Informative Essay: Community Policing

Jeffery Williams

Community Policing

Police interactions with community members has long been a topic of conversation amongst the public, and that has only been amplified over the past year. With the events in Ferguson, more and more Americans have called for better training and insisted that officers be less militaristic. One possible solution to improve the image of the police to the public is community policing. Many departments have adopted it, or claim to follow its principles, but results can be mixed, and total commitment from the entire precinct can be hard to accomplish. With police serving as the most visible form of government, police officers throughout the country could regain some lost trust and good will with their respective

Between 1991 and 2002 the number of departments that involved citizens in work agreements fell four percent to twenty one percent (Fridell and Wycoff, 2004). And fewer than twenty percent engage citizens in promotional processes (Fridell and Wycoff, 2004). This is number that should begin to rise in coming years as communities look to have a greater say in what goes on in local law enforcement. Allowing citizens to be involved in the promotion of officers could help increase rewards for officers looking to make positive impacts in their jurisdiction.

The benefits of community policing can be hard to quantify at times, but a nationwide meta-analysis conducted by Charlotte Gill was able to show some positive results. She found that, overall, citizen satisfaction, trust in the police, and perception of improvements in public disorder all increased (Gill, 2014). They were unable to prove if crime was definitively lowered by community- oriented policing strategies, a perceived decrease in disorder by the public of 35% would undoubtedly contribute to positive attitudes, which was found. In 80% of all cases, community policing was found to be effective (Gill,