CRMJ512-Research Paper

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1 The Down and Dirty of COPS: Community Oriented Policing Services Alexis R. Sutherland American Military University, American Public University System CRMJ 512: Police Administration Dr. Stephanie Myers-Hunziker November 26, 2022

2 Abstract This paper serves to describe the intentions of community policing and the ways that community policing has been utilized so far in the United States to improve and build the relationships between communities and law enforcement agencies. The roles of both the law enforcement officials and the community members are taken a look at and correlated to their positions within community policing procedures while explaining how the different roles incorporate and feed off of one another for a successful relationship. The effects of the relationships are then explained to show how community policing benefits both parties and what other possible positive outcomes could come out of the new age policing structure. Possible issues that may come into question are addressed and the relation of community policing compared to police reformation are evaluated. Keywords : community policing, reformation, law enforcement agency, community members, relationships

3 The Down and Dirty of COPS: Community Oriented Policing Services When society thinks of cops, they think of the slang term used to describe the individual officers who conduct their duties to keep the peace by enforcing laws and keeping criminals at bay. However, in the present day in age the word cop stands for something much more significant than just being a slang term for law enforcement. It stands for Community Oriented Policing otherwise known as just community policing and, in the last 30 years, it has been the most utilized innovation across police agencies ( Community Policing and Procedural Justice, 2020), being supported heavily by political advocates such as the Clinton administration. The Clinton administration took action to promote community policing by creating the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) through the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, to create a department within the Justice Department ( Community Policing Consortium , 1994) for citizens to be able to address their concerns with law enforcement about their communities and issues they may have within it while also providing the money that was necessary to be able to support implementing community policing more thoroughly ( Community Policing Consortium , 1994). By doing so, it was the Clinton administration’s hope to make law enforcement much more available throughout the communities within the United States for citizens to be able to have access to police officers whenever they may have an issue arise, criminal or not. It was through the noncriminal interactions with the communities that the police officers were able to promote the healthy relationships that would shape the way that the police and the public would be able to interact with each other on a daily basis, allowing for the ease of cooperation in cases as long as those relationships were maintained to be healthy and happy.

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4 Establishing the Purpose So many people in the history of the United States felt that putting their faith into community policing was the right call for the country to be able to move in the right direction in terms of the criminal justice system working together with the citizens of the country to eliminate conflict and criminal activity that police training academies have taken to training new officers under community policing curriculum rather than traditional policing. This is because community policing is all about being proactive and building rapport with the citizens that the officers will be engaging with every day on the job. Society is attempting to move away from the cause and reaction methods of policing and engage in preventative policing so as to avoid as many crimes, injuries, and deaths as possible rather than settle for those outcomes and be forced to deal with the consequences and grief that corresponds with them when it is possible to try and prevent the events altogether before having to deal with the negative aftershocks. Community policing provides the answer by creating an organized method of prevention that becomes the routine (Chapman & Scheider, 2012) for communities so that public safety concerns are dealt with before it is necessary to act in response to a safety situation happening, allowing the public to be at ease, knowing that they are safer and go about their lives without as many worries as they would have to if community policing were not an established system. This is also important because, by establishing a positive and effective community policing system within the neighborhoods, the police are capable of accomplishing critical components of their duties. These duties include the detection of dangers and violent behaviors, teaching the community members how to respond to such events, especially the public officials, and if the police are unable to prevent a situation, dilute it the best they can while ensuring the

5 communities are able to heal from the experience to the best of their abilities and recover as quickly as possible (Straub, 2020). Community Policing Generations What is interesting about the development of community policing is that the entire policing platform has moved through three different generations while law enforcement has been attempting to get the entire procedure down to the most effective practice (Oliver, 2000). The first generation was the innovation stage. This stage was from 1979 to 1986 and began when law enforcement practices were being sought to be improved after coming under scrutiny ( Community-Oriented Policing: Rationale , n.d.). Throughout this first generation of community policing, there were trials conducted throughout different law enforcement agencies to test just how effective the new community policing practices could be. These trials were limited to larger law enforcement areas that had more crime populations in order to really focus on being able to study the different core components of community policing. Once these experiments were finished being conducted and the results were satisfactory, the second generation of community policing was introduced, called diffusion. Diffusion lasted from 1987 to 1994 ( Community-Oriented Policing: Rationale , n.d.) and was exactly how it sounded. It was the time period of expanding the community policing practices throughout the country to law enforcement agencies to begin implementing so as to spread community policing to as many cities as possible in order to get a better understanding of the outcomes of the use of the procedures. The diffusion generation was crucial to the development of community policing because it identified many of the benefits and problems that came with the new system of police work.

