Community Oriented Policing Strategy

Reaction Paper
CDT 3C . Section-4 “D”Coy

Community oriented Policing is a strategy of Policing that focuses on building ties

and working closely with the members of the community. Community policing's main aim
is for the police to establish relationships with the community through communication with
local agencies and members of the public, establishing alliances and approaches to
minimize crime and disorder. While community policing targets more low-level crime and
disorder, the broken theory of windows indicates that this can mitigate more severe crises.
Within contemporary policing, the role of police within society has increasingly become
an important issue. Police are starting to adopt a broader role in view of the complexities
of social issues and the enormity of issues facing peace and security. Community
preferences and institutional issues require creative policing strategies. Those from
different sectors need the organization of the police. Scholars argue that only when
creative strategies are pursued to mobilize the public and improve their participation in
crime prevention and control are said to occur. Police activities should not be called COPS
merely because their purpose was to lead to greater participation of the community.
COPS deserves recognition if it is a step away from past practices and if it is a step back.
Peel's principles relate police service to public acceptance rather than to regulations. The
principles taken as a whole emphasized the responsibility of the community to manage
its own affairs, the dependence of the police on the community for their legitimacy, and
the police objective to enhance the well-being of the community. Inkster (1991)
emphasized that Peel's principles summarized below are in fact, the essence or COPS.
The duty of the police is to prevent crime and disorder. The power of the police to fulfill
their duties is dependent on public approval and on their ability to secure and maintain
public respect. Public respect and approval also mean the willing cooperation of the public
in the task of securing observance of the law. The police must seek and preserve' public
favor not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely
impartial service to law. The police should strive to maintain at all times a relationship with
the public that gives reality to the tradition that the police are the public and the public are
the police. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible
evidence of police action in dealing with these problems. Moving from incident-driven
response policing to COPS needs a profound systemic change for an agency as large as
the Philippine National Police. This requires a change in policing style, from one that the
police passively respond from incident to incident, to one that they get out in the
community and become problem solvers in the neighborhoods they represent.
Everybody in the pole. Criminologists have raised a number of concerns about and
application of community policing. On the broadest conceptual level, some legal scholars
have pointed out that the phrase ' group,' at the core of' community policing,' is vague in
itself. Without a standard definition of the word, it is difficult to define what' community
policing' would look like. Others have remained unclear.

The Philippine National Police today continue to reinvent its policing system on the fast
growing communities and as communities grew, social interaction becomes complex as
social inventions interfaced with various issues in the community that sometimes develop
into a problem on peace and order.

In the growing complexities in the environment, policing the communities has

become a growing headache for police organizations as policing systems are finding
difficulties to cope with the demands of the times. This is also largely caused by work
attitudes of Police elements in the City Police Stations/Municipal Police Stations
(CPS/MPS) where some administrative works mandated by law such as protection and
preservation of environment, cultural properties and natural resources; campaign against
illegal drugs; activities pertaining to security preparations and disaster preparedness,
have crowded the already busy schedule of police officers in the streets and confused the
Chief of Police. Partly also, the seeming attitudinal inaction of the police is blamed on the
thinking that the public view the police as inept, corrupt and abusive. In short, at the
station level, it is already quite difficult to push action plans that may enhance police and
community relations.
 At present also, the operational management at police stations is deemed
soaked with systems that fail due largely, to the inability of Chiefs of Police (COPs) to
optimize utilization of human and material resources and party because of bad work
culture and work habits of police elements at the station. (Among which is the 1-day-
duty-one-day-off practice, 15-30 work appearances, details of personnel to politicians
and wealthy businessman, details to secure vital installations that are not public
corporation, etc.). Specifically, it fails also probably because of an orientation or mindset
of the police officers that is not consistent with the intent of the framers of the PNP law,
and the poor leadership ability, or the lack of it, of small unit leaders who, despite
appropriate training, have not learned how to exercise small unit management.