Community Oriented Policing

Socialist Global Agenda:

The government pays drug addicts, dealers, jobless, homeless to break into your house, sabootage your vehicles, break your utility hookups outside, install electronic surveillance in your homes and stalk and harass you in your home and in public no matter where you go, even if its for a walk for a bike ride. This is an endless program where you have to spend your hard earned money on protection from the police. This is a nation-wide, world-wide agenda defined and started by globalists to take control of communities. This is why all official accounts and definitions define Targeted Individuals as mental patients and deny this program exists. It is strongly entrenched for the globalists to take control of police and their stalkers when the time arrives. Tax money pays for the stalking, approved by Congress.

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48151#_Toc196836011

"Defining Community Policing

Under the authorization for the COPS program, grants can be awarded for hiring or rehiring law enforcement officers "for deployment in community-oriented policing," to procure technology to "to increase the number of officers deployed in community-oriented policing," or to facilitate the adoption of "community-oriented policing as an organization-wide philosophy." However, the authorization for the program does not contain a definition of community-oriented policing.37

It is not always clear what actually constitutes community-oriented policing. The COPS Office states community policing is a "philosophy that promotes organizational strategies that 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 fear of crime."38 Two scholars, in their review of trends in policing, describe community policing as "a catchphrase that has been used to describe a potpourri of different strategies" and that "one complication in determining the extent to which [community policing] has transformed policing is determining exactly what it is."39 A 2018 review of proactive policing strategies conducted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine stated that "despite [community policing's] longevity as a reform—it dates back more than three decades—there is still considerable variation in how community-oriented policing is defined."40 The academy noted that community policing started with an emphasis on community-focused tactics, such as foot patrol, neighborhood watch, and community meetings or newsletters.41 However, community policing practices evolved to include collective efficacy and empowerment; procedural justice and legitimacy; and efforts to increase police accountability through citizen review boards, body-worn cameras, and improved complaint processes.42 In a literature review of community oriented policing and problem oriented policing, community oriented policing is described as "a broad policing strategy that relies heavily on community involvement and partnerships, and on police presence in the community, to address local crime and disorder."43

While there are different conceptualizations of community policing, some common elements emerge from the literature:44

• An emphasis on partnerships: Community policing posits that the police can rarely solve public safety problems alone; therefore, law enforcement should develop partnerships with community stakeholders (e.g., other government agencies, community members, nonprofit organizations/service providers, businesses, and the media) to develop solutions to problems and promote trust in police.

• Citizen input: Under community policing, law enforcement should engage the public in making decisions about public safety priorities, addressing identified problems, and making decisions about how their communities should be policed. In addition, the police should carefully consider citizen input when making policy decisions that affect the community.

• A focus on prevention and problem solving: Community policing promotes proactive efforts to address conditions that are contributing to public safety problems rather than responding to crime after it occurs. One of the more commonly cited problem-solving models in the community policing literature is SARA (scanning, analysis, response, and assessment). Scanning involves identifying and prioritizing problems. Analysis involves researching what is known about the problems. Response includes developing solutions to permanently reduce the number and extent of the problems. Assessment involves evaluating the success of the response to the identified problems.

• Changing officer assignments: One of the key tenets of community policing is a focus on long-term geographic assignments. This means assigning officers to a place (i.e., a specific beat) for an extended period of time to facilitate interactions between the officers and residents and foster a sense of mutual accountability for what happens in the neighborhood.

• Fostering positive interactions: Policing involves some negative or coercive interactions with members of the public, such as making arrests, issuing tickets, stopping people based on reasonable suspicion, or ordering people to desist disruptive behavior. As such, under community policing law enforcement also works to develop ways to have positive interactions with the public. The theory is that positive interactions can help offset the negative interactions, foster a sense of familiarity and trust, and allow police officers to become more knowledgeable about people and conditions on their beat.

• Organizational change: Community policing emphasizes the need for flatter organizations (i.e., reduced layers of hierarchy) and decentralized authority. These changes are necessary so that officers can act more independently, be more responsive to their communities, and take responsibility for their roles in community policing. In addition, management should empower officers to be proactive and creative in solving public safety problems and developing relationships with the community. Community policing also places an emphasis on organizational culture, mission, and values, and less emphasis on rules and policies, with the idea that if officers are instilled with certain values they will generally make good decisions. Evaluations of officers' performance should be based on the quality of their community policing and problem-solving activities instead of traditional performance indicators (e.g., tickets issued, arrests made, calls handled).

• Access to information: Community policing relies on collecting and producing data on a range of police functions—not just enforcement and call-handling activities—as a means to developing solutions to community problems and providing citizen-focused services. Community policing also emphasizes the need for police to conduct crime analysis at a more localized level (e.g., a neighborhood) so that officers can identify and respond to problem hotspots.

There may be some questions about whether COPS grants move law enforcement agencies to embrace community policing agency-wide rather than just at the officer level. According to the COPS Office, the agency has received more than $20 billion in funding and it has awarded grants to over 13,000 of the 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States.45 However, data from BJS indicate that as of 2020, 32% of police departments have a written community policing plan, though a majority of police departments serving jurisdictions of 50,000 or more people have such a plan.46 BJS's data indicate that nearly 40% of police officers work in agencies that do not have a community policing plan.47 A 2014 study concluded that COPS grants awarded to law enforcement agencies serving 50,000 or fewer people in the mid-1990s did not promote widespread adoption of community policing principles among these agencies.48

During the mid- to late 1990s, the COPS Office awarded billions of dollars in grants for law enforcement agencies to hire officers to engage in community policing. However, some scholars argue that there is not great consistency in what constitutes community policing, and the concept of community policing can just be a way for law enforcement agencies to present their old ways in a new package. For instance, two scholars have previously noted, "[law enforcement agencies] are managing to reconstitute their image away from the citizen-controller paradigm based in the autonomous legal order and towards a more comforting Normal Rockwell image―police as kind, community care-takers."49 They contend that community policing is more about police transforming their image rather than the substance of their work.

Some research suggests that community policing might help improve the perception of the legitimacy of the police, but it has a limited effect on reducing crime and citizens' fear of crime. Policing scholars at George Mason's Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy note

Evidence for the effectiveness of community policing is mixed. Several systematic and narrative reviews find that its impact on crime prevention is limited and that it has little impact on reducing citizens' fear of crime.... However, community policing was originally intended to emphasize the non-crime-fighting roles of the police, such as building community trust, and to increase citizen satisfaction with and confidence in the police.... [A 2014 study found] that community policing is associated with significant increases in citizen ratings of satisfaction with the police and also has positive benefits for police legitimacy and citizen perceptions of disorder.50

At the same time, and consistent with the debate over what community policing is, these experts also note

As with many areas of policing, research guidance on implementing community-oriented policing is limited. A key challenge is the diversity of strategies that have been deployed under the umbrella of community policing over time and across different agencies. The extent to which departments who claim to be doing community policing engage in community partnerships, systematic problem-solving, and organizational transformation varies substantially, and there is not always a formal process for citizen engagement in identifying and responding to problems.51

Before allocating more funding for COPS hiring grants, policymakers might consider whether there need to be clearer expectations for how law enforcement agencies use the officers hired with the grants, or at least whether there should be some limitations on COPS-funded officers' activities. For example, policymakers could consider legislation that would prevent law enforcement agencies from placing COPS-funded officers on SWAT teams or specialized units that engage in aggressive enforcement of specific offenses."