structure remains stable amongst each person of that group. But, this might also create a
problem for people when they have to deal with a negative side of extremity amongst the
group of people (Hickman, 2013). It involves an active participation of people, police and
the agencies of government working together and understanding issues from all points of
view. It requires a certain amount of trust to be maintained between the two. There is a
possibility that people do not agree with the police’s point of view and their plan of action.
This difference in the viewpoint might create differences between the two.
It might also be possible that the society is made up of two or more communities and
the officer who is assigned to the duty of community policing in a particular society gets in
favour of one community whereas other people do not support the idea, can create various
differences between the two and can act as a challenge in serving people in a right way.
Implementation of community policing has been an overall success but it also comes
up with various challenges also(Huey & Quirouette, 2010). These barriers include lack of
control by the authorities, less flexibility, tailoring in the neighbourhood level and many
others. Sometimes, people are unable to recognize the trust between people and the police or
there might be lack of quality of information provided in a crime scene.
This way of policing is often taken as softer way of implementing the police culture.
It feels like that the policing is moving from the traditional way of policing and taking up
new ways where there is a lack of individualism and people are getting involved in the inside
working of policing. It can disturb the vocal majority of a police authority and reduce it to
mere team workers voice as all the people are equally involved in the investigation(Hickman,
2013)
ADAVATAGES OF COMMUNITY POLICING

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Inclusiveness of community in the policies and legal structure of police makes
policing a more efficient process and it helps people to be involved in the reasoning out of
crime and its investigation. Investigation of a crime which includes people as well as the
authorities can give rise to more ideas about it. It not just helps once the crime has been
committed but also in maintaining discipline amongst the community members. Communities
develop a trustworthy relation with the police authorities, making them as a part of a
structured society. Any police authority who is assigned as a community police officer tends
to create a bond with society and help them in creating a safe and secure environment around
them(Huey & Quirouette, 2010).
It helps in reducing the fear amongst the people of a community. It increases the
police presence in a society and helps people to feel more secure and safe. Apart from
improving community police relationships, it increases the quality of lifestyle and ultimately
reducing the crime in the neighbourhood. Its implementation changes the policing structure
and its management. It strengthens the community and links police with the communities and
society as a whole. Familiarizing themselves with the community, police officers tend to
obtain important information easily and create a reliable evaluation of citizen’s needs and
expectations. Community policing has opened new doors for the policemen to serve in their
desired area and can maintain a friendly relation with the communities, making people more
comfortable with the police structure. Usually, people face a gap of comfort between the
people and the policemen but community policing can help policing achieve another success
of not being a frightening institution but made to help the people in the times of need. This
decreases the gap and creates a new bond amongst the citizens and the cops.
Community policing makes people understand that police stands for assisting the
crowd for a peaceful and disciplined living in a city and hence, the team consists of both the
parties to achieve the same.
CONCLUSION
Moving to an end of the report, we have discussed about the meaning of community
policing which means that police authorities work in a collaboration and inclusiveness of
communities around them. Community policing has come up as a different strata of policing.
It has been found that community policing differs in a heterogeneous and a homogenous
community. It might be a welcomed strategy of policing in today’s world but it has a certain
points of challenges to it. The community people and police authorities have to maintain a

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cordial and a trustworthy relationship amongst the two for making community policing a
success. With a loss of trust on the authorities can make it a disaster. Police authorities are
permanently left to lead on safety and security to a particular society and hence can decrease
their individualism. It is stated as a two way process and is required to involve equal work
from both the sides. Along with the disadvantages, community policing has an advantage of
making police a less threatening organisation for the communities and being more friendly
with discussing their problems with the. It also makes the police authorities more responsible
towards the area they are serving. This inclusiveness helps police to get information which
more deeply from the society and helping them in maintaining a safe, secure and a
responsible community. With people being involved in the process, crimes are to get low in
an area. Hence, the society must welcome this new structure of community policing and help
our communities become safer.

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References
Arthur, L. (2019). Retrieved from
https://cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/vets-to-cops/e030917193-CP-Defined.pdf
Choi, K., & Lee, J. (2014). Citizen participation in community safety: a
comparative study of community policing in South Korea and the
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10.1080/10439463.2014.922087
Hickman, M. (2013). Review of Policing Issues: Challenges and
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Huey, L., & Quirouette, M. (2010). ‘Folks Should Have Access … How You Do it
is the Difficult Thing’: exploring the importance of leadership to maintaining
community policing programmes for the homeless. Policing And
Society, 20(2), 172-186. doi: 10.1080/10439461003668484
Max, L. (2019). Why Community Oriented Policing?. Retrieved from
https://www.policeone.com/community-policing/articles/98346-Why-
Community-Oriented-Policing/
Sozer, M. (2010). Crime and Community Policing (pp. 20-55). El Paso: LFB
Scholarly Pub. LLC.