What is the difference between traditional policing and community policing?

The Police Patrol is the backbone of the police organization, and plays an important role in protecting the interests of government, citizens, and businesses. Patrol officers have major responsibilities to maintain order, deter and prevent crimes, arrest criminals, respond to calls for service, and provide a sense of security for the community. These responsibilities need adequate resources to fulfill, but in the reality, all police departments have not, and will not be, given all needed resources. Police department chiefs are required to manage their department and do their best to serve their communities with the available resources. Budget constraint forces police chiefs to assess the needs of their communities and prioritize the services and problems most relevant to them. One of the most concerning issue to the community is crimes. Many people outside of the criminal justice have criticized the police department’s performance in combating crime. This has motivated researchers and police departments across the U.S. throughout the history to think out of the box and propose new patrol strategies. Although studies revealed that some proactive policing strategies have failed to generate positive impact on crime reduction, many others proved to be effective.

The Traditional Police Patrol Strategy in Fighting Crimes

For decades, police departments have adopted reactive policing as a strategy to fight crime and bring criminals to justice. Reactive policing involves responding to a crime or incident after it occurs. It encompasses an immediate response to calls, and follow-up investigations (Moore et al., 1988). Police patrols conduct routine or random preventative patrol until receiving a call to respond to a crime or incident. They try to arrive the crime scene in a short period in hope to catch the criminal in or around the crime scene. Upon arrival, they start a crime scene investigation, collect and preserve evidence, and work toward resolving the crime to achieve justice. Traditional thinking suggests that the mere presence of police vehicles will act as a deterrent to crime. Studies assert that routine or random preventative patrols have no impact on crime reduction or control. In fact, many people outside the police community including scholars criticized police tactics for being reactive rather than proactive.

Proactive Policing Strategies

In the past decades, many U.S. police departments begun to adopt proactive policing strategies to reduce and control crime. In the beginning, some police departments established special units to proactively address organized crime including drug dealing and juvenile misdemeanors (Moore et al., 1988). They relied on informants, covert surveillance, and undercover investigations to be proactive in fighting crimes. Since then, police experts and researchers have begun to propose other proactive police strategies. These strategies have been implemented in many police departments and have been tested by many scholars over the years. Proactive policing strategies generally fall under one of the following four approaches: (1) Place-Based Approach; (2) Problem-Solving Approach; (3) Person-Focused Approach; (4) Community-Based Approach.

Place-Based Approach

The place-based approach address crimes by directing police patrol resources to areas where crime is concentrated. This strategy aims to maximize police efforts and increase their presence in crime hotspot in order to deter crime and interrupt criminals who are about to commit crimes. This approach includes three strategies used to combat crime, including hotspot policing, predictive policing, and closed circuit television. In this article, hotspot policing will be discussed.

     I.         Hotspot policing

Hot spots policing is a strategy that address crime and disorder by focusing police resources and activities on small units of geography that have high rates of crime. Sherman and Weisburd developed this strategy in 1995 during the Minneapolis Hot Spots Patrol Experiment. The Experiment revealed that increasing police patrol presence in hot spots caused significant reduction on crime and disorder. Hotspot Policing is based on the premise that crimes and disorder do not exist equally in the neighborhood, but rather in small places. For decades, many studies reinforced the idea of crime concentrations in specific places. Weisburd et al. (2013) found that even in crime-ridden neighborhoods, crimes do not exist everywhere, but concentrated at a few discrete locations within these neighborhoods. The accumulation of evidence of crime concentration in a specific geographic area supports the police department's decision to focus its resources on crime hotspots, which will reduce operating costs, and effectively reduce crime rate. Hot policing is based on the deterrence and reduction of crime opportunities theory (Braga & Schnell, 2018). By increasing police presence in crime hot spots, police officers create deterrence to criminals who fear to be arrested, and thus, they become discouraged to exploit crime opportunities.

Police departments can use a range of proactive policing interventions such as problem-oriented policing, and direct patrol. Hot spot policing does not identify specific policing strategies, rather it focuses on places where crime occurs. The police department determines the most effective interventions that need to be applied in crime hotspots. The crime hot spots policing proved to be an effective strategy in crime prevention due to the strong positive results it gives in many studies and experiments conducted by researchers throughout the years. A recent comprehensive review conducted by Braga et al., (2019) encompassed sixty-five studies containing 78 tests of hot spots policing interventions concluded that Hot spots policing made crime reduction without displacing crime into surrounding locations. It also found that the strategy was more effective in drug offences, disorder, property crime and violent crime.

