The past trends of policing have not changed a whole lot as far as the job. The job of policing is still to protect their community. Some of the ways that it has been done is community policing and problem solving policing. In the past, police officers used different types of policing such as the watchman, the Watchman had the responsibility to protect their towns. The watchman would work together and communicate with each other to protect their towns. The present day trends have not changed a whole lot but the way information is gathered and technology has changed the way policing has been done in the past. Things like the use of mug shots, fingerprinting and the use of DNA to solve crime has made a huge impact on policing. Today we see more community involvement from policing, we see officers doing such programs as D.A.R.E. to help prevent future use of drugs or getting involved in community watch programs to help stop crime in communities. We also see more use of video cameras to help record crimes happening. As for the future of policing, we will never really know what it has in store for us, but we can predict that technology in fighting high tech crimes and more of an outreach to the communities from law enforcement will be used to help with the future of policing and the enforcement of the laws in our society.
References http://policecrunch.com/2011/06/26/past-present-and-future-of-law-enforcement/