With globalization, immigration, and urbanization taking the lead, as a part of the global evolution, police need to cultivate a harmonious relationship with the general public. For police to foster friendliness with the general public, they mainly implement Problem Oriented Policing or Community Oriented Policing. In this essay, I discuss, with examples, the pros and cons of each and present an overview of the challenges police departments encounter when implementing either of the strategies.
Community Oriented Policing refers to traditional ways of enforcing laws by engaging the community through partnerships, solving problems, and putting into place measures of preventing crime. As an engaging strategy, with shared responsibility between police and citizens, this strategy recognizes the difficulties faced by police in their duty and the crucial role played by citizens in preventing crime (Nandi, 2018).
As a policing strategy, Community Oriented Policing is no exception to pros and cons. One of the benefits a community gets to enjoy from its implementation is unity and improving police officers’ reputation as friendly protectors. Therefore, as a crime deterrent measure, communities get an opportunity to learn about their rights and responsibilities in ensuring security for themselves and others. According to Koen (2018), this strategy prevents crime because criminals do not know who is watching them. In such a scenario, the police are seen as more approachable, and hence people become willing to report suspects.
Community-oriented policing is often faced with several challenges. Since the strategy gets implemented by a few police officers, this may open avenues for corruption, making it hard to serve the intended purpose. Increased police autonomy in making decisions under this strategy may also lead to rifts between partner-officers. In case of hostility from the community served, officers feel unwanted hence lowering their morale.
In Pueblo, Colorado Police Department has been implementing community-oriented policing successfully. By deploying police in the streets and neighborhoods, who are tasked with instilling a shared and proactive information-sharing initiative, crime rates in the area have tremendously gone down. According to Koen (2018), this has led to stronger relationships between the community and police, thus facilitating a successful flow of information in deterring crime. Another place where community-oriented policing has been successfully implemented in New York City by the NYPD. According to the then police chief, the department would dispatch many officers to tour the neighborhoods, talk with residents, and exchange information. According to Nandi (2018), this fostered a friendly working environment for the police and changed how residents viewed them before.
Problem-oriented policing is a strategy used to devise ways to deter crime or its rate reduced. This strategy mainly focuses on identifying problems affecting a community, coming up with ways to solve the problem, and analyzing and weighing their effectiveness. This strategy grants the police an opportunity to use all means and resources within their reach to solve the problem.
One of the pros of problem-oriented policing is that it reduces policing expenses since research done in a specific area can solve a similar problem in another area. Additionally, the strategy proves effective because it is solution-centered and shows that officers must be committed to solving a problem. This benefits the community by ensuring low crime rates and a secure and conducive working environment. The main shortcoming of problem-oriented policing is that officers can only solve one problem simultaneously, thus making the strategy less flexible. Therefore, this makes the strategy ineffective in problem-solving since it aims to solve problems and prevent them from occurring.
Rancho Cardova is an example of well-implemented problem-oriented policing by the policing department to protect citizens and ensure secure neighborhoods. In this city, the police department invests in research to provide long-term solutions to problems and prevent their reoccurrence. For instance, the unit liaises with community prosecutors and county authorities to track down noise pollution offenders and rogue business people and educate motorists on best practices (City of Rancho Cordova, 2017). Another example is San Antonio Police Department, where a unit is tasked with coming up with solutions to community problems. According to Rivers, “this elite unit concentrates on tracking down drug dealers and visiting crime scene neighborhoods to acquire more intelligence which is later incorporated into problem-solving strategies” (2018).
Implementation of POP and COP is faced with numerous challenges, including community size and other demographic factors such as age distribution. Other challenges include negative attitude by residents, inadequate training, conflicting ideas among police officers, and police officers’ inadequacy. Therefore, when it is hard for police officers to agree on dealing with law offenders while in the streets, this conflict of ideas can breed rivalry, making operations difficult. Lastly, these strategies require a huge sum of resources, meaning that if the authority is unable to sustain the provision of all needed resources, implementing COP and POP can fail terribly.
In my view, community-oriented policing is the more effective than POP because it prevents crime by a large margin. Gathering intelligence from the public can benefit police departments with adequate information to track down criminals and prosecute them in a court of law. Conclusively, COP and POP are all strategies employed by police to foster stronger relationships with the public and deter crime. While COP focuses on creating a shared responsibility approach in solving community problems and preventing crime, POP focuses on analyzing problems and coming up with solutions. These strategies have been implemented in different parts of the United States, including Colorado, New York, Rancho Cardova, and Antonio Police Department. Though successful in combating crime, their implementation is often faced with challenges such as inadequacy of police officers, varying attitudes of community members, and increased corruption being a major challenge.
References
The city of Rancho Cordova. (2017). Problem oriented policing (POP) unit. Web.
Koen, Andy. (2018). Community oriented policing drops the crime rate on Pueblo’s East Side. Web.
Nandi, Anisha. (2018). Neighborhood policing programs build relationships to cut crimes. Web.
Rivers, Matt. (2018). ‘Problem Oriented Policing’ style tackles larger issues. Web.