What Is Community Policing?

What Is Community Policing?
Chapter
What Is
Community
Policing?
Courtesy of Corunna Community Police Committee
3-1
Chapter 3
Learning Objectives
• Describe the traditional model of police work
• Discuss measures of police effectiveness
• Define and identify the principles of
community policing
• Compare the key features of traditional
police practice and community policing
3-2
Chapter 3
Learning Objectives
• Describe community-based strategic policing
• Discuss the evolution of community policing
in Ontario
• Discuss the key sections of Ontario’s Police
Services Act related to community policing
• Identify the key players in community
policing
3-3
Chapter 3
Sir Robert Peel, 1829
To maintain at all times relationship with the public
that gives reality to the historic tradition that the
police are the public and the public are the police;
the police being only members of the public who
are paid to give full-time attention to duties which
are incumbent upon every citizen, in the interest
of community welfare and existence.
3-4
Chapter 3
The Traditional or Professional Model
of Policing
• Police officers are the professionals who
have sole responsibility for crime control
• The objectives of police work are legally
defined and involve responding to calls that
involve criminal incidents
• The role of the police officer is to control
crime, and this role is carried out by way of
preventative patrol and rapid response times
3-5
Chapter 3
The Traditional or Professional Model
of Policing
• The police tend not to work in conjunction
with community residents or other agencies
• Police services are centralized
• Decision making occurs through a
hierarchical command and control structure
3-6
Chapter 3
Traditional Patrol Practice: Three Rs
• Random patrol, rapid response, and
reactive investigation
• Central premise of random patrol, also
known as the watch system: the mere
presence of patrol cars serves as a
deterrent to crime and increases citizens’
feeling of safety
3-7
Chapter 3
Traditional Patrol Practice: Three Rs
• Patrol officers spend their shifts
responding to calls
• Remaining time is spent patrolling
randomly, waiting for the next call for
service
3-8
Chapter 3
The Traditional Approach to Police Work
• Incident oriented: the primary focus is on
responding to specific incidents, calls, cases,
or events
• Response oriented: police management
and operations are oriented to responding to
events “as they arise”
– response capacity and capability are
emphasized
– little time and few resources are devoted to
proactive intervention or prevention activities
3-9
Chapter 3
The Traditional Approach to Police Work
• Focused on limited analysis: information
gathering is limited to specific situations and
does not include analysis of the causes of
events
• Focused on the means rather than the end:
the emphasis on response efficiency means
that little significance is placed on the impact
of police strategies on preventing, reducing,
or eliminating problems
3 - 10
Chapter 3
Traditional Police Deployment
• Patrol officers work the same shift rotation
• Patrol operations are based on a
hierarchical and centralized “military” model
of policing
• Emphasis is on command and control
principles
• Narrow range of police response options
3 - 11
Chapter 3
The Problem with Traditional Police
Deployment
• Insensitivity to community needs
– officers deployed to one neighbourhood
during a shift rotation are not redeployed to
the same neighbourhood on the next rotation
• Creativity is stifled among front-line police
officers
• Policing becomes internally focused rather
than having an external community focus
3 - 12
Chapter 3
Traditional Police Practice:
How Effective Is It?
• Effectiveness is determined by the
clearance rate
• This rate is the percentage of cases in
which an offence has been committed and
a suspect identified, regardless of whether
the suspect is ultimately charged or
convicted of the crime
3 - 13
Chapter 3
3 - 14
Chapter 3
Clearance Rates: Some Limitations
• Police officers do not spend most of their
time chasing criminals
• The crime rate should be interpreted
carefully to determine the effectiveness of
the police
• Not all police officers serve in the same
types of communities
• Not all police officers are engaged in the
same type of police work
3 - 15
Chapter 3
Effectiveness of Random, Reactive
Patrol?
• Research studies over the past decade have
cast doubt on the effectiveness of random
patrol
• The cornerstone of traditional models of
policing and remains at the core of most police
services today
• Similarly, questions have been raised about
the effectiveness of rapid response and the
preventive value of reactive arrests
3 - 16
Chapter 3
The “new” approach to policing that has
recently begun to sweep through North
America, Europe, and the major common law
countries is community policing. Rather than
being a new approach, however, it is more
correctly a renewal or re-emergence of the old
approach developed in Metropolitan London.
—A. Normandeau and B. Leighton
3 - 17
Chapter 3
Citizens on Patrol
Côte-Saint-Luc is the first city in Quebec to implement the Volunteer Citizens on Patrol (vCOP) program. Working
in collaboration with Côte-Saint-Luc Public Security, Emergency Medical Services (EMS), and the Montreal Police
Department, vCOP members patrol the city, observing and reporting any suspicious activities or problems.
3 - 18
Chapter 3
Community Policing Defined
• Community policing is a philosophy,
management style, and organizational
strategy centred on police–community
partnerships and problem solving to
address problems of crime and social
disorder in communities
3 - 19
Chapter 3
The Principles of Community Policing:
The Three Ps
• Community policing requires patrol officers
to take a proactive, interventionist, problem-
solving approach. The “three Ps”:
– Prevention
– Problem solving
– Partnership with the community
3 - 20
Chapter 3
3 - 21
Chapter 3
A Closer
Look 3.1
continued
3 - 22
Chapter 3
The Policy and Practice of
Community Policing
