Criminology

Community policing is an organizational tactic and the individual attitude that enhances collaboration between law enforcers and members of the society and furthers practical crime solving in conjunction with public sector agencies and local organizations. The goal is to minimize crime and fear of crime, ensure development in the neighborhoods and develop good public attitude towards the police. It therefore, requires great accountability by law enforcers, involving community members in making decisions and watching individual rights.

For community policing to be effective, there are organizational structure changes that occur within the police department. Police departments ought to be open to the public through decentralization and deployment of law enforcers at community level so as to further relationship between police and members of the public. Communication between police officers should be simplified and done at a lower rank to avoid victimization. Law enforcers should be diplomatic and their supervision ought to promote relations in all ranks. Police should be assigned duties at community level at all times but not only in times of crime. Hiring new officers should focus on the highly learned individuals and those committed to working for the community. Recruits should immensely be taught on public relations and those who are community-oriented be thanked. Cooperation is also a must for public regencies and local organizations so as to acknowledge community desires and use the available resources to cater for the needs thus avoiding conflicts with the people. We should understand the communities in details so as to know the origin of criminal actions. Data on crime and community characteristics should be well documented. Social amenities such as churches and schools should be taken at community level since they campaign against crime.

Community policing has many merits to the community. It has led to improved attitude towards the law enforcers, engaged community members to understand and solve their problems, and it has increased social relations between people and police. In addition, it has minimized fear of crime (Anderson, 2005). Again, it has increased the friendship between police and the public, helped the members of society to understand the authority of policemen and officers can now feel comfortable with their work. There are shared benefits of community policing. These include reduced chances of clash between public members and law enforcers, crime rate has lowered and enabled better communication between the police and the members of the society.

Community policing is however facing some challenges. Merging of problem- oriented and intelligence-oriented policing has not been easy. More research ought to be done to find out the effectiveness of tactics currently used as a way to combat crime. Due to increased contact between the police and community members, law enforcers may end up being litigated (Murray, 2002).