6 After the identifying the good and the bad during the diffusion generation, the last generation that was implemented for community policing was the institutionalization generation that started in 1995 ( Community-Oriented Policing: Rationale , n.d.). This generation continues on today and is the increase in law enforcement agencies using the community policing methods over traditional policing even directly from the police academy. The Components – Community Partnerships When referring to community policing, there are three main components that, when utilized properly, lead to the successful implementation of the policing method and those are community partnerships, organizational transformation, and problem-solving (Chapman & Scheider, 2012). Taking a look at community partnerships, this element is all about the relationship between the partner and the police agency working together in order to find the best solution to find solutions to problems that will appease both parties while establishing more trust within the police force out in the public, leading to a stronger relationship (Chapman & Scheider, 2012) and creating a cycle that keeps building until one of the parties breaks the cycle by breaking that trust. The police are a force that are given the authority to act on the behalf of the government to take action against issues that negatively impact the communities within the United States and to aid where they can in the positive ongoings of the communities. However, the police officers very rarely are capable of completing their responsibilities on their own without the outside help of the citizens that they are bound by duty to serve (Chapman & Scheider, 2012) so they must be able to step out, ask for help from the public, and trust that the public will be trustworthy enough to do their part in aiding law enforcement carry

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7 out their responsibilities. Without these bonds and the trust that comes with these bonds, the police agencies cannot rely on the public for aid and the public cannot rely on law enforcement to carry out the responsibilities that will fix the issues or benefit their communities to make them safer and more pleasant to live within. These relationships can be formed through a variety of different entities ranging from the individual citizens, other government agencies, private businesses, nonprofit organizations, and the media (Chapman & Scheider, 2012). Each of these entities have their own benefits to having a positive relationship with local law enforcement and the local law enforcement benefits differently in each situation as well. For example, having positive relationships with individual community members allows the police force to trust that when suspicious or criminal activities occur, they can rely on the public to help identify unknown suspects or report the activities in general. A positive relationship with the media could allow the police to distribute the image of an unknown suspect to the public in a mass distribution so that the information is passed quickly to the public to allow the public to aid in identification as soon as possible. Different still is a positive relationship with other government agencies who may have jurisdiction over an investigation in the local area but because the relationship between the two is extremely positive and successful, the two agencies are willing to work together and share information as if they were the same agency. The Components – Organizational Transformation Moving on the organization transformation and what it means in terms of community policing, the structure, management, information systems, and personnel are all key elements

8 that must be in tune with each other in order to support organizational transformation and, in turn, problem solving and positive relationships with the communities (Chapman & Scheider, 2012). This component takes a more direct approach to the inner workings of the law enforcement agencies and how they are organized and managed rather than placing the focus on the relationships built between the law enforcements agencies and the public. Being able to structure the department in a way that community policing is the priority and production reflects that is a big step in driving towards successful accomplishments of duties out in the community. It really is a matter of all of the i’s being dotted and t’s being crossed with everyone doing what they need to be in order to promote community policing at every level within the agency, from the newest police officer to head of the entire agency. Creating a community policing-based law enforcement agency begins with the planning and policies that are created to ensure that everyone is following the proper steps to form and maintain positive relationships with the community. Once the policies are in place, the agencies must follow up on the performance of the officers to ensure that they are performing their duties while abiding by the policies that have been put in place by measuring different aspects of the community. This is done differently than the individual officer evaluations that are performed to measure the range of duties carried out by the officers such as traffic stops or the time it takes to get to a call (Chapman & Scheider, 2012). The community evaluations are done by measuring how fearful the community is, how much faith the community has in the law enforcement agency, and if the community feels that the issues in the community are being addressed and addressed properly. It is through all of this information and the openness of the law enforcement agency with the community that allows for another key element in organization transformations to be a successful component to community

