COMMUNITY POLICING AND INTELLIGENCE LED POLICING

It is often said that modern problems need modern solution. As the society got complex because
of new technologies and changing nature of crimes, it became challenging for law enforcement
agencies to maintain social order. Despite adoption of new ways of policing, it cannot still be
made holistic. For policing to be proactive. new techniques need to be adopted. Among them,
Community policing and Intelligence Led Policing are being adopted by police forces across
countries.
Community policing is a technique which allows local community to participate in the process of
policing. Developing community partnerships, engaging in problem solving, and implementing
community policing organizational features are the main components of community policing. In
this way, either members of community volunteer for service or police itself assigns this task to
some individuals of a certain locality. These community members have direct contact with the
police station through mobile phones. They report any suspicious activity or likelihood of a
crime in the surroundings. The methods of community policing include the following:
1. Encouraging the community to help prevent crime by providing advice, talking to
students, and promoting neighborhood watch groups.
2. Increasing foot and bicycle patrols.
3. Creating team of officers to carry out community policing in designated neighborhoods
4. Clear communication between the police and the communities about their objectives and
strategies.
5. Partnership with other organizations such as government agencies, community members,
nonprofit service providers, private businesses, and the media.
6. Moving towards some decentralization of police authority, allowing more discretion
among lower ranking officers, and more initiative expected form them.
In 1971, the leadership of the Dallas Police Department wanted to redefine the role of Dallas
police officers by identifying the basic needs of the Dallas community and restructuring police
services to respond to those needs. The department sought to increase the number of minority
police officers and to place those officers in minority communities. The department and
foundation aimed to show that individual police officers have as much personal stake in
providing better services as do members of the communities in which officers’ work. The
percentage of street crimes. Domestic violence, gender based violence, theft, and house breaking
decreased significantly.
When it comes to Data driven policing, Intelligence Led Policing is the other technique can help
police to be proactive. As the name manifests that it is the policing that is based on intelligence.
The technique is more useful in preventing organized crimes. Intelligence-led policing attempts
to identify potential victims and potential repeat offenders, then works in partnership with the
community to provide offenders with an opportunity to change their behavior before being
arrested for a more severe crime. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, intelligence-led
policing is “a collaborative law enforcement approach combining problem-solving policing,
information sharing, and police accountability, with enhanced intelligence operations.” It is
designed to guide policing activities toward high-frequency offenders, locations, or crimes to
impact resource allocation decisions. An important component of intelligence-led policing is that
it encourages—and, arguably, depends on—collaboration among various agencies and the
community, including not only local police, but other local law enforcement, the FBI, homeland
security agencies, and even probation and parole officers.
A 2014 paper published by the American Statistical Association in 2015 studied the use of
predictive policing algorithms versus the use of dedicated crime analysts in three divisions of the
Los Angeles, California, Police Department and two divisions of the Kent, United Kingdom,
Police Department. They determined that models predicted 1.4 to 2.2 times as many crimes as
the dedicated analyst and led to an average 7.4 percent reduction in crime as a function of patrol
time.
CONCLUSION:
Policing has become a challenging task in this era. Police organization across the world are
working on new techniques and tools for policing to be proactive rather than reactive. Among
many modern methodologies, Community policing and Intelligence Led Policing are two ways
through which the exercise of policing could be proactive instead of reactive.