Problem-Solving Approach

The primary objective of the problem solving approach is to solve recurring problems to prevent future crimes. By adopting this method, the police department cooperates with the community to identify and analyze community problems, and formulate the most appropriate response measures to solve these problems. To gain positive results from using this approach, a police department must gain a deep understanding of the inherent problems in the community in which it serves. Effective understanding of the problems helps the police department to select the best interventions to eliminate the root causes of these problems. This approach includes two policing strategies: problem-oriented policing and third party policing. In this article, only problem-oriented policing will be discussed.

  II.         Problem-Oriented Policing

The Problem oriented policing (POP) is a problem-solving strategy aims to identify and analyze the underlying problems, and devise tailored strategies to resolve these problems. Once the response is implemented, the police department needs to assess the impact of the implemented strategy on the problem (Goldstein, 2018). POP was best explained through the SARA model of problem solving. The model contains for steps: (1) Scanning to identify the problem; (2) Analyzing the root causes of the problem; (3) Selecting suitable solutions to address the problem, and (4) assesses the impact of the implemented solutions, and adjust the responses when needed. The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) in the U.S. Department of Justice has incorporated this strategy into its community-oriented policing program. The POP was described by The 2004 NRC report (2004) as a promising approach to deal with crime, disorder, and fear of crime.

Taylor and colleagues conducted one of the good studies that generated a positive result in crime reduction by using the POP in 2011. In this study, police officers implemented 283 problem-solving measures, including improving the security measures and business practices, providing social services, removing physical barriers in the community, and building relationships with community members. The study revealed that during the 90-day evaluation period after the intervention, street violence incidents were reduced by 33% (Taylor et al., 2013). The police officers analyzed the causes of crimes and provided solutions to prevent future crimes. A recent review made by Hinkle and his colleagues in 2020 included 39 studies on POP conducted between 2006 and 2018, revealed that the POP had significant impact on crime reduction reaches 33.8%. The review also concluded that there is no evidence of major crime displacement due to the use of the POP. However, POP was found to be ineffective in terms of fear of crime, legitimacy and collective effectiveness (Hinkle et al., 2020). These studies show the advantages of using the POP as means of reducing crimes. Combining this strategy with other methods will increase the impact on crime reduction. For example, a police department can use the POP in conjunction with the hot spots policing. This practice will maximize the police deterrence, and solving causes of problems, which will lead to a more effective result than using the POP alone.

Focused Deterrence Approach

The Focused deterrence approach is a policing strategy that aims to reduce and prevent crime by focusing on criminals with high crime rates to deter them and force them to change their behavior. This approach was originated in the 1990s in a problem-oriented policing initiative to address youth-gang gun violence in Boston (Scott, 2017). It stems from the deterrence theory of crime, which asserts that the fear of being caught discourages offenders from committing crimes. Person-Focused Approach includes two strategies: Offender-Focused Deterrence and Stop, Question and Frisk. Offender-Focused Deterrence will only be discussed in this article.

 III.         Person-Focused Deterrence Approach

The Person-Focused Deterrence Approach is a strategy that aims to address crimes by monitoring and communicating directly with high rate offenders to force them change their behaviors and deter them from committing more crimes. Many of the focused deterrence strategies use the “pulling levers” framework, which was pioneered in Boston as a problem-oriented policing project to eliminate gang violence in the 1990s (Braga & Weisburd, 2012). The police department does this in different ways, often by communicating clear incentives for compliance, consequences for continuing criminal activity, or offering help to change through social services. This strategy is gaining popularity among the U.S. police departments and is increasingly used to combat crimes committed by gangs, overt drug dealers, and individual repeat offenders. Police departments use official crime databases to identify high-risk offenders. Then, they conduct counseling sessions with them by call-in meetings or forums to deliver the police message of zero tolerance if they commit any more crimes. In the same time, the police officers offer help to encourage them to change their behavior, if they are ready to take this step.

Many studies were conducted to examine the impact of the Person-Focused Deterrence Approach on crime reduction. One of these studies is a rigorous review made by Braga and Weisburd in 2012. The review included eleven studies that examined focused deterrence interventions implemented in small, medium, and large U.S. cities. Among the eleven studies, ten studies reported significant crime reductions. In 2018, Braga and his colleagues, conducted a systematic review on focused deterrence strategies in 24 studies published from 2001 to 2015, and their review suggests that focused deterrence strategies may generate impact on crime reduction, especially violent crime. They recommend that policy makers and practitioners must continuously implement these strategies to control serious crime problems (Braga et al., 2018).

