Community and Problem Solving Policing

BY
Nina Tubbs

In 1988, the National Institute of Justice and Harvard produced a series of monographs. These monographs discussed community policing, problem-oriented policing, police values, and corporate strategies of policing. Corporate strategies for policing are presently guiding U.S. policing in strategic policing, community policing, and problem-solving policing. Strategic policing involves a continued reliance on traditional police operations, but with an increased emphasis on crimes that are not generally well controlled by traditional policing. Strategic policing also represents an advanced stage of traditional policing using innovative enforcement techniques.   Community policing is an attempt to involve the community as an active partner with the police in addressing crime problems in the community. Community policing mandates that the police work with the community, not against it, to be effective. The most important benefits of community policing are more realistic acknowledgment of police functions with recognition of the interrelationships among police functions. The acknowledgment of the limited capacity of the police to accomplish their jobs on their own and of the importance of an alliance between the police and the public and less dependence on the criminal justice system and
more emphasis on new problem-solving methods. Community policing greatly increased use of the knowledge gained by the police of their assigned areas with more effective use of personnel with the increased awareness of community problems as a basis for designing more effective police response. Community policing seeks to replace our traditional methods of police patrol with joint community and police efforts to find proactive, innovative solutions to crime and disorder on our streets.   Problem- solving policing forces the police to focus on the problems that cause the incidents. The problem-oriented policing strategy consists of four distinct parts: scanning, analysis,...