9 policing and that element is the importance of transparency. Allowing the community in of the decision-making process when determining what is best for solving the issues within the community is the best way to let the citizens know that law enforcement can be trusted and that they are really there to help the citizens live better lives within their communities by solving all of the issues that are going on within them. The Components – Problem Solving The final component that composes community policing is the problem-solving portion of the process. Though each of the different components are important in their own way and they all rely on each other for the community policing system to be able to be successful, the problem-solving component has a bit stronger of a role than the organizational transformation component when it comes to actually making progress within the community and having visible results for the citizens to be able to observe. This is because being able to engage in the development of an effective response to problems identified by the community members allows for the prevention of similar issues in the future by creating organized and preventative protocols (Chapman & Scheider, 2012). One way to allow police officers to come up with their protocols more quickly and efficiently is to remember the acronym, SARA (Chapman & Scheider, 2012), which stands for scanning, analysis, response, assessment. Following these steps allows for officers to be able to do more than just eliminate the problems within their communities. The officers are able to come up with detailed observations as to what the problems are, what the factors are that are causing the problems within the community, and providing resources that will eliminate the factors necessary to create the problem in order to prevent the problem from occurring again in the future ( Community Policing Consortium , 1994).

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10 Issues Identified Looking at how effective community policing is, there has been numerous conflicting studies as to whether or not community policing has had a positive influence on the communities throughout the United States or not. A study that presents against the effects of community policing was conducted in Seattle and had come to the conclusion that there was no significant relevance to community policing and the community helping the police in a way that was useful (Cossyleon, 2019). The opposite view was shown in a study that was in favor of community policing was done over a span of 10 years in Chicago had shown that the community had improved ideas of the city’s problems (Cossyleon, 2019). Other issues that have been identified include the constraints that are placed on the law enforcement agencies that are possibly interfering with the successful community policing. These include the police officers being trained in community policing and being placed in an agency that is still placing focus on traditional policing tactics. This makes it difficult for the new officers to be able to abide by the community policing procedures because those who are inclined to stick with more traditional methods are normally set in their ways and against change which debilitates any efforts that the new officers would be attempting. This goes hand in hand with the new officers being placed elsewhere so that they cannot utilize their training in community policing and being forced to turn their attention to other methods of policing or other matters within the law enforcement agency in general. Another major issue that can cripple the implementation of community policing is the amount of funding that law enforcement has to be able to make the changes necessary within their departments. Funding is extremely important because it takes an immense amount of training to be able to change the methods of policing from traditional policing to community

11 policing because of the level of differences between the two methods, the levels of differences that are between the two methods, and the amount of scrutiny that comes from the public to ensure that the local law enforcement is adapting to the transition while performing their duties properly within the community. If the transition is not conducted properly and or the officers’ duties are not being carried out correctly, opening up the agency to scrutiny, the discord in the community will only grow, accomplishing the opposite effect than what the goals of community policing is all about – minimizing the problems within the community while building positive relationships with its citizens, making the entire presence of law enforcement moot. The Role of Law Enforcement Examples of why community policing has been developed to replace traditional policing are the uproars that have been caused in cases of excessive force and wrongful deaths at the hands of law enforcement, especially in recent history. The general public of the United States has been pushing for a reformation of law enforcement because of cases such as Michael Brown, Elijah McClain, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor; all deaths at the hands of law enforcement officials that have been the subject of debate (Morgan, 2021) since each have occurred, to make arguments as to how the police should conduct their duties. Community Policing has been pulled even more into the spotlight as one of the best ways to go about the continuation of police reformation as a result of these tragedies and, as such, places much more responsibility onto law enforcement agencies and the individual officers themselves. This is because community policing requires that the law enforcement agencies are committed to maintaining peace in their communities not only through crime control but also

12 through the different relationships that the agencies maintain with the different entities within the community. As mentioned earlier, these entities include the businesses, other government agencies, the media, nonprofit organizations, and the individual citizens within the community. This is also required on the more personal level of the individual officers as well which creates the extra responsibility for the officers to maintain those relationships as professionally personal as possible so as to not cross the line into police misconduct. Community Responsibilities It is important to keep in mind that law enforcement agencies and individual officers are not the only ones who have increased responsibilities with the implementation of community policing. The community as a whole, all of the different entities that make up the community, and all of the individual citizens each have their own responsibilities that are created when community policing is put into place. These responsibilities can be seen through the creation of neighborhood watches, community safety events, and installation of community video surveillance systems (Mock, 2022). After taking this into consideration, it should be noted that in the community policing approach, police are put in the position of fulfilling the role of a public servant much more to the extent that is expected of them in the present day than in the comparison to traditional policing where law enforcement motives were seen to be much more political (Shain, 2002). This is to the advantage to the communities that the law enforcement agencies are attempting to create the beneficial relationships with because it helps with allowing the citizens to be able to trust the officers much easier than if they view the officers as only doing their jobs in order to benefit their own careers and politicians.

