The History of Community Policing - Research Paper Example

Running Head: THE HISTORY OF COMMUNITY POLICING The History of Community Policing The History of Community Policing Introduction The concept of community policing is not a new one, though not always known by that name. The concept of community policing originated in 1827 with the passage of the Metropolitan Police Act in London, England (Greene, 2010). The core element of the community policing concept was the establishment of a cooperative crime fighting coalition between the citizen and the police to reduce the rising crime problem (Goldsmith, 2005). According to Robinson and Scaglion (1987: 115), "… the police institution is unique to the English people, originates from the people, is dependent on them for their support, and without that support, its effectiveness and even its existence would be in doubt." Bayley (1994: 1 02) has recognized that the "police cannot solve societys crime problems alone. They need the assistance of the public…" With the emergence of community policing in the United States in the 1970s, policing has come full circle from police-citizen cooperation to virtually no citizen involvement, and finally back to community policing that focuses on police-citizen interaction to combat the root causation of crime. A more in-depth review of the evolution of community policing is necessary for a full and rich appreciation and understanding of why policing has metamorphosed back to a police-citizen cooperative methodology. In looking for the key variable that provided the cohesiveness and viability to the concept of democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville identified the abundance of voluntary associations (Trojanowicz, 1982). It is likely that American judges, attorneys, and police officers of the 1800s and 1900s had a good sense of values of community, the decisions required relative to crime and social control, and the resources required to maintain the community in a healthy state (Tocqueville, 1961). Democratic ideological fears of adopting an institution from monarchical Europe helped ensure that local political repre­sentatives would control American police departments. This local control eventually resulted in the misuse of police agencies by politicians and corruption flowed over into police departments (Miller, 2000). The first American police department to advance beyond the night watch concept and organize along the professional lines of Peels model was the New York City police department in 1845 (Fogelson, 1977). Since the 19th century the United States has seen three specific periods of policing methodology that have been predominately, but not exclusively, directed at urban areas. The majority of information that has been learned from researchers has come from studies that have focused on large metropolitan police departments that were the first to implement these programs (Maguire et al., 1997). These three periods of policing strategy include: the political era, the reform era, and the community problem-solving era. Political Era The political era was named for the close relationship between the police and politics. It covered the period from the 1840s through the early 1900s when various interest groups struggled for control of police departments (Kelling & Moore, 1988). Historically, Americans felt the police should be under local control rather than national control like many European countries. The American political machine, exemplified by Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed, used the police to round up voters and carry out numerous other orders from politicians in exchange for their very positions. The officers helped political leaders by encouraging citizens to vote for politicians who put them in their jobs and at times assisted in rigging elections (Fogelson, 1977). "Cops saw them­selves as beholden to corrupt ward politicians who expected them to turn a blind eye to protected vice" (Lardner & Reppetto, 2000: 70). American police derived their authority and resources from the local political leaders. Though police were obligated to follow the law, their allegiance to local politicians was so tight they were referred to as adjuncts to local political machines. Political machines reciprocated by recruiting and retaining police officers. This period had its strengths in the areas of the support from the citizens as well as police familiarity with the neighborhoods they patrolled. They also maintained social order within the neighborhoods, performing functions well beyond simply enforcing the law. The officers familiarity with citizens was accomplished by officers performing many services including foot patrol, crime prevention and control, order maintenance, assisting with soup lines, assisting in providing lodging for immigrants, and helping politicians find work for the millions of ethnic immigrants. There is evidence that this police-citizen closeness prevented riots and other displays of disorder and reduced the incidence of crime. As a result of this closeness to communities and citizens, the police became intimately connected with the social and political fabric of the local ward (Kelling & Moore, 1988). Reform Era Later, reformers moved away from these foundational police-citizen approaches to a focus only on crime fighting to create highly disciplined, paramilitary police orga­nizations independent of local politics that no longer involved citizens in police work (Moore & Kelling, 1983). During the 1930s through the 1970s, a time known as the reform era, American police changed their policing strategy to a narrow focus limited strictly to crime fighting. Reformers moved to create highly disciplined, paramilitary police organizations independent of local politics that were limited to crime fighting and enforcement