Unit 9:New Directions for Police Psychology:

Community Policing

In this seminar, we will discuss the following:◦ Community policing from a psychological

viewpoint.◦ Impact on officers, the community, and on crime

as a whole. ◦ Discuss views on community policing and whether

you believe it is beneficial. ◦ Share experiences you may have had interacting

with a department that follows this approach, or working in a department with similar philosophies.

Seminar

Read Chapter 20, 21 and 22

Discussion Board

Project

Create a PowerPoint presentation consisting of 10-15 slides (not including the cover slide and reference slide), that describes the roles psychologists play in law enforcement. 

Scenario:  You are a police psychologist for a local sheriff's office that is going to implement a community policing model at the first of the year. The sheriff has asked you to assist in the transition, with both the administrators and officers.

Assignment: Community Policing and the Role of the Psychologist

• Explain the development of community policing, and identify the elements in the various models of community policing. 25

• As the police psychologist, explain your role in police selection for the community policing effort, training of those officers, and overall organizational development. How would you interact with the administrators in the new organizational structure of the agency? 25

• Discuss your role interacting with and providing services to the officers, including dealing with new forms of stress that they may experience and the concept of human reliability. 25

◦ Content (Answers All the Questions) 75◦ APA (A minimum of 3 academic references) 20◦ Organization (Intro, title slide, body and

conclusion) minimum of 10-15 slides – not including the cover and reference slides 25

◦ Grammar (Spelling, Sentence Structure, etc) 20◦ Neatness (Title page) 10

How would you define community policing in your own words?

Siegel & Senna (2006, p. 598) define community policing as

◦ “A law enforcement program that seeks to integrate offices into the local community to reduce crime and gain good community relations. It typically involves personalized service and decentralized policing citizen empowerment, and an effort to reduce community fear of crime, disorder and decay.”

Friedmann (1996, para. 6) states:◦ “Community policing is a policy and a strategy

aimed at achieving more effective and efficient crime control, reduced fear of crime, improved quality of life, improved police services and police legitimacy, through a proactive reliance on community resources that seeks to change crime causing conditions. This assumes a need for greater accountability of police, greater public share in decision making, and greater concern for civil rights and liberties.” 

Definitions Compared

Siegel & Senna• Integrate offices into the

local community • Reduce crime • Good community relations• Personalized service• Decentralized policing

citizen empowerment,• Reduce community fear of

crime, disorder and decay.

Friedmann• Effective and efficient crime

control• Reduce fear of crime• Improve quality of life, police

services and police legitimacy• Rely - community resources• Change crime causing

conditions.

DOJ defines CP as:

◦ “Community policing is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques, to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime.”

http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/files/RIC/Publications/e030917193-CP-Defined.pdf

“Philosophy of policing” based on police and community working together. (Trojanowicz & Bucquerous, 1990)

“Public health of police work” (Prothrow-Stitz and Weissman (1991)

“Working partnership” between police and public to prevent crime (Brown, 1992).

Since there is not a standard definition; there are many different forms of CP in departments.

◦ Philosophy ◦ Specific Community-Based Program◦ Unique Patrol: Foot Patrol◦ Specific Community Oriented Police Unit

Paradigm Shift◦ From We-They

Obstacles◦ Change Traditional Values of Policing◦ Community Political Leadership◦ No Central Core in Communities

Change police recruiting: ◦ Recent Attempts to Recruit Women ◦ Softer Approach to Crime Control

Consider yourself (DO NOT ANSWER QUESTIONS) This is NOT a debate..just think about

yourself

Your views on how to raise children Your views on death penalty Your views on religion Your views on abortion Your views of your favorite football team Your views of your least favorite football

team Your views on how to punish a criminal

Could you easily change your views on the topics I just mentioned?

Of course not!

We believe a certain way and have held these beliefs for years, many of them are handed down from our parents, our grandparents, who gained their views from their parents and grandparents and so on and so on.

Police Department Philosophy

Community Trust/Acceptance of Police

What Can Be Done to Change the Department?

Paradigm Shift◦ From We-They

Obstacles◦ Change Traditional Values of Policing◦ Community Political Leadership◦ No Central Core in Communities

Change police recruiting: ◦ Recent Attempts to Recruit Women ◦ Softer Approach to Crime Control

While over 60% of police agencies in the United States are either implementing or planning for community policing (Annan, 1995), actual implementation of community policing practices is disjointed and has produced more problems than solutions.

One such problem is the resistance among officers to the philosophy itself.

It is not at all uncommon for officers to have a negative orientation toward the COP philosophy. For example:◦ “Community policing is total *&^ and a

waste...We got a memo. It said that community police officers are supposed to respond to calls, generally, and engage in community policing in their zones. But they do not respond to calls. They only stay in their zones to do community policing (Dicker, 1998).”

Individual officer objections to the COP philosophy are one thing.

When combined with organizational resistance, however, they present an extraordinary challenge to the 78% of police chiefs who believe that COP should eventually be implemented on a department-wide basis (Annan, 1995).

When the federal government gives grant monies to departments they look for certain things

Idea of “Community Policing” sounded good to Feds

Immediately funds were set aside for police departments who implemented CP programs

Management didn’t necessarily support COP

Philosophy of traditional policing didn’t change simply because Feds offer monies

However, management wanted the funds…so they (perhaps half-heartedly) created One Unit.

CP policy is based on the Social Structure Theory

Intra-departmental changes

Inter-agency cooperation

The community, its needs, and its resources.

