Chapter 6 - Community Policing and Crime

Abstract

Community policing suggests that creativity and innovation are required to approach serious crime from new angles—that is, making incremental improvements that hold the promise of making long-term substantive improvement. It recognizes the importance of treating all social problems, including property crime, as serious police business. The professional policing model has been ineffective in reducing crime, reducing citizens' fears, and satisfying victims that justice is being done. The chapter explains the special contribution that community policing can make in extending the overall impact of the police and examines the most heinous crime, murder, to show the way community policing augments motor patrol's attempts to prevent, thwart, or solve this crime. Homicide including murder, non-negligent manslaughter, and negligent manslaughter, is often a crime of passion or profit. It focuses special attention on those at the risk of becoming offenders and victims. It involves people in efforts to make their communities more crime-resistant including participating in projects to reduce neighborhood problems. It involves Community policing officers (CPOs) as community outreach specialists, allowing them to function as the community's ombudsmen to other agencies that can help. Community policing pays particular attention to juveniles, not only because young people commit crime, but because of the hope that positive police intervention at an early age holds a greater promise of discouraging problems in the future.