of the law as a solution to eliminate patronage by the police when graft and corruption of politics pervaded police departments (Miller, 2000). David Thacher (2001) pointed out that it is natural for police departments to attempt to remain autonomous to isolate themselves from politics, given the recent past history of political corruption. The police have had a difficult task in choosing the most effective policies to carry out their functions. Criminal law was used as the source of police legitimacy and these agencies became known as law enforcement agencies rather than as police agencies. Police in this reform era narrowed their function to crime control and criminal apprehension. Duties that required police to solve community problems were now seen as social work and rejected (Kelling & Moore, 1988). The emphasis was on uniform enforcement policies with little officer discretion that drastically reduced the influence of politicians. The change to centralized bureaucracies further reduced the ability of local politicians to influence the police at the ward level. Municipalities engaged in public relations campaigns touting the police as the solution for crime. This paved the way for 911 emergency call centers and introduced reactive policing methods that centered on police officers scurrying from one call to the next with little time to interact with citizens. With a recent reputation for corruption, bru­tality, and downright incompetence on the part of the police, municipal police reformers rejected politics as the basis of police legitimacy that they saw as the problem in American policing. The move to separate police from politics was so strong that in Philadelphia it became illegal for police to live on their beats so as to isolate officers as completely as possible from political influences (Kelling & Moore, 1988). The hierarchal military model with a clear division between politics and admin­istration in police departments was consistent with the prevailing general management philosophy of the early to mid-1900s as advanced by Frank Goodnow (1900). Police departments seized upon the principles of division of labor and unity of control that touted organizing under the pyramidal bureaucratic hierarchy model to focus control in a single central office that greatly limited officer discretion. This quasi­-military model fit well with the structured law enforcement mentality in use at that time. With this shift in management style, police became impersonal and detached, excluding citizen involvement with a heady confidence that the police would manage the problem of crime (Kelling & Moore, 1988). New officers were subject to stricter hiring standards and more effective training that further reduced influence and control by poli­ticians. Police relied heavily on new technology such as radios, 911 emergency telephone systems, and mobile patrols without seeking assistance from citi­zens to solve crime. Police left the foot beats for the perceived omnipresence of the patrol car and the politically neutral method of responding to crime after the fact. Another significant factor influencing the move away from interaction with citi­zens and toward strict crime fighting was the creation of the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) maintained by the FBI. These data encouraged police administrators to focus on activities that were visible in these crime statistics that became accepted measures of police effectiveness. Officers effectiveness was judged by the number of arrests made and response times to calls for police service with the overall measure of effectiveness the comparison of the officers activity to the UCR statistics. Officers who desired to advance their careers engaged in reportable types of policing activity and shunned citizen contact and problem solving that was not a reportable activity. The measures that were put into place to assess an officers effectiveness were the same systems that caused dimin­ished citizen-police contact. Further, police agencies that obtained federal grant funding were often required to document quantitative measures attributable to the federal funding that were used to justify continuation grants. This movement away from close interaction with citizens resulted in the distrust of the police and the loss of a highly effective crime reduction tool, that of citizen involvement and the information they possessed. Two other reasons causing decreased interaction between police officers and citi­zens was the increased incidence of crime demanding more of the officers time conduct­ing investigations with less citizen contact and the increasing fiscal difficulties of cities. During the 1960s crime began to rise. Police budgets lost financial support when cities experienced fiscal difficulties. As a result, financial cutbacks resulted in substantial losses in the number of police officers employed. These factors necessitated retaining fewer officers to do more work with less time for citizen contact (Moore & Kelling, 1983). The effects of the reform era have acted to cement policing beliefs and tactics of that time period especially in older officers trained in these methods. These policing methods minimized the problem-solving requirements that are central to the community policing philosophy. Where traditional policing focuses on detecting and arresting offenders, community policing requires officers to look past the crime to the underlying causation and with citizens involvement, design solutions to prevent the occurrence of crime in the first place. Community Problem-Solving Era The third era of policing known as the community problem-solving era (also known as the community policing era) was started in the United States during the 1970s when some of the most innovative police administrators and academics