Introduction
Terrorism has contributed to increased cases of violence, conflict, injuries and loss of innocent lives indicating a great need for effective interventions. This paper will discuss the notion of terrorism and effective ways to combat. While a number of notions of terrorism have been adopted, researchers cannot come to an agreement about its nature and characteristic features. Thus, Schwenkenbecher (2012) defines terrorism as the desire to have indirect influence on decision-making processes of some group through direct harmful actions on another group. Rapin (2011) calls attention to the negative connotations the term brings forth and the anxiety it causes placing terrorism close to the notion of terror. Taylor (2010) emphasizes the group phenomenon of the notion. Unlike previous attempts to define terrorism from the perspective of its dominant features, this study aims to embrace all aspects of the notion. Thus, this research defines terrorism as the unlawful use of violence against members of the public or the administration with an aim of causing harm.
Further, the study aims to investigate the measures used to combat terrorism. The study focuses on cooperation of the community and the police efforts as one of the most promising methods of fighting against terrorism. The author believes the collaboration between law enforcement officers and societal members to be of the most effective measures to address terrorism risks. The evidence for it lies in the fact that collaboration between police and community members allowed to disclosed more terror threats than the efforts of the police alone (Jackson & Costello, 2019). Within the framework of this research, the author aims to prove that such collaboration is effective in reducing the high prevalence of terrorism since it helps to promote confidence and rapport between members of the public and the police.
Literature Review
Community policing has proven to be effective in addressing terrorism since members play a significant role in helping police officers to identify high risk individuals. However this can only be achieved by ensuring that members of the public are aware and vigilant when it comes to terrorism (NCTC, 2022). This is necessary to ensure that citizens can easily identify behaviors that indicate specific groups of people seeking to engage in violence. Community policing should be focused on ensuring that society members are aware of various issues related to terrorism for them to raise an alarm for fast response.
Effectiveness of community policing strategies require community members and police officers to work in a collaborative manner. The police and citizens can work together to identify priority activities and address them in an appropriate manner (Snodgrass, 2020). Activities promoted by community policing help to foster long term trust relationship between law enforcement officers and the citizens. Trust results from members of the public realizing that the police are putting in the effort to keep them safe. Trust relationships are necessary to promote resilience and the ability to counter terrorist narratives.
Police and other law enforcement agencies have to be aware that using the engagement activities to gather intelligence might have a negative impact on the interaction with citizens. Community policing strategies should be focused on enhancing information sharing between the citizens and relevant authorities (Snodgrass, 2020). Community policing allows officers to openly share information with the public while also seeking support on issues that are of mutual concern. A well implemented community policing strategy helps to eliminate various forms of violent extremism.
Community policing and the efforts promoted by the intervention help to mitigate risks associated with individuals radicalizing to engage in terrorism. Police play a significant role in community policing strategies by addressing various factors in community that enhance the risk of violent extremism (Mazerolle, 2020). Community policing achieves this by providing society-based education and awareness programs. The programs enhance referral networks while also providing assistance to individuals who face increased risks of radicalization.
Law enforcement officers have to identify community policing strategies that are likely to enhance public engagement in countering terrorism. In this case officers can choose to engage in recreation and sports, community forums, liason programs and legitimacy enhancing strategies while also promoting community education (Mazerolle, 2020). This is necessary to ensure that law enforcement officers have a working relationship with general citizens which are necessary to address violent extremism. Success in community policing requires law enforcement officers to have strategies that promote connectedness. Community connectedness is necessary to increase prosocial ties between community members.
Effectiveness of community policing in eliminating terrorism depends on whether it helps to improve the relations between civilians and law enforcement agencies. Community policing strategies help to ensure that terrorists are deprived of their legitimacy and undermine their claims (Hoffman & Morrison-Taw, 2019). This helps to minimize terrorist influence within a community to ensure that they receive little to no support from societal members. Community policing also helps to redress any grievances likely to be used by terrorists to fuel unrest.
Community policing should be focused on addressing political and economic needs of the people to minimize civilian support towards terrorist groups. Terrorists can never be successful in their course without receiving support from members of the public (Hoffman & Morrison-Taw, 2019). Community policing interventions should not be aimed at impeding active or passive aid given to terrorists by civilians. Such measures can end up having a negative impact and causing members of the public to increase their support for terrorist groups.