Structure Internal communications Police supervision Police deployment Recruitment Training Performance evaluation Reward structure

Departments needs to be more decentralized

Better deployment in the community and more effective use of officers and response to citizens and in building the network relations with citizens.

Flat rank structure; this will allow officers to continue good performance without necessarily aspiring for command positions, and it will improve the quality of police personnel in the field.

The use of more civilians in auxiliary and liaison functions will generate closer ties with the community as well as free officers to do police work.

Internal communications need to be exchanged at the lower level to break the relatively rigid chain of command and to improve the flow of information.

Police supervision should enhance interaction between all levels (officer-supervisor and officer-community) in order to expand the spans of responsibility of officers.

Proactive, preventive and community-oriented, in addition to (not instead of) reactive policing.

Should not replace reactive policing The two need to be there side by side as

there are incidents which require immediate reaction.

Police need to be involved in long-term preventive activities along with other service agencies and citizens alike.

Recruitment should emphasize higher educational levels and seek people-oriented, service/mediation-centered officers.

Many officers still join the force having in

mind adventure and the use of force.

Philosophy to “Get The Bad Guy”◦ Childhood games “Cops & Robbers”◦ Childhood game NOT “Work with Citizens”

A differential recruitment policy will change this image and will enhance the self-selection process to improve future police personnel.

Improve the likelihood of police to become a respected occupation and also enhance the likelihood that it will be equalized among other social services.

Training should expand on interpersonal skills and become more community-oriented.

This is particularly relevant as a relatively small proportion of the officer’s training is dedicated to such issues.

Officers' performance evaluation should emphasize measurable community-oriented activities (contacts, coordination, assistance)

Reward structure should acknowledge community oriented efforts, offer tangible salary raises and intangible recognition for performing accordingly.

Finally, it is important to have community policing adopted force-wide and not relegated to special units.

Interaction

Cross-jurisdictional cooperation

Super-Agency

Inter-agency cooperation should encourage increased scope and level of interaction between various agency levels (not only between department heads).

Agencies (police and other social services) should develop a better understanding as to what constitutes overall community needs and how they can, by working together, improve their response to those needs.

Agencies should have systematic information about the availability of resources and create a climate that rewards cross-jurisdictional cooperation and minimizes friction.

Agencies should provide incentives for cooperation at a comprehensive level.

The value of the Super-Agency is not merely in the development of partnerships but also in offering practical solutions to problems that may somehow not receive the proper attention from the services that are responsible for them.

This could be the coordination of utilities work in a city or the development of a working definition for the identification of health care need and criminal justice reaction in cases of physical and sexual child abuse.

This envisioned "Super-Agency" is the civic body most likely to effectively coordinate the matching of needs with services.

Acts as a dynamic liaison between citizens, social service agencies and law enforcement in an attempt to focus efforts to eradicate crime causing conditions in the community.

Not an additional bureaucracy but a coordinating "hands-on" implementation oriented body.

Only when law enforcement, other social service agencies and the community work together, through the "Super-Agency," will there be a chance that these concerted efforts will bring about the results we so much desire for.

Crime Mapping

Reliance on Communal Institutions

The Community• The improving of police and (coordination among)

other services to the community could go so far if nothing changes in the community itself.

• Social and ethnic tensions that result in group crime or immigration frictions that result in individual crime are but a few examples to the extent that even when services are available (and that is not be taken for granted) the underlying problems in the community continue to generate the conditions that breed criminal behavior.

In order to better handle community issues it is essential to increase the knowledge we have about the community.

There needs to be better mapping of crime as well as profiling of community populations, networks, problems, needs and available resources.

There needs to be far greater reliance on communal institutions such as the family, school, church, and various civic associations that will make participation in crime less acceptable than it is today.

There needs to be increased proactive planning and a climate supportive of wide-based coordination of community-oriented activities.

Oscar Lewis ◦ Culture of Poverty

William J. Wilson ◦ Truly Disadvantaged

Gunter Myrdal ◦ Underclass

Oscar Lewis ◦ Lewis coined the term culture of poverty to

describe apathy, cynicism, helplessness, and mistrust of social institutions such as schools, police and other government agencies.

◦ He argued the crushing lifestyle of slum areas produces a culture of poverty, which is passed through generations.

William J. Wilson - Truly Disadvantaged

◦ He describes members of the lowest level of the underclass in America as socially isolated individuals who live in the inner urban areas and are often victims of discrimination.

◦ Because the members of this group very seldom come into contact with the actual source of their oppression, they often target their anger at those they live next to.

Gunter Myrdal – Underclass His point is the members of this group do not

have the knowledge or skills to demand certain rights.

For example, if a parent is uneducated (is not aware of steps to take, does not know his child has the right to certain opportunities (special classes, testing) to school, does not have skills (reading, writing, math) then that parent will likely feel intimidated in dealing with the school on behalf of their child.

This could prevent this parent from going to school/parent meetings, from knowing their child has a reading disability, and even if they did know their child had a learning disability, would not know where to go to get help for their child.

In order to be effective CP:◦ Must be Department Wide◦ Must have police officers, managers, and city

leaders complete support◦ Must have community trust and support

No Seminar Next Week!

Please email me your plans for completing any missed work

All outstanding work must be completed no later than Saturday, January 22, 2011 at midnight.

You must send me an email AFTER you have completed ANY work to assure you get credit

It has been my pleasure to work with and get to know each of you!

Thank you for your hard work and commitment to your education and our class.

Look For Me….

CJ490 - 02

Research Methods in Criminal Justice

Thursday, 8:00PM