implemented this concept with its more humanistic approach (Thurman et al., 2001). The rigid organiza­tional structure of the military model of policing with its authoritarian management style had been increasingly called into question regarding its ability to address the problems facing the police (Tafoya, 1990). This criticism contributed to the move toward the more humanistic community policing model. General management philosophy started to shift from the rigid "one best way" touted by Max Weber and others with authority and decision-making discretion held only by top managers to the more humanistic approach advanced by Roethlisberger and Dicksons (1939) Westinghouse experiments. This new theory called for flattened organizational structure thereby pushing decision-making down to the line police officer with less emphasis on counting the officers activity. This humanistic movement in policing spread quickly under many names with many varia­tions to police agencies that started to buy into this new management philosophy. Another major factor in the move to integrate police with citizens in problem solving efforts through community policing has been the recent crisis in public confidence in large city policing. The legitimacy of the police existence was questioned. Com­missions in cities such as Los Angeles (Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, 1991, also known as the Christopher Commission), Philadelphia (Philadelphia Police Study Task Force, 1987), and New York City, (The Knapp Commis­sion Report on Police Corruption, 1973), have called for the adoption of community policing as the policing methodology to resolve the use of force and the long history of unresponsive and inequitable treatment against minorities. "Community policing can be viewed as an attempt to forge links between police and previously excluded communi­ties" (Eck & Rosenbaum, 1994: 11). Mastrofski, Worden, and Snipes (1995) observe that community policing suggests that police officers are more than simply crime fighters-they should be guided by the preferences of the community when deciding whether to make an arrest. The community policing concept, marked by police-citizen interaction, was initially accomplished by police foot patrol that expanded to many police departments in the United States since the 1970s. Research established that one important factor could help with crime reduction: information. The police once again realized that this infor­mation regarding crime and the criminals responsible for these offenses could be obtained from citizens. This resulted in police agencies changing from working closely with poli­ticians and citizens up until the early 1900s, to becoming autonomous to avoid politics and corruption from the 1930s to the 1970s, and then moving back to closeness with citizens in the name of community policing in the 1970s. This Americanized concept of community policing has been defined by Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux (1990: 5) as: … a new philosophy of policing based on the concept that police officers and private citizens working together in creative ways can help solve con­temporary community problems related to crime, fear of crime, social and physical disorder, and neighborhood decay. Citizen fear reduction has been linked to order maintenance (Kelling & Moore, 1988). A large source of citizen fear stems from acts of social disorder evidenced by minor misconduct such as public drunkenness, prostitution, aggressive panhandling, and vandalism. These minor acts of misconduct that give rise to the fear of crime on the part of citizens and lead to further crime have been described as the "broken windows" theory. This theory advanced by Wilson and Kelling (1982) suggests that when police work to fix broken windows and other signs of social disorder (minor crimes and signs of disorder), citizens fears are reduced by the perception that social control is being maintained, their environment is safe and further crime is further reduced. The primary goals of community policing can be greatly aided by establishing and maintaining effective relationships with citizens who become involved in prob1em-solving issues while working to reduce their fears of victimization. Under the concept of community policing the officer is not simply a crime fighter, but rather the officer is guided by the preferences of the community served (Mastrofski et al., 1995). A National Institute of Justice study concluded that the goal of community policing was to increase interaction and cooperation between police and citizens and to reduce and prevent crime while increasing the feelings of safety among residents (Mastrofski, Parks, & Worden, 1998). Crime prevention and community policing are necessarily linked and share a common purpose, making the public safer and communities healthier. These two concepts share the common goal of reducing the threat of crime and enhancing the sense of safety to positively influence the quality of life and develop an environment where crime cannot flourish (Crime Prevention Coalition, 1990). Citizens groups have become versed in crime reduction concepts involving criminal opportunity reduction, problem solving, crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), and both political and legal action (Kelling & Coles, 1996). Often, the most serious problems, which police departments typically focus their effort on, are not what the residents are most concerned with. The issue centers on a quality of life measure, but as perceived by the residents, not as is typically perceived by the police. Residents often view issues as problems that the police dont regard as important. Vagrants loitering, abandoned buildings, and youths congregating, are situ­ations that create fear in citizens and detract from the quality of life of