Community-Based Approach

The community-based approach seeks to enlist community members and gain their cooperation to work jointly in identifying community problems, resolving these problems, and increasing the public safety (Community Policing Consortium, 1994). This approach do not specify police tactics in resolving crimes, and thus other policing strategies can be used under this approach. In essence, community-based approach emphasizes the need of the community participation, collaboration, and partnership in preventing crimes. This approach aims to open a line of communication between the police and the community including (businesses, residents, schools, and other sectors) to gain allies in working to reduce crimes and increase the feeling of security in the community. Community-oriented policing, procedural justice policing, broken windows policing are three policing strategies under the community-based approach. This article discusses only community-oriented policing and broken-window policing.

 IV.         Community-Oriented Policing

The Community-Oriented Policing aims to allow the police and the community members work collectively for reducing crime and disorder in the community. This collective work examines the main problems the community faces and identifies appropriate problem-solving responses (Community Policing Consortium, 1994). In order to establish and maintain an effective community-policing program, a police department needs to adjust its organization structure, and modify its policies. Police patrol operations should be re-planned to ensure police officers patrol small, well-defined geographic areas. Police officers must develop strong relationships with the community in their area of patrolling. This can be achieved by organizing or attending community meetings and forums and get to know many people as they can. This method has been tested, but there is no research showing evidence that using it has a positive effect on reducing crime (National Academy of Sciences, School of Engineering, and School of Medicine, 2018). In addition, it should be noted that this method uses other police strategies, including problem-solving methods, hot spots policing, and other strategies. Therefore, any positive results can be attributed to these strategies. However, this does not mean this approach cannot benefit the police. Community policing is still important because it can improve the police’s image on the eyes of community members, strengthen the relationship between the police and the community, and help police obtain information that helps them implement other proactive policing strategies.

   V.         Broken-windows Policing

The Broken Window Theory is a community-based approach attempts to control crimes by eliminating physical and social disorders. James Wilson and George Kelling put this theory forward in 1982. They believed that untreated minor crimes/physical and social disorders would cause more problems and create a suitable environment for more serious crimes. The main goal of the broken window theory is to maintain order by eliminating misdemeanors including public drinking, prostitution, and drug use, and removing physical disorder signs such as graffiti, broken windows, and abandoned property. The theory assumes that physical and social disorders increase fear in the neighborhood and force residents to stay away from the street to avoid becoming victims. Over times, minor crimes spread and turn to more serious crimes (Kelling & Wilson, 2020).

In this approach, the police use formal and informal interventions, ranging from mere warnings to arrests and citations. The police may use other policing strategies in conjunction with the broken windows method. However, the most severe strategy that the broken windows approach uses is the “zero tolerance,” which is an aggressive policing tactic aims to disrupt social disorders by arresting those committing misdemeanors to prevent crime. Many studies have been conducted to test the impact of broken windows on crime, but in general, the results of these studies have been mixed. Facts have proved that aggressive police tactics aimed at increasing the arrest of people who committed minor crimes have not had a valuable impact on the control and reduction of crime.

Conclusion

Many police departments adopt proactive policing strategies to reduce and control crime. While some proactive policing strategies have failed to generate positive impact on crime reduction, many others proved to be effective. Each police department should examine the community problems and needs in order to be able to choose the best strategies to fight crimes in their community. The police departments need to strengthen their relationship with their communities to get their ''buy in'' and cooperation in crime prevention efforts. The police departments will need to hear from the community and listen to their concerns and problems, and collectively work to resolve these problems. Before selecting any proactive policing approach, a police department should do their best to analyze and understand the problems in the community, then identify the most suitable tactics to resolve these problems. It is very important that the police department monitors and reviews the impact of the selected policing approach and makes adjustments when needed to improve its work in preventing crime.

References

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Photo Credit

McGlinchy, A. (2021, August 27). After two Austin police officers die from Covid, department can only guess how many members are vaccinated. KUT Radio, Austin's NPR Station. Retrieved December 2, 2021, from https://www.kut.org/covid-19/2021-08-27/after-two-austin-police-officers-die-from-covid-department-can-only-guess-how-many-members-are-vaccinated.

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