Community policing is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques, to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder and the fear of crime.
Community Policing is comprised of three key components:
Community Partnerships – Collaborative partnerships between the law enforcement agency and the individuals and organizations they serve to develop solutions to problems and increase trust in police.
Organizational Transformation – The alignment of organizational management, structure, personnel, and information systems to support community partnerships and proactive problem solving.
Problem Solving – The process of engaging in the proactive and systematic examination of identified problems to develop and rigorously evaluate effective responses.
The focus of Community Oriented Policing is problem solving. Police will still respond to emergencies, however, many calls to the police are not police related and are more effectively handled by other agencies. As the number of non-emergency calls decrease, benefits to citizens increase.
• Officers are able to spend more time working with citizens to solve crime and disorder problems.
• With better police-citizen communication, officers can more effectively use and share crime information with the public.
• Officers who know both a community’s problems and its residents can link people with other public and private agencies that can help solve community concerns.
• No single agency can solve complex social problems alone. A combined community-police effort restores the safety of our neighborhoods and business districts.
