Components of Community Policing

  • Redefines the roles and relationship between the police and the community.
  • Requires shared ownership, decision making and accountability, as well as sustained commitment from both the police and the community.
  • Establishes new public expectations of and measurement standards for police effectiveness.
  • New standards include quality of service, citizen satisfaction, cultural sensitivity, and responsiveness to community defined issues.
  • Increases understanding and trust between police and community members. Promotes more contacts, greater communication, and information exchange.
  • Empowers and strengthens community-based efforts.
  • Requires greater flexibility to respond to emerging issues. Personnel and resources must be flexible to respond to problems identified through increased contacts and intelligence developed about current community problems.
  • Requires long-term, strategic planning to address underlying conditions that cause community problems.
  • Requires knowledge of available community resources and how to access and mobilize them, as well as an ability to develop new resources within the community.
  • Requires buy-in from the top management of the police and other local government agencies.
  • Requires internal philosophical support to promote risk taking, creativity and innovation, and a commitment to free officers' time and provide necessary resources.
  • Decentralizes police services, operations and management, and encourages innovative and creative problem-solving.
  • Empowers employees by giving them the authority and support to make decisions.