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Community Policing

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DOI: 10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0058

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Community Policing
JENNIFER E. COSSYLEON
Loyola University Chicago, USA
Community policing has been defined and
implemented differently over time and within
different contexts, largely because it is a polic-
ing philosophy that is tailored to the changing
needs of local communities. The US Justice
Department’s Office of Community Oriented
Policing Services (COPS) defines community
policing as “a philosophy that promotes orga-
nizational strategies that support the system-
atic use of partnerships and problem-solving
techniques to proactively address the imme-
diate conditions that give rise to public safety
issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear
of crime” (Community Oriented Policing
Services 2014, 1). Unlike traditional policing,
which aims to stop crime primarily through
punishment, community policing models are
framed as a set of crime prevention tech-
niques that promote building relationships
between police officers and the communities
they serve, to prevent crime. Community
policing strategies have also aimed to estab-
lish trust among uniformed officers and the
general public.
HISTORY OF COMMUNITY POLICING
The roots of community policing are often
traced back to Kelling and Wilson’s broken
windows theory from the early 1980s, which
argues that crime thrives in communities
where disorderly behavior is ignored. Kelling
and Wilson proposed that crime and the fear
of crime could be prevented, by “managing”
street life, to achieve public order. What such
management and order would look like was
The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies. Edited by Anthony Orum.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0058
to be defined by each community. Yet, the
broken windows theory and associated prac-
tices grew in popularity in the United States
during an era of heightened incarceration for
drug-related offenses sparked by the War on
Drugs. This helps to explain why some schol-
ars have argued that the legacy of community
policing and increased police presence has
not been deeper community involvement, but
rather a “stop and frisk” policy (Goetz 2016).
Stopping more people can lead to more arrests
for drug crimes and for other “quality of life”
crimes that often stem from unequal access to
social, economic, and educational resources.
In fact, around the time community policing
was becoming more widespread, there was a
steady increase in the prison population for
low level crimes. According to the Bureau of
Justice statistics, the number of persons held
in a federal or state prison or jail rose from
around 1.5 million in 1995 to 2.2 million in
2005.
The Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act of 1994 allocated funds
for hiring and training police personnel
to implement community policing strate-
gies throughout the country. Supported by
streams of federal funding – which has dra-
matically been reduced today from its peak
in 1998 of over $1.6 billion to $208 million
in 2015 – by the year 2000, the majority
of urban police departments across the
USA had a community policing program of
some type (James 2015). These community
policing programs have generally covered at
least one of four overlapping components:
community-based crime prevention; proac-
tive participation in neighborhoods; shifting
command responsibilities to lower ranks;
and public participation in planning and
supervising police operations.
2 C OM M U N I T Y P OL IC I NG
COMPONENTS OF COMMUNITY
POLICING
First, through community-based crime pre-
vention, or what some have called proactive
problem-solving, police officers dedicate
attention to the roots of perceived prob-
lems instead of solely focusing on incidents
themselves. Trained to gather pertinent
information about criminal events, police
seek to find the likely source of social
problems to avoid further criminal inci-
dents. In some cases, citizens are also able
to participate in problem-solving training to
gather information.
Community-based crime prevention can
also include program implementation, par-
ticularly programs to help educate youth
about the risks of drug-use and gangs. Some
of the major national police-sponsored
crime prevention and educational programs
include: Neighborhood Watch; DARE (Drug
Abuse Resistance Education); and GREAT
(Gang Resistance Education and Training).
These programs also serve to increase police
involvement in communities outside of the
scope of crime-solving, which leads to the
second component of community policing:
proactive police participation.
