Community Policing Vs Problem Oriented Policing

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People can all agree, without local law enforcement, communities would not function correctly. For a community to function smoothly, it does not only take an easy one job task, rather a set of different inputs. Two of various inputs utilized are community policing and problem-oriented policing. This paper will explain the importance and the roles they play in each community in the following matter. Foremost, community policing and problem-oriented policing will be explained, followed by why community policing was enforced, and how both were intended to serve their purpose and introduced to each organization. Thereupon, both will also be compared and contrasted.

In police agencies, both community policing and problem-oriented policing could …show more content…

Therefore, Community policing was first acquainted into the system in the 1960s - 1980s after the police discovered that they rarely were able to solve public safety problems alone without interfering with the public and found crime and fear rates were on a constant increase. (Weisburd and Braga p.13, 2006) Soon after, naturally agencies had to analyze and sift out effective approaches and tweak the ones that fell short of proving beneficial, hence problem-oriented policing. As per the creator, Herman Goldstein, it was found the police only directed their attention to its “means “ rather than its “ends”. Meaning attention was placed on the management and staff and not on resolving of problems. Goldstein believed if a systematic plan of action was presented to administration and from there introduced correctly to officers, who if in turn would certainly engage, there would be an organizational change.The systematic intervention included three components: precise problem identification, research of problem, and exploring the alternative. Although Goldstein gave an idea as to what would help, it seems the law system has yet to fully execute introduced plans and continue to focus on the wrong components. (Goldstein et. …show more content…

Community policing was found to be effective in building stronger relationships between community and police which in turn decreased fear.But despite having the potential of being a great innovation, some flaws have been found. Community policing was found to be more effective if more officers complied with recommended aspect as an organizational transformation instead of treating it as an “add-on”. Also, research found there was a percentage of the community who did not engage in efforts to work with local organizations which is one of the crucial aspects of the community policing program. As for Problem-oriented policing, it too has been successful in carrying out it objective and has proven to be effective in determining community obstacles but also in a limited manner. Research found problem-oriented policing may not function as desired due to law enforcement feeling pressure in decentralization, not implementing the program fully and being a slow process to implement. As noticed, these two programs rely on proper implementation, which arguably is the key component to fully see an effectiveness. It is also clear that these two programs rely on each other to bring positive results to the

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