Community policing strategies help to address terrorism by minimizing civilian recruitment to terrorist groups. Information shared through community campaigns play a role in limiting the influence of terrorist messages to eliminate their radicalizing effect. This is achieved by raising awareness among members of the public in relation to propaganda spread by violent extremists. Societal leaders and law enforcement officers should avoid using community policing to encourage members to spy on one another since it can have a negative impact on civilian trust (Jackson & Costello, 2019). The main goal of community policing is to reduce the incidence of terrorism by countering extremist causes and any ideology that supports radicalization. Community policing is also necessary to identify alternatives that can be used to respond to terrorism risks.
Analysis
The main methodology of this study is discourse analysis, which makes it possible to identify different perceptions and interpretations of the concept of terrorism. More specifically, this method allows crystallizing effective collaboration methods between the society and police officers within the framework of community policing. At the same time, the comparative method is actively used to contrast the key features of collaboration suggested by different researchers and make conclusions as to the best cooperation strategies. The strengths of the methodology employed lies in its broad embrace of a scientific literature on the subject which allows to make reliable conclusions as to the effectiveness of community policing in combatting terrorism. The limitations of the content methodology lie in the fact that no first-hand information, such as can be got from questionnaires or polling, was gathered, which largely makes the conclusions of this research second-handed.
The sample size consists of eight research works written between 2010-2020 that dwell on the concept of terrorism and community policing measures as a way to tackle it. The time frame of the research comprises years between 2000 to 2020, usually labelled as the years of the rise of terrorist attacks in the world. The chosen period adds credibility to the research made as it is the time when counter terrorist measures were elaborated and employed most vigorously.
While the necessity of community and police collaboration have been restated in many research works as a measure of paramount importance, researchers differ in their perceptions of how this collaboration should be organized. Mazerolle et al. (2020) believe that society-based education and awareness programs work to enhance the loyalty of the population to the police force and thus lay down the grounds for effective collaboration. Hoffman and Morrison-Taw (2019) state that effective cooperation can be reached through addressing political and economic needs of the people. However, all studies agree that, for the community policing to be effective, the cooperation should be based on trust and information sharing between the police and relevant authorities. Such system allows citizens to notify officers of the unduly behavior or occurrences they perceive so that the police force can take preventive measures to resolve the problem.
Moreover, all works agree that punitive measures will not serve to promote community policy efforts. Instead, such measures are likely to serve to erode trust and push citizens to radicalization. Moreover, Jackson & Costello (2019) state that police officers should not use community policing for surveillance over community members or encouragement of people to spy on each other, as such measures are conducive to the disintegration of community into poor manageable groups. Overall, the research revealed high generalizability and consistency of the analyzed materials, which makes the results highly reliable.
Conclusion
Within the framework of this research, the author aimed to prove that community policing is an efficient measure for reducing the high prevalence of terrorism. It was found that, to be effective, community policing should rely on cooperation and information sharing between law enforcement officers and community members. The collaboration can be reached through society-based education and awareness programs as well as addressing political and economic needs of the people. Punitive strategies were largely found to be disruptive for productive collaboration since they erode trust of the public in the police force.
References
Jackson, B. A., & Costello, K. (2019). Practical terrorism prevention: Reexamining US national approaches to addressing the threat of ideologically motivated violence. RAND Corporation, Web.
Hoffman, B., & Morrison-Taw, J. (2019). A strategic framework for countering terrorism and insurgency. Routledge, Web.
Mazerolle, L., Eggins, E., Cherney, A., Hine, L., Higginson, A., & Belton, E. (2020). Police programmes that seek to increase community connectedness for reducing violent extremism behaviour, attitudes and beliefs. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 16(3), e1111, Web.
NCTC. (2022). JCAT counterterrorism guide for public safety personnel. Web.
Rapin, A. J. (2011). What is terrorism?. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 3(3), 161-175. Web.
Schwenkenbecher, A. (2012). What Is Terrorism?. In Terrorism: A Philosophical Enquiry (pp. 38-47). Palgrave Macmillan, London. Web.
Taylor, M. (2010). Is terrorism a group phenomenon?. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 15(2), 121-129. Web.
Snodgrass, D. W. (2020). Using community-focused policing to combat terrorism and counter violent extremism: A law enforcement toolkit. Web.