What Is Community Oriented Policing

Neighborhood-Oriented Policing as I understand it is the second from of policing that makes up the whole community-oriented policing process. This part of the process is where the community gets together and creates a committee to address the concerns of the community about the criminal and order maintenance issues that is going on in the community. There are four programs that make up neighborhood-oriented policing. The first program being community patrols. Community patrols are very important as it allows the police to be seen working the streets and more accessible to the community. This helps keep crime down because the more you see a police officer in an area the less likely a criminal would be trying to commit a crime in that area for fear they will get caught by the police. Today this
program is more in cars than on foot but in the earlier days it was on foot. It shifted to cars when cars started becoming popular because it allowed for a quicker response time than they had on foot. In some bigger cities you will see they still have a few foot patrol police officers but most are in cars now. The second program is community crime prevention.
My understanding of this program is that it puts the prevention of crime in the community’s hands. The way it does this is with the community have having programs such as neighborhood watch home security survey. Of course the community still has to work with the police for these programs to work. Especially the security survey because this one requires for an officer to be sent out to your home and go over with you ways you can prevent your home to be less of a target to criminals. The third program is the communication program. This program helps the police to connect with the community by showing them who the police are and things they can do within the community to help out. There are a few ways they do this but the one that sticks out to me in particular is the ride along program. I myself have done this. It really is a good way for the people in the community to see what the police do so they know more how they can help. It also allows the police to connect on a different level with the minority groups in the community to let them know they are there for them as well. The last program is community social control
program. This program allows for the police to work with the community to either establish or reestablish control in the community by the community. It does this by giving the community the help to stand up and fight for what’s right and not laydown to crime. One way they might do this is by having some officers buy a house and move into a damaged community. This will give that community a sense of security and be more willing to start trying to turn things around and clean up the streets.