Community policing is a novel innovation in recent policing.

Especially given the

recent spate of extreme criticism and public condemnation of the police all over America,

there is a need for a paradigm shift. What is community policing, what benefits can it offer,

and what is the “catch”? This essay discusses each of these questions in light of the best

course of action for the Virtual Police Department.

First, it is critical to develop a working definition of community policing. This type of

policing refers not to specific policing practices but instead to “Community policing is, in

essence, a collaboration between the police and the community that identifies and solves

community problems. With the police no longer the sole guardians of law and order, all

members of the community become active allies in the effort to enhance the safety and

quality of neighborhoods” (Community Policing Consortium, 1994, p. 3). Why do so many

advocate for this type of policing? Somerville (2009) explains: “Police officers are

understood as street-level bureaucrats, with multiple accountabilities. The ideal

relationship between police and public is characterised as a structural coupling between

two types of self-organising system” (Somerville, 2009, p. 261). Therefore, the mistrust

many have for the public and for the police is something that could be bridged with a

fundamental restructuring of the relationship between the two forces. Community policing

appears to offer a solution for those who no longer trust the police, as well as for those who

recognize that communities have significant policing need.

Finally, one important aspect of understanding community policing involves

considering it as a cultural construction that involves, at least to some extent, what intends

to be a benign appropriation of cultural norms that are common elsewhere in the world. “If

community policing in Western democracies is often a unilateral action of the police

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promoting community self-rule, in most of the rest of the world, informal policing in

communities is ubiquitous, popular, and sometimes excessive. Bracketing the Western

ideology of community policing as state-initiated and -controlled (top-down) allows to

discover a rich field of informal policing widely practiced by communities in Asia, Latin

America, or Africa (bottom-up)” (Wisler & Onwudiwe, 2008, p. 427). Thus, the very

paradigm of community policing may involve in some sense a reclaiming of a view of the

police that has existed in response to the views of them that have resulted from the police

acting as conduits with conflicting senses of identity.

Community policing has been lauded as a way to reach impoverished and at-risk

communities where inequality and gang activity are rampant. Why? First, in response to

criticisms that community policing is at odds with the mission of the police, one study

found that there was no reason not to implement it: “…various policing innovations are

wholly compatible with the community policing philosophy and that incorporating these

innovations into community policing may improve their overall utility and the likelihood of

their adoption” (Scheider, Chapman, & Schapiro, 2009, p. 694). Community policing,

according to this viewpoint, is an evolution of policing models and activities. A book-length

study of community policing in Chicago has found that a majority of jurisdictions

experienced reduced crime rates and improvements in outcomes after the implementation

of community policing (Skogan & Hartnett, 1997).

One study in the United Kingdom found that community policing was a wonderful

solution – but that it ran the risk of losing efficiency and mission to the same things that

impeded more traditional forms of policing as well. “This article examines the relationship

between community policing, intelligence-led policing and crime control. Whilst

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community and intelligence-led policing have developed as distinctive reform movements

within contemporary UK policing there have been calls for the two to interact in practice.

In particularly, aspects of community policing are operationalised through the frameworks

of intelligence-led policing… community policing was conceived, at least in part, as an

alternative to traditional reactive policing styles which coalesce around patrol, rapid

response to incidents and enforcement of the criminal law. However, as community

policing has evolved in practice it has become firmly embedded in conventional police-

centric notions of ‘efficiency,’ law enforcement and crime control” (Bullock, 2013, p. 125).

This nuanced assessment reminds readers that there are no hard or fast answers, and that

community policing is at its best, arguably, when it is focused on community, rather than

on policing. The bureaucracy that diminishes community policing’s power is the same

bureaucracy that has led to a mistrust of the police in many jurisdictions to begin with.

Therefore, although no individual or study has wholeheartedly endorsed community

policing as an absolute solution to the problems that exist in communities, there is a great

deal of research pointing to the fact that these programs can lead to positive outcomes for

many communities and individuals.

Yet there have also been many critiques of community policing. One major critique

has been the realm of communication and how it often fails the communities that have

implemented community policing. “Communication problems that were apparent included

one-way dialogue between police and neighbourhood residents, the inability of police to

effectively communicate with minority and special needs groups, and the promulgation of

community policing as a purposive rational model which obfuscates an empathetic

dialogue between police and SDN residents. These communicative problems limited the
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success of community policing and crime prevention in this neighbourhood and

perpetuated the asymmetrical relations between many residents and the police. Indeed,

traditional community policing models have generally failed SDNs because they do not

recognize how police communication with residents can continually reproduce an

asymmetrical power relationship between the two” (Schneider, 1999, p. 347). Thus, the

process of implementation is critical for the success of community policing in new contexts

as a supplement or even as a replacement to traditional policing.

Others have decried community policing as mere rhetoric that positions policing as

something that should be done by the community in the wake of funding cuts (Klockars,

2005). Still others have dismissed it as a “Panacea,” and found it particularly offensive,

especially when it is presented as a Western policing model that has come to save the west

(Brogden, 2004). In this sense, it is worthy of discussing community policing as a colonial

endeavor that could pull valuable infrastructure away from areas that need it, even when in

doing so, it returns autonomy to communities.

One systematic study of community policing found that it was a well-intentioned

philosophy with mixed results. “Our findings suggest that community-oriented policing

strategies have positive effects on citizen satisfaction, perceptions of disorder, and police

legitimacy, but limited effects on crime and fear of crime... there is a need to explicate and

test a logic model that explains how short-term benefits of community policing, like

improved citizen satisfaction, relate to longer-term crime prevention effects, and to identify

the policing strategies that benefit most from community participation” (Gill, Weisburd,

Telep, Vitter, & Bennett, 2014, p. 399). Finally, an essay from 2004 found that there was a

somewhat problematic affinity between community police and more traditional ones,
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suggesting that the concept of community policing was little more than a practice of

rhetoric and marketing (Pelfrey Jr., 2004).

Therefore on the basis of this admittedly very brief literature review, it is clear that

community policing is a promise that has not fully paid off in the most explicit measure of

its efficacy and has instead led to other benefits that, while positive, do not necessarily

justify the implementation of this protocol.

Regardless of the former chief’s views on the topic, the research seems to be clear

that community-oriented policing is a valuable strategy. Even if it has been used in the past,

it may be beneficial to wipe the slate and to start over with an exploratory committee and

the development of a new set of connections to the community. The former chief had to

balance a great deal of commitments and stressors, so regardless of his or her opinion, it is

possible to start over with a different view of the practice and how it can be implemented

right here in Virtual. The findings, especially the critical ones, seem to suggest that

community policing can at worst be a well-branded false promise of community connection

and at worst can be ineffective.

Therefore, this should not be implemented lightly and more detailed research and

assessment should be conducted before a final decision regarding community policing in

Virtual is made.
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Gill, C., Weisburd, D., Telep, C. W., Vitter, Z., & Bennett, T. (2014). Community-oriented
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428. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-014-9210-y
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