A proactive police participation approach
aims to incorporate police into communities
beyond responding to criminal complaints,
as a means to build relationships with res-
idents and community members. As such,
police units have worked to establish part-
nerships with a variety of actors, including
government agencies, residents at neighbor-
hood associations and town hall meetings,
nonprofit organizations, and local private
businesses. Also, it is not uncommon for
local police departments to place uniformed
officers on foot, on horses, or on bicycles
in an effort to build relationships with resi-
dents. Free from the physical barriers present
with patrol vehicles, these more accessible
means of transport allow the police to get
to know residents. While these types of
police presence strategies might make some
residents feel safer, research finds it can
also intimidate community members. For
instance, when approached by police, racial
minorities, younger community members,
and the poor lower income residents are
more likely to “feel like a suspect,” regard-
less of whether or not they are breaking the
law (Tyler, Jackson, and Mentovich 2015,
604). And although police presence aims to
deter criminal activity and make residents
feel safer, evidence suggests that community
members do not feel they are more likely to
get caught for breaking the law when there is
increased police presence (Tyler, Jackson, and
Mentovich 2015), nor does it always make
residents feel a greater sense of safety (Hinkle
and Weisburd 2008).
A third common component of commu-
nity policing involves shifting command
responsibilities to lower ranks of the police
force by training officers to be relatively
autonomous and to utilize discretion. For
instance, in cases of citizen disorderly con-
duct, officers are taught to make arrests
only when all other problem-solving options
are exhausted. At the height of community
policing efforts, officers were structurally
supported by programs like San Francisco
Cares, which created systems for officers to
refer people who were homeless and people
who were inebriated in public to services
instead of jail booking stations. These types
of system highlight the power officers have
in making discretionary decisions that can
disproportionately impact the most vulner-
able. Conversely, critics have argued that
when “legal standards” are blurred – that
is, when police officers widely exercise
discretion – factors like race, sex, and wealth
may play a more significant role in who is and
who is not arrested (Mastrofski, Worden, and
Snipes 1995).

The final component of community polic-
ing involves public participation in planning
and supervising police operations. Ideally,
power is delegated to the community to make
decisions about police planning and agendas.
For instance, police officers can document
the needs of particular beat areas based on
structured or everyday community feedback,
door knocking, and systematic tracking of
where crime occurs, through programs such
as New York City’s CompStat. These data
can be used to inform police work plans.
Police are also charged with establishing
mechanisms for community members to
supervise police operations. This process has
received the most pushback from police units
across the country. Although community
members who participate in advisory boards
can view police and crime statistics and offer
input about crime prevention, true supervi-
sory and punitive power over the police does
not rest with everyday community members.
EVALUATING COMMUNITY POLICING
Academics and practitioners often disagree
about the best way to measure community
policing program successes, while studies
offer mixed results on whether these pro-
grams improve community conditions. Data
from Seattle show that community policing
is rarely successful in achieving effective
collaborations between community mem-
bers and police (Herbert 2006). Scholars
have also punctured the broken windows
rationale of community policing by argu-
ing there is no direct relationship between
disorder and more serious crime (Sampson
and Raudenbush 1999). Conversely, other
researchers suggest that community policing
can in fact reduce rates of serious crime
(Connell, Miggans, and McGloin 2008).
In a robust 10-year study of a community
policing program in Chicago (CAPS), authors
find that the program helped to improve
C OM M U N I T Y P OL IC I NG 3
community perceptions of decay and disor-
der depending on “who you were and where
you were” (Skogan 2006, 234). Community
outcomes varied according to gender, race,
and socioeconomic and educational status.
Men were more than twice as likely to be
stopped by police as women and there were
significant differences between white, black,
and Latino residents’ experiences concerning
their perceptions of community decay and
disorder. For the most part, white community
members had fewer community problems
to begin with and were already involved
in neighborhood and political community
groups. African Americans saw the greatest
improvement in community outcomes while
Spanish-speaking Latino communities, par-
ticularly immigrant community members,
felt their community conditions grew worse
(Skogan 2006).
Some research suggests mixed findings
can be expected given that community polic-
ing looks differently depending on police
leadership, the geographic area, and the
demographic characteristics of communities
(Thatcher 2001). Other studies claim police
departments have simply relabeled old tactics
as community policing, making little struc-
tural change to police activities (Morabito
2010). More skeptical work highlights the fact
that community policing “seems much less
practiced in disadvantaged neighborhoods”
(Reisig and Parks 2004, 163).