residents. Police conditioned to engage in high profile activities such as making arrests do not view the presence of vagrants or abandoned buildings as important enough to spend their limited time and resources on. This causes a disconnect between the citizens concerns and the priorities of the police. Community policing practices attempt to change this situation of disparate views of what the most pressing problems are and for the police and citizens to work in collaboration to identify and resolve issues jointly. Citizen perceptions of neigh­borhood conditions such as crime, social disorder, and physical decay also impact their level of satisfaction toward the police (Reisig & Parks, 2002). The current theme of community policing that requires collaboration with nearly everybody is consistent with the broad trend across the United States in both government as well as the private sector. Broad public policy now generally disfavors autonomy in government pursuits in favor of close working relationships between public and private entities within society, the creation of public-private partnerships, and inter-local efforts (Kettl, 1996). The community policing problem-solving strategy is based on decentral­ized control down to the patrol officer. The use of 911 call centers is discouraged under this model except in serious emergencies. The reactive 911 dispatching based approach is traded for the proactive attempt by the police to change the social, political, and fiscal circumstances to bring citizens wants in line with police resources. Summary In summary, the literature explains how the reform movement of police professionalism arose in response to the corruption and inefficiency of the political era. The reform era eventually became a victim of its own success when increased reliance on routine automotive patrol and a professional crime-fighting approach led to the estrangement of the police from the community. The literature also highlights how community policing arose in response to rising crime rates and rising complaints against the police associated with aggressive enforcement tactics. References Bayley, D. H. (1994). Police for the future. New York: Oxford University Press. Crime Prevention Coalition. (1990). Crime prevention in American: Foundations for action (p. 64). Washington, DC: National Crime Prevention Council. Eck, l., & Rosenbaum, D. P. (1994). Community policing in theory. In D. P. Rosen­baum (Ed.), The challenge of community policing: Testing the promises (pp. 3-23). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Fogelson, R. M. (1977). Big-city police. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fogelson, R. M. (1977). Big-city police. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goldsmith, A. (2005). Police reform and the problem of trust. Theoretical Criminology 9(1). 443–470. Goodnow, F. (1900). Politics and administration: A study in government. New York: Russell & Russell. Greene, J. R. (2010). Community Policing. Encyclopedia of Victimology and Crime Prevention. SAGE Publications. Kelling, G. L., & Coles, C. M. (1996). Fixing broken windows: Restoring order and reducing crime in our communities. New York: Simon & Schuster. Kelling, G. L., & Moore, M. H. (1988). The evolving strategy of policing. U. S. De­partment of Justice. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice. Kettl, D. F. (1996). Governing at the millennium. In Perry L. (Ed.), Handbook of public administration (pp. 5-18). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Lardner, J., & Reppetto, T. (2000). NYPD: A city and its police. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Maguire, E. R. (1997). Structural change in large municipal police organizations during the community policing era. Justice Quarterly, 14(3), 547-576. Mastrofski, S. D., Worden, R. E., & Snipes, 1. B. (1995, November). Law enforcement in a time of community policing. Criminology, 33(4),539-563. Mastrofski, S., Parks, R. B., & Worden, R. E. (1998). Community policing in action: Lessons from an observational study. Research Preview. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice. Miller, W. (2000). The good, the bad & the ugly: Policing American. History Today, 50(8), 29-35. Moore, M. H., & Kelling, G. L. (1983). To serve and protect: Learning from police history. The Public Interest, 70, 49-65. Reisig, M. D., & Parks, R. B. (2002). Experience, quality of life, and neighborhood context: A hierarchical analysis of satisfaction with police. Justice Quarterly, 17(3), 607-630. Robinson, C. D., & Scaglion, R. (1987). The origin and evolution of the police function in society: Notes toward a theory. Law & Society Review, 21(1),109-153. Roethlisberger, F. J., & Dickson, W. J. (1939). Management and the worker: An ac­count of a research program conducted by the western electric company, Hawthorne Works, Chicago. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tafoya, W. L. (1990, January). The future of policing. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 59(1),13-17. Thacher, D. (2001). Conflicting values in community policing. Law & Society Review, 35(4), 765-798. Thurman, Q., Zhao, J., & Giacomazzi, A. (2001). Community policing in a community era. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury. Tocqueville, A. (1961). Democracy in America (Henry Reeves, Trans.). New York: Schocken Books. Trojanowicz, R. (1982). An evaluation of the neighborhood foot patrol program in Flint, Michigan. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University. Trojanowicz, R., & Bucqueroux, B. (1990). Community policing: A contemporary per­spective. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing. Wilson, Q., & Kelling, G. L. (1982, March). Broken windows: The police and neighborhood safety. The Atlantic Monthly, 249(3), 29-38. Read More