Understanding community policing

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to explore, in broad terms, how policing needs to be developed in communities today. Approach The approach is normative and analytical, considering the meaning of policing in general, and community policing in particular, and specifying the criteria that such policing has to satisfy in order to be fair and effective in contemporary society. Findings A concept of public self-policing is developed and community policing is then evaluated in the light of this concept. 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. Implications The paper has implications for how policing organisations and governments might develop improved policing strategies in the future. Value of the paper The paper provides a clear, logical summary of thinking about the role of policing, particularly community policing, in today’s society. It offers a novel concept of public self-policing, leading to a new approach to the evaluation of the work of policing organisations

Evolution of Community Policing in New York City

This study examines the various community policing initiatives, or lack of community policing initiatives, within the New York City Police Department (NYPD) from 1984 to present. Community policing is a policing model that is currently in the forefront of the criminal justice field due to strained relationships between many communities and the police. The community policing initiatives examined in this study are organized as follows: the Community Patrol Officer Program (C-POP) under Police Commissioner Ward (1984-1989); the Safe Streets, Safe City Program under Police Commissioner Brown (1989-1992), which established community policing as the dominant operational philosophy in the NYPD; Broken Windows data-driven policing under Police Commissioner Bratton (1994-1996), which ended community policing as the dominant operational philosophy; the Lack of Emphasis on Community Policing under Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly (2002-2014); the Re-emergence of Community Policing under Police Commissioner Bratton’s second term (2014-2016); and currently the Neighborhood Coordination Officer Program (NCO) under Police Commissioner O\u27Neill (2016-present). These initiatives were analyzed as an evolutionary process in order to determine how community policing models have changed in the NYPD as well as attempt to identify the factors driving the change in policing styles. This study includes research of prior community policing initiatives as well as first hand observations of current community policing initiatives within the NYPD. It was ultimately determined that numerous factors influenced the various community policing initiatives. Surprisingly, even though addressing the needs of the community is often cited as the sole or even primary goal of community policing programs, it was determined that this was not necessarily the case across NYPD policing initiatives examined in this study. This research only examines the evolution of community policing initiatives in the NYPD, and perhaps can act as a springboard for future studies on the effectiveness of NYPD community policing practices in terms of community satisfaction

Entrepreneurial Policing? International Policing Challenges

International police assistance is a global growth industry. Democratic police reform has become a cornerstone of security sector reform within peacebuilding and capacity building programmes. The UK provides police for a wide range of missions across the world. There are challenges in the provision of quality policing services resulting from the fragmented nature of UK police service provision and growing tension between state and corporate providers

Progress in community policing

This article examines the development of community-based policing in the\ud United States and the Netherlands. These two countries were selected because\ud the United States has been the forerunner of research into the police and one\ud of the first countries to attempt to introduce on a wide-scale, and conduct\ud research into community policing. In the Netherlands, the Major Cities Policy,\ud a governmental approach to addressing the cities' problems provided an\ud interesting basis for comparison. Policy or operational changes in the police\ud organization are generally influenced by the political climate and or scientific\ud research. Both of these factors played a major role in the US. This section\ud begins with a brief historical view of the factors which brought about changes\ud within American policing, ultimately resulting in a new concept of community\ud policing. This is followed by developments which led to community policing or\ud the concept of the 'neighbourhood teams' (wijkbureaus) in the Netherlands

Roads policing: Current context and imminent dangers

© The Authors 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of CSF Associates: Publius, Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions please e-mail: [email protected]. The final version of this paper can be accessed at the link below.This paper will argue that roads policing is the public face of the police for many citizens and thus enjoys an elevated profile. Yet the delivery of roads policing services requires urgent care and attention. As was the situation a century ago, potential and actual conflict with the driving public could be close at hand as more reliance is placed on enforcement technology and more drivers become criminalised and their vehicle movements logged. Indeed, it will be contended that unless great care is taken, such could be the public disaffection with traffic law enforcement and monitoring policies that the legitimacy of the police itself could be challenged. After a brief update of recent developments concerning roads policing nationally and internationally, the second section will underline the ways in which roads policing provides a crucial service. Details follow of dangers lying in wait for the service if the pressing enforcement issues around roads policing are allowed to drift. Finally, some suggestions are outlined to help inform discussion of these matters that could simultaneously facilitate achievement of other key roads policing objectives

Book review:Conor O’Reilly (ed.), Colonial policing and the transnational legacy: the global dynamics of policing across the Lusophone community

First paragraph: Traces of the past are found in the present, in the continued (re)construction of identities and in practices built around them. Explorations of these legacies offered in O’Reilly’s edited collection provide valuable insights into not only colonial policing and its development over time in Lusophone communities, but of its relevance to policing today. O’Reilly not only draws together social, political and historical examples from across the Lusophone community, but throughout the book’s three sections, each contribution charts the development of policing culture, transnational policy exchanges and the construction of subjects through a continued colonial lens. Doing so provides us with a rare engagement with colonialism, identity and policing across the Portuguese Empire

Policing in nonhuman primates: partial interventions serve a prosocial conflict management function in rhesus macaques.