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13 On the community’s side, the better the relationship with the law enforcement officials, the better their interactions will be when they find themselves in a position that they need to make a report or deal with the police in any way. For example, if a community member works at having a personable and trustworthy relationship with local law enforcement, when the citizen finds him/herself in a situation where a crime has been committed and the individual must explain the situation to an officer, the officer will be much more willing to listen. Not only will the officer listen to the community member, but the officer is much more likely to believe the details of what the community member is saying has happened and be empathetic and sympathetic towards the individual compared to if the relationship between the community member and law enforcement was more negative, the interaction between the officer and the individual may not go as smoothly. Depending on the details of the prior interactions that built the relationship to the point that it is in the present, the officer may not believe what the community member is saying or feel empathy or sympathy for the individual. This can then lead to an even worse interaction, making an even worse relationship that can be talked about throughout the community, providing a negative impact on the entire relationship between the law enforcement agency and the community. If this happens, community policing in general would be affected and the entire rapport would have to be built all over again, making any progress that was made in the community become a loss. The good news is that, just as one negative interaction can cause a chain reaction within the community, so can one positive interaction. Simple gestures from police officers towards community members can increase the positivity and improve the attitude of the community

14 towards law enforcement with results of this proven through a study conducted by police making door-to-door visits to community members (Cummings, 2019). How Communities are Affected Taking everything and bringing the information together, the effects on the community can be looked at to see how community policing brings about changes that were not possible with traditional policing methods in regard to police reformation and the overall relationship between law enforcement and the public. Looking at the roles that the officers play within community policing, deeper observations are now possible to be made because of the immersion into the environment that the police are getting from being involved more directly into the community nowadays. The officers are taking part in more and more activities such as community events, taking strolls through businesses and parks, and inserting themselves into situations that they may be of help to the citizens in the community more often. Even just passing by a family and saying hello has an effect on both the officer and the family, making both parties view law enforcement as people and not just robots on duty for the government which develops the trust between the law enforcement and community that is necessary to have a beneficial relationship to provide the type of environment everyone involved is aiming for. For the community members, the feeling of safety is increased by the police presence and the trust in the police being able to keep the community safe and under control for the sake of the families who live there. The more successful the police are in continuing in keeping the peace and preventing issues within the community, the more faith and better the relationship the community and the police have with each other. It is a cycle that continues to grow until

15 something happens to throw a wrench into it to stop the cycle in its tracks, such as an instance of excessive force used by an individual within the law enforcement agency. When it comes to situations like excessive force and police brutality, the best way for the law enforcement agency to begin the journey to mending the relationship with the community is to take complete accountabilities for all wrongful actions while being absolutely transparent to the public in what course of action the agency plans to take to be able to prevent those issues from ever happening again in the future (Community Relations Services Toolkit for Policing, n.d.). Unfortunately, the repercussions of an act of police brutality may not only affect the local department and community, as has been seen with cases like those mentioned previously. Cases like Breonna Taylor have gained national and even world-wide attention, damaging the reputations and relationships with law enforcement throughout the United States and other countries where similar cases have occurred. In situations of that scale, there is very little that can be done to appease and mend relationships other than taking a step back to reevaluate policing and looking at if reformation should be taking place. Community policing is one of the steps to reformation that has been pushed for, specifically in cases of minority communities after major events of questionable or tragic police actions and part of community policing in these communities is to address the fact that minorities have always been treated disproportionately (Community Relations Services Toolkit for Policing, n.d.) just as the lower income have been treated disproportionately to the more affluent neighborhoods. The efforts that are made within community policing are designed to take these issues into account and ensure that the police are making the efforts to create relationships with the

