NCJ Number
127076
Journal
Atlantic Monthly Volume: 263 Issue: 2 Dated: (February 1989) Pages: 46-52
Date Published
1989
Length
7 pages
Annotation
Community-oriented policing means changing the daily work of the police to include investigating problems as well as incidents.
Abstract
Because of the gaps in the knowledge about both the results and the difficulties of community-oriented policing, it should not be accepted uncritically. However, the traditional model of police professionalism -- devoting resources to quick radio-car response to calls about specific crime incidents -- makes little sense at a time when the principal threats to public order and safety come from collective, not individual, sources, and form problems, not incidents. Even if community-oriented policing does not produce the dramatic gains that some of its more ardent advocates expect, it has indisputably produced one that officers who have been involved in it immediately acknowledge: it has changed their perceptions of the community. Where once police were dealing with "losers," in community policing they are dealing with good citizens and helping them solve problems.