Studies of prosocial policing in nonhuman societies traditionally focus on impartial interventions because of an underlying assumption that partial support implies a direct benefit to the intervener, thereby negating the potential for being prosocial in maintaining social stability for the benefit of the group. However, certain types of partial interventions have significant potential to be prosocial in controlling conflict, e.g. support of non-kin subordinates. Here, we propose a policing support hypothesis that some types of agonistic support serve a prosocial policing function that maintains group stability. Using seven large captive groups of rhesus macaques, we investigated the relationship between intervention type and group-level costs and benefits (rates of trauma, severe aggression, social relocation) and individual level costs and benefits (preferential sex-dyad targeting, dominance ambiguity reduction, access to mates, and return aggression). Our results show that impartial interventions and support of subordinate non-kin represent prosocial policing as both (1) were negatively associated with group-level rates of trauma and severe aggression, respectively, (2) showed no potential to confer individual dominance benefits, (3) when performed outside the mating season, they did not increase chances of mating with the beneficiary, and (4) were low-cost for the highest-ranking interveners. We recommend expanding the definition of 'policing' in nonhumans to include these 'policing support interventions'

Implementation of Community Policing Strategy: Impact of Community Factors in Nairobi Country

Crime is a community problem and not just a police problem. The adoption and implementation of Community Policing (CP) in the 1980s, was perceived as departure from the professional ‘police-as- expert’ model of public safety that had been dominant for a long time. The CP approach is designed to engage the community as an equal partner in solving local crime and other security threats within the community. The CP concept was introduced in Kenya in the 1990s.Though it had informally existed in Nairobi County in Ruai and Kasarani estates much earlier.Its formal implementation only gained currency after the Post Election Violence of 2007-2008 in Kenya. Among the factors influencing its implementation in Kenya has received considerable research attention, but challenges impacting on its implementation in Nairobi County have not been adequately documented. This study aimed to fill this research gap by focussing on community factors. The overall research objective sought to determine the influence of community factors in effective implementation of community policing within Nairobi County. The objective of the study was to assess how community factors influence implementation of community policing within Nairobi County. The research findings adds to the body of knowledge, while also benefitting policy makers dealing with issues of community policing. It will also benefit other researchers exploring different aspects of community policing as a strategy to combat crime in city neighbourhoods. The research established that community factors are among the most influential factors that hamper smooth implementation of community policing in Nairobi County. The study recommends that the community needs to be educated on community policing initiatives and how to manage community factors that affect the implementation of CP in Nairobi County

The Peacemakers: Navigating the Intersection of Biblical Justice and Contemporary Policing

For Christians seeking to enter the field of policing, the question of justice is answered by two separate sources. Conceptions of justice are presented by both the contemporary justice system and the Bible. The history and current state of American policing reveal a sense of justice that is concerned with fighting crime and defending the rights of the vulnerable. There are, however, inherent limitations when operating within a system made by man. Biblical justice goes further by prioritizing restoration and redeemed relationships within its conception of justice. Reconciling these two perspectives equips Christian police officers with a framework with which they can navigate policing in a way that best glorifies God and effects true justice

Killing and replacing queen-laid eggs: low cost of worker policing in the honey bee

Worker honeybees, Apis mellifera, police each other’s reproduction by killing worker-laid eggs. Previous experiments demonstrated that worker policing is effective, killing most (∼98%) worker-laid eggs. However, many queen-laid eggs were also killed (∼50%) suggesting that effective policing may have high costs. In these previous experiments, eggs were transferred using forceps into test cells, mostly into unrelated discriminator colonies. We measured both the survival of unmanipulated queen-laid eggs and the proportion of removal errors that were rectified by the queen laying a new egg. Across 2 days of the 3-day egg stage, only 9.6% of the queen-laid eggs in drone cells and 4.1% in worker cells were removed in error. When queen-laid eggs were removed from cells, 85% from drone cells and 61% from worker cells were replaced within 3 days. Worker policing in the honeybee has a high benefit to policing workers because workers are more related to the queen’s sons (brothers, r = 0.25) than sister workers’ sons (0.15). This study shows that worker policing also has a low cost in terms of the killing of queen-laid eggs, as only a small proportion of queen-laid eggs are killed, most of which are rapidly replaced