Seminar 2 community policing PDF

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Community policing: rhetoric or reality? Seminar Seminar reading summary Based on finding from 3 studies in Scotland between 2009 and 2012. 1) The Strathclyde Community Intelligence Project - gathered community level intelligence through interviews with the public by community police officers. They aimed to determine which crimes had the strongest ‘signal’ aka what caused community anxiety. They did this through • the training of police analysts and community police officers in the signal crimes approach and in the use of the software; • collecting information on signals – using the software – by sampling a selection of community-members in two geographic areas. Both areas were located within the same Strathclyde police division; • analysing the information collected to produce two community profile reports. The results - locational concerns rather than problem specific. Low level incidents were a concern e.g. litter, youths hanging around and threatening behaviour, although underpinning these issues in both subareas were concerns with drug dealing and more serious public violence. 2) The Glasgow Project - studied police reform in Glasgow, emphasis on an Inebriated Service Delivery Model which aims to bring community policing and response policing closer. A small exploratory project focused on the impact of the recession on policing, based in three police stations within a different policing division. In particular it examined how community and response police officers were adapting to a range of organisational changes, all of which were driven in part by the need to police more efficiently. In addition to reviewing relevant police policy documentation, the study involved 20 in-depth semistructured interviews with a purposively selected sample of police staff of mixed ranks and different lengths of service.

3) The Edinburgh Project - a knowledge exchange project with Edinburgh police which involved observational research with community police officers and developed a KE forum known as the Edinburgh Police Research and Practice Group. Had to understand what CP actually ‘was’ in practice, and this required us to undertake research. This took various forms e.g. focus group meetings with different interested constituencies of police officers, individual interviews with officers, a Dictaphone Diary interviews with CP practitioners to explore the detail of their working lives through their own words. Seminar questions Define community. Think about who is in it, how big an area, how identifiable, what makes it a community etc. What problems do you face in defining it? Define community policing? What is it? How carried out? Who involved? Does it map on to your definition community above? How? How can its success and / or failings be assessed? What issues are associated with it (conceptual, practical etc)? Why has community policing become a popular idea in the last 20 years? What role, if any, might public perceptions of the police play in establishing community policing approaches? Why might community policing be viewed negatively by police officers in relation to their role and function (crime fighters) and what might officers think about public involvement in crime prevention? How does community policing fit within the current policing in austerity crisis (reduced resources)?...