CAHRO's symposium on community policing scheduled for Hayward on February 3rd
is an attempt to bring community activists up to speed on a critical issue. Almost all the information on community policing theory and practice has been directed toward law enforcement, but the community that is expected to be a critical partner is woefully under-informed. In one southern California, for example, city rank and file police officers successfully lobbied community groups to support their efforts to get rid of the police chief because he was trying to promote community policing.
Another problem that surfaces when the community lacks information about community policing is that residents can be manipulated by their policing agency to accept a glossed-over version of traditional policing that
robs them of the opportunity to participate in a true partnership. Estimates have been made that as many as 60% of police departments that claim to have implemented community policing are in fact utilizing
traditional principles and allocating resources in the "old way".
If law enforcement is setting its own priorities without a mechanism for a broad representation of the community to participate in the process it is
missing out on one of the critical elements of community policing. There is a qualitative difference between a law enforcement agency sitting down with a group of people in the community to tell them what they are
doing, and the same agency sitting down with a representative group of people in the community to ask them what they think the agency should be doing. Community policing by its very nature empowers the community.
John Crew, staff counsel of the Northern California American Civil Liberties Union, lauds community policing as a vehicle for increasing the accountability of law enforcement to the communities they serve.
Once a
department embraces the concept that it is just as important to prevent a crime by addressing the immediate and long term issues that are causing it as it is to catch someone who just committed the crime in is on its
way to adopting the community policing philosophy. The implications are significant in how resources are allocated and in how the police network with other people and resources. It means that officers must
be given the time and opportunity to sit down with other people in the community to design and put together a strategy to deal with a particular issue that the community considers high priority. To take a common
occurrence for example, a number of complaints may be received from residents around a high school that students tend to smoke, use drugs and litter during the lunch period in the area around the school. A
traditional approach for a watch sergeant might be to get an officer to drive through the area to watch over things at lunch, but the community policing watch sergeant would assign someone to meet with the residents,
students, and school staff to design and implement strategies to resolve the problem.
Community policing is not monolithic and is adaptable to both the nature of the community where it is being implemented and to the
depth of commitment by city officials and the law enforcement agency. From a human relations standpoint the definition of "community" is critical to its successful implementation. Human relations advocates
argue that the definition of community needs to be broad enough to include those who are likely targets of law enforcement in the mix, for example if a community believes ending gang violence should be a high priority
gang members should be part of the dialog. A survey of the problem (community) oriented policing system in Chicago showed a wide variation of community representation that ranged from relying on landlords and
business owners to represent the community to drawing from the wide spectrum of residents in an area.
It will be difficult for community policing to consistently reach its potential unless all the parties share
an understanding of its philosophy and have access to the appropriate information.
