Even Though Traditional Policing Week 7 Discussio

• Offer an additional strength or limitation of traditional policing.
• Offer an additional strength or limitation of community-oriented policing.
• Offer additional resources to support or refute your colleague’s position.

Respond to Stephen as if you’re having a conversation with him. A few sentences and a question

Typically, traditional policing involves police officers patrolling the community and answering to calls while locating crimes that already happened or are deemed to occur within the given community. Ideally, the officers would simply respond to the situations that have occurred or are developing thus making this to be purely reactive (Braga, Papa Christos & Hureau, 2014).

Police officer/s assumes a position of authority over community members
and is solely responsible for maintaining peace within the community.
On the other hand, community policing differs from traditional policing
in that, it is both reactive and proactive. It involves the
collaboration of police officers and community members to share the
responsibility of maintaining peace within the community. Additionally,
officers in this given model are less authoritative over community
members with the main goal of serving the community rather than
controlling it.

The two models of policing come with their benefits and limitations
which determine their appropriateness in solving various problems with
the community. Community policing for starters benefits the community by
reducing fear among citizens due to an increase in police presence in
the neighborhood, which ideally helps police gain trust from the
community (Schaefer, 2010).

At the same time, community policing is flexible hence, its
strategies can change to help solve a community problem effectively. One
major limitation of community policing is linked to trust from the
community in the sense that, with no trust, any program by community
policing will not succeed. Likewise, traditional policing has limited
benefits accrued to its reactive nature, which does not require
community trust to handle situations. It is the most common model used
by policing that utilizes specialized units to handle various crimes and
solve problems. However, its main disadvantage is that it produces
fewer solutions to the problems and does not guarantee the elimination
of the problem. Its reactive nature likewise leaves a gap for an
unexpected incident to occur that can injure the community concerned.

With regards to addressing specific issues such as street gangs and
meeting the multicultural needs of the community, both types of policing
models serve a better purpose. However, since an issue like street
gangs requires long-term results, the advantages of community policing
make this type of model to be the most effective approach. Even though
traditional policing would eliminate street gangs for a shorter course,
it does fully meet the needs of the multicultural community and hence
utilizing community policing would be appropriate. Having established
trust within the community, the police and community members can work
together and uproot the specific people driving street gangs in the
community and thereby a long-term solution would be met.

References.

Braga, A. A., Papachristos, A. V., & Hureau, D. M. (2014). The
effects of hot spots policing on crime: An updated systematic review and
meta-analysis. Justice quarterly, 31(4), 633-663.

Schaefer Morabito, M. (2010). Understanding community policing as an innovation: Patterns of adoption. Crime & Delinquency, 56(4), 564-587.