Another explanation for differential com-
munity outcomes as a result of community
policing is the lack of true partnerships
between the police and particular com-
munities (especially in communities where
ethnoracial and language barriers exist).
Evidence from a review of 11 community
policing programs across the country finds
there is widespread disagreement among
police and community members regarding
(a) a shared goal of public safety and (b)
how much authority and force police should
4 C OM M U N I T Y P OL IC I NG
utilize in everyday policing (Thatcher 2001).
Thus, a gap between police and the commu-
nity regarding the roles and goals of policing
can hinder the implementation of community
policing strategies.
COMMUNITY POLICING
AND EXCESSIVE USE OF FORCE
Recently, community policing has been pre-
sented as an answer to tense community–
police relationships across the country due
to the excessive use of force by police, which
has led to the death of countless young
black men across the country. Two high
profile investigations of the use of force by
police (one by the Department of Justice
and the other by a Police Accountability
Task Force) in Ferguson, Missouri and
Chicago suggest the implementation of
community policing as a way of rebuilding
trust among uniformed officers and local
residents. However, neither investigative
report offers clear guidelines about the nec-
essary amount of community involvement
or decision-making power, nor does either
report suggest who would be funding and
leading these changes to rebuild mutual coop-
eration on the ground. Municipalities may
lack the monetary and leadership capacity to
undertake these kinds of initiatives without
significant support.
Research and practice need to place
a greater emphasis on studying and imple-
menting police oversight, which is a less-often
practiced component of community policing.
Future studies on community policing should
incorporate engaged research methods that
include the valuable input of community
members regarding their experiences, needs,
and concerns pertaining to contact with
police. One way police departments can reach
the community is through building connec-
tions with grassroots community organizing
groups that are comprised of residents and
have meaningful and sustained relationships
with other community members.
SEE ALSO: Citizen Participation; Community;
Urban Inequalities; Urban Policies
REFERENCES
Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).
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Department of Justice, e051229476. Accessed
January 4, 2018, at https://ric-zai-inc.com/
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Connell, N. M., K. Miggans, and J. M. McGloin.
2008. “Can a Community Policing Initiative
Reduce Serious Crime?: A Local Evaluation.”
Police Quarterly, 11: 127–150.
Goetz, B. 2016. “Community Policing and the Wel-
fare State: The Problem of Institutional Selec-
tivity.” Paper presented at the Urban Affairs
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Herbert, S. 2006. Citizens, Cops and Power: Rec-
ognizing the Limits of Community. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Hinkle, J. C., and D. Weisburd. 2008. “The Irony of
Broken Windows Policing: A Micro-Place Study
of the Relationship between Disorder, Focused
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James, N. 2015. “Community Oriented Polic-
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Mastrofski, S. D., R. Worden, and J. Snipes. 1995.
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Morabito, M. S. 2010. “Understanding Commu-
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Reisig, M. D., and R. B. Parks. 2004. “Can Com-
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Skogan, W. G. 2006. Police and Community in
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Thatcher, D. 2001. “Conflicting Values in Com-
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Tyler, T. R., J. Jackson, and A. Mentovich. 2015.
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View publication stats
C OM M U N I T Y P OL IC I NG 5
FURTHER READING
Dias, R. A. 2016. “Racism Creates Barriers to
Effective Community Policing.” Southern Illi-
nois University Law Journal, 40(3): 512.
Goetz, B. 2017. On the Frontlines of the Welfare
State: How Fire Service and Police Shape Social
Problems. New York, NY: Routledge.
Kerley, K. R., and M. L. Benson. 2000. “Does
Community-Oriented Policing Help Build
Stronger Communities? Police Quarterly, 3:
46–69. DOI: 10.1177/1098611100003001002.