• Reassesses who is responsible for public
safety and redefines the roles and
relationships between the police and the
community
• Requires shared ownership, decision
making, and accountability, as well as a
sustained commitment from both the
police and the community
3 - 23
Chapter 3
Community Policing
• Establishes new public expectations of
and measurement standards for police
effectiveness
– measures of police performance include
quality of service, customer (community)
satisfaction, responsiveness to issues
identified by the community, and cultural
sensitivity
• Increases understanding and trust
between police and community leaders
3 - 24
Chapter 3
Community Policing
• Empowers and strengthens community-
based efforts
• Requires constant flexibility to respond to all
emerging issues
• Requires an ongoing commitment to
developing long-term and proactive
strategies and programs to address the
underlying conditions that cause community
problems
3 - 25
Chapter 3
Community Policing
• Requires knowledge of available community
resources and how to access and mobilize
them, and the ability to develop new
resources
• Decentralizes police services
– relaxes the traditional “chain of command”
– encourages innovation and creative problem
solving
3 - 26
Chapter 3
Community Policing
• Requires a commitment from the top
management of the police and other local
government agencies
• Shifts the focus of police work from
responding to individual incidents to
addressing problems identified
• Requires a commitment to developing new
skills through training
3 - 27
Chapter 3
What Community Policing Is Not
• A panacea for solving all of a community’s
problems of crime and disorder
• A replacement for many traditional police
services and crime-prevention strategies
• A single police initiative, although specific
programs can be developed within a
community policing strategy
3 - 28
Chapter 3
What Community Policing Is Not
• Solely the responsibility of the police—rather it
requires a true police–community partnership
• A generic, “one size fits all” policing model that
can be applied to all communities across the
country
• A program or series of initiatives that can be
added onto existing police organizational
structures
• A policing strategy appropriate for addressing all
types of criminal activity
3 - 29
Chapter 3
The Framework of Community
Policing
• Citizens are actively responsible for policing
their own neighbourhoods and communities
• The community is a source of operational
information including:
– crime-control knowledge
– strategic operations for the police
• The police are more directly accountable to
the community
3 - 30
Chapter 3
The Framework of Community
Policing
• The police have a more proactive and
preventive role in the community that goes
beyond traditional law enforcement
• The cultural and gender composition of a
police agency reflects the community that it
serves
• The organizational structure of the police
agency facilitates broad consultation on
3 - 31
strategic and policing issues
Chapter 3
Community Policing: Operations
• Customer oriented
• Responsive to community needs
• Open to input from citizens
• Visible in the community
• Available on the streets
3 - 32
Chapter 3
Community Policing: Operations
• Knowledgeable and interested
in the neighbourhoods and their problems
• Proactive in its approach
• Accountable for its actions
3 - 33
Chapter 3
3 - 34
Chapter 3
Table 3.1 Comparison of Traditional Policing and Community Policing cont’d
3 - 35
Chapter 3
A Partnership of the Key Players
• The key players in community policing include
– community interest groups
– police managers
– police officers, their unions and associations
– elected officials
– municipal-Regional government agencies
– provincial government
– federal government
3 - 36
Chapter 3
A Partnership of Public Services
• Public service partnerships are able to
develop a more integrated approach to
addressing the underlying causes of crime
and social disorder than are the police
acting alone (see A Closer Look 3.2)
• This approach is most commonly referred
to as “crime prevention through social
development” (CPSD)
3 - 37
Chapter 3
A Partnership
of Public
Services
3 - 38
Chapter 3
Community Policing in Ontario
• The province of Ontario has established a
legislated requirement for community
policing
• Ontario is considered a leader in
community policing, providing a supportive
environment for municipal and regional
police services and the Ontario Provincial
Police (OPP) to implement the principles
of community policing
3 - 39
Chapter 3
Community Policing in Ontario
• Two key pieces of legislation relating to
Ontario’s police forces focus heavily on
community policing
– Police Services Act, and the
– Adequacy and Effectiveness of Police
Services Regulation
3 - 40
Chapter 3
Ontario’s
Police
Services
Act
3 - 41
Chapter 3
Adequacy and
Effectiveness of
Police Services
Regulation
3 - 42
Chapter 3
Community-Based Strategic Policing
• Intelligence-led policing is a
collaborative enterprise based on
improved intelligence operations and
community-oriented policing and
problem solving
3 - 43
Chapter 3
Comparison
of Policing
Models
3 - 44
Chapter 3
Chapter Summary
• Community policing represents an
expansion of the traditional or professional
model of police practice, rather than a
replacement of it
• The importance of key players in police–
community partnerships
3 - 45
Chapter 3
Key Terms
• Adequacy Standards
• clearance rate
• community policing
• Community Policing Implementation
Checklist
• intelligence-led policing
• key players in community policing
3 - 46
Chapter 3
Key Terms
• police effectiveness
• the three Ps—prevention, problem
solving, partnership
• the three Rs—random patrol, rapid
response, reactive investigation
• traditional or professional model of policing
• watch system
3 - 47

What Is Community Policing?

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What Is Community Policing?

Courtesy of Corunna Community Police Committee

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