The Community Problem-Solving EraIn the beginning policing was considered the civic duty of members of a community. These “drafted” officers were not paid or trained. Appointed Sheriffs were motivated by money, and lost focus on enforcing the law. This began to change as did society, and industrialism. Urbanization brought with it a rise in crime, causing police to shift towards a more proactive approach to law enforcement. Police agencies have evolved since the early 1600’s to become a highly organized group that strives for crime prevention, preservation of citizen’s rights and professionalism. The 1970s started a new era in policing known as the Community Problem-Solving Era. This era is characterized by the authority coming from the support of the community, law, and professionalism. A broad range of services provided a better hold on crime control in the community. Having a decentralized organization gave more authority to patrol officers and let them become more intimate with their community relationships. This era increased the use of foot patrols and an increased knowledge of problem-solving. Law enforcement became more concerned over citizen satisfaction. Today, it is known as Community Policing. Its basis is simply trying to work with the community to identify its problems and fixing them before they escalate or lead to crime. Community policing is far different than any other philosophy seen in policing. Community based policing provides hope for the future of law enforcement.
In the late 70s, the communities had become a diverse pool of nationalities, subcultures, and attitudes. People identified themselves as parts of separate groups and at times the police was not part of what they called “us”. During this time, a burst of new ideas and changes in the sociopolitical and economic structure began to occur, that would eventually bring about a new kind of police officer (Gaffigan, 1994) police leaders felt the need to reflect on these problems and their overall image with the public. In their attempts to understand what was going wrong, many studies and experiments were sponsored. One of them, the Kansas Study proved that, no matter how many police officers are devoted to random patrolling, there is no effect on the actual crime rate (Peak, 2009).
The government had recognized the problems of crime fighting and the problems of police and community relations as far back as 1967. However, it took years later for that idea of a “new kind of police officer” to develop and this has provided a whole new model for policing. It’s an evolutionary philosophy that attempts to refocus the essence of policing that tries to do two things: bring police officers and citizens together in neighborhoods, and give the police responsibility for solving problems in the community (Allender 2004). This new policing ideal incorporates into two elements: community partnership and problem solving. These two elements are the cores of the policing strategy
Both the first element and the second are part of our general approach to policing that can improve our neighborhoods.
We have often said that we want to change the city’s police forces as soon as we understand the fundamental problems. We don’t want to take a look back because we know what we do wrong. In many places, we can’t use the force as soon as we see things happening to our neighborhood. The best way to get our kids off the street is for our own cops to get into the neighborhood and take care of the street without running into trouble, rather than trying to solve those things in a day and then putting people in jail for doing that dirty work or not doing that dirty work (Tinker 2003). In a small country, many of our young police officers can’t work, can’t handle a phone call, can’t take a walk, can’t take a meeting without being caught up in a ruckus and have to spend weeks of their days behind bars, and cannot walk, play with the kids without being arrested or being taken to court (Tinker 2003).
In the future we may have many opportunities to improve the way the lives of my officers and the lives of our communities can be improved. This is our ultimate aim in our struggle for community policing. Our best hope will be for our officers to get out of their roles in a world where people are more likely to do better in their lives and can still have hope while being in control.
Our officers and their community partners must use these opportunities to get out of the work force, to understand the problems and help the people with these problems have to navigate and face those problems with an open mind and an open mind of confidence when they are arrested or have to go through that process before being taken to court for the wrong thing. This goal will lead them to take important steps to improve their lives, so they will be more open-minded as they go through their process.
These are the people who have to navigate for these problems, so they will take these steps because it makes sense to them that these problems can never escape their hands. We can build our police force on the foundation of our own social and behavioral changes and to create more of these through our police and community partnerships. This is our goal for next year and next year we will have our policing plan in place for those who have been affected by the police and community relations in our neighborhood with the first step. After our second part we will also take a second and final step with our first phase of this strategy. To do this there is a whole new concept to policing that you don’t currently understand: “Community policing.” Communities are places where police can work together because of their mutual concern for one another. This is often