Community Policing History

History of Public Policing

Community policing as it related to communication with the public has existed in some content of the early since the 1930’s (Fisher-Stewart, 2007). It was during the 1960’s with the focal point of the Civil Rights Era, that the police-citizen crisis began and research was initiated to ascertain the core of the problems involving policing and the community (American Law & Legal Information, n.d). It was is in response to the civil unrest that existed during this period that President Lyndon B, Johnson appointed a commission of nineteen(19) people to study the American criminal justice system with the directive of fighting crime and repair the
The primary goal of agencies is to create the problem-solving mechanism to address the unilateral needs of both the community and the policing agencies that police them. It is important that police managers and leaders focus on aligning various components of criminal justice organizational and the alignment of management, personnel, and communication and information systems necessary for supporting community partnerships. It is important that they create problem-solving units that will aid with identifying the problems that the community and the policing agency are experiencing and evaluate and develop effective responses to these problems. Developing a relationship of mutual trust and respect between the police agencies and the communities they serve are vital for maintaining public safety and effective community policing. Policy management and first line officer must take the lead in imitating interagency collaboration and community relations. They must play an active role within the agencies in building the Police-Community Relationship and focus on being proactive as well as reactive. A few recommendations are as
There are various factors that contribute to why communities do not trust police department and some of these reasons have evolved from historical relationship communities have had with their police departments. As of 2016, according to a Gallup Poll, public confidence or trust in the police is at 56%, (Gallup, 2016) with the bulk of the distrust coming from minority communities. Many of these problems stem from a series of occurrence where crimes against blacks have increased, such as in Ferguson and St Paul (Funke & Susman, 2016) where unarmed black men were killed by police. Community distrust does not solely stem from the policing agencies but other criminal justice agencies such as the judicial system have some attribution the distract and break down of the police department/community relationship(Cannon, 2013). The media also plays a significant factor in how public trust is perceived as well. Some news agencies, both local and national, are quick to report inaccurate of incomplete information with attempts to influence public perception with no regards to the overall effect it has on law enforcement (Forte, 2015). In addition, the use of camera phone and social media also poses a significant problem with public perception and building community trust. Many of the policy agencies, in some case, are not fully equipped to counter these negative perceptions