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16 minority populations just as they make efforts to make relationships with nonminority populations in order to ensure everyone is being represented and treated as equal human beings. Conclusion Overall, there are many points to be made about community policing, the positives about it and the negatives about the use of it, the implementation, the roles that the police and the community members both play, and the outcomes of utilizing community policing properly. There are the fears of community policing not being implemented quickly or efficiently enough for the policing technique to be successful. There are the fears of not having enough funding for the law enforcement agencies to be capable of training all of the officers and employees in the correct procedures to fully implement the use of community policing within the agency. There are the complications of agencies that are being run by or filled with law enforcement officials who oppose change and would much rather stick with the methods associated with traditional policing than change their ways to allow for community policing to make its way into their agencies. However, community policing is the way of the future for law enforcement and there is little room for resistance in terms of trying to keep traditional policing in the world that is being lived in today. Reformation of how police handle their duties and interact with the citizens in the United States has become such a hot subject that it is not going to die down until the issues are addressed and those who are opposed to the changes of reformation are pulled from being a part of law enforcement. There will be no room for the individuals who do not want to make changes for the better of both the communities in the county and the law enforcement agencies in the

17 country and the new generations of citizens will continue to create changes until their ideal police force has been created. The roles of the police will remain the same in the sense of ensuring the safety of the citizens but, in terms of community policing, the officers will be much more public servants that are called to help the citizens of the community for miscellaneous ailments, in between making sure there are no opportunities for criminal activities, than being randomly or aimlessly on patrol looking for criminal activities that are in progress. The country must be on the watch that the police do not become too much of a public servant in the process, becoming too much at the disposal of the public though. If this happens, the country will be in danger of crime not being able to be prevented because of the law enforcement not having the time or opportunity to worry about crime prevention and control because they will have become too involved in the everyday needs of the individual citizens rather than the concerns of the community as a whole. The citizens will have become too reliant of the police being there to help with concerns that should not be associated with the police, but rather other community members reaching out to help each other, allowing for the law enforcement to do just that – enforce the law. Community policing, so far, has shown to be an improvement over traditional policing methods and continues to prove its worthiness to be implemented throughout the law enforcement agencies throughout the United States. With that being said, taking the ideals of community policing too far could be harmful or even detrimental to the communities within the country and, if not stopped after reaching that harmful point, could impact the entire country in a negative way by destroying the role of law enforcement altogether. As long as the considerations of this possibility are kept in mind by those that make the big decisions about how

18 and when police procedures are created, imposed, and implemented, realistically it should never reach the point where police become a useless entity that is no more than a community aide.

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19 References Chapman & Scheider. (2012). Community Policing Defined . U.S. Department of Justice-COPS, 2012. https://cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/Publications/cops-p157-pub.pdf Community-Oriented Policing: Rationale . (n.d.). http://what-when-how.com/police-science/community-oriented-policing-rationale/ Community Policing Consortium . (1994). United States. Bureau of Justice Assistance. Understanding community policing: a framework for action. Washington, D.C.: The Bureau. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles/commp.pdf Community Policing and Procedural Justice . (2020). The Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy (CEBCP). https://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence- review/community-policing/ Community Relations Services Toolkit for Policing (Ed.). (n.d.). Importance of Police- Community Relationships and Resources for Further Reading . United States Department of Justice. https://www.justice.gov/file/1437336/download Cossyleon. (2019). Community Policing. 1-5. 10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0058. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332426579_Community_Policing Cummings. (2019, September 16). Study finds community-oriented policing improves attitudes toward . YaleNews. https://news.yale.edu/2019/09/16/study-finds-community-oriented- policing-improves-attitudes-toward-police Mock. (2022). Examples of Community Policing Strategies at Work . Rave Mobile Safety. https://www.ravemobilesafety.com/blog/examples-community-policing-strategies-work/

20 Oliver. (2000). The Third Generation of Community Policing: Moving Through Innovation, Diffusion, and Institutionalization. Police Quarterly. 3. 367-388. 10.1177/109861110000300402. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258180156_The_Third_Generation_of_Commu nity_Policing_Moving_Through_Innovation_Diffusion_and_Institutionalization Shain. (2002). Role of Community Policing in Building Confidence in Minority Communities . U.S. Department of State Archive. https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/2002/14785.htm Straub. (2020). Director of the Center for Mass Violence Response Studies, National Police Foundation, "The Importance of Community Policing in Preventing Terrorism," nij.ojp.gov: https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/importance-community-policing- preventing-terrorism

CRMJ512-Research Paper

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