The importance of community engagement in effective policing first came to the forefront in the 1980s with the advent of community-oriented policing. Since then, community engagement and cooperation has become increasingly important and law enforcement agencies are using a multitude of innovative programs to engage with their communities.
Introduction
The community engagement is in the limelight due to its impact on different community stakeholders. The community engagement indicates the group of people working together to meet the common goals of the community. Interestingly, the community engagement is triggered by the community development process, which ultimately creates long-term benefits.
Why community relationships are imperative to effective policing
Law enforcement agencies in the country are enhancing the visibility of community engagement through interactions and collaborations. For effective policing, the leaders in the law enforcement agencies intend to derive information, build trust and conduct the collaborative efforts to enable peace, development, and protection. As far as the effective policing in the community are concerned, the law enforcement departments have considered the community engagement as a big source for information (Worldbank.org, 2016).
How administration of a criminal justice organization is made easier with positive community partnerships
The criminal justice organization takes the benefits of the positive community relationships. The relationship with the community members helps the organizations to set the goals to ensure the public safety in an effective and lucrative manner. In the criminal justice, the administration can make an appropriate process flow through information. In the criminal justice organization formation, it seems easy to contain the data-based predictive policing. Obviously, through positive relations, people will be assertive to provide information to the organizations to stop, detain and rescue. The positive communicate partnership eliminates the traditional policing system in the community, and the administration of criminal justice organizations seems forceful to execute the strategies, based on derived data (Worldbank.org, 2016).
Four Current Community Relations Programs
1-Community Walks Richmond
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Program Summary
The program has been designed by the police department to walk in the streets to examine or evaluate the social conditions and meet people to obtain the issues. This program provides the opportunity to meet people door to door to derive the actual description of the security condition. The purpose is to accelerate the relations with local residents through weekly meetings and revisit the security plans and strategies (Richmond.ca, 2017).
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Police-Community Relation Improvement
This program improves the community relations, as regular visits to the streets strengthen the relations with people. Police officers and residents use to know each other, and accordingly, they do not depict the reluctance to reveal the information. Through this program, people are quite open and broad to share information (Richmond.ca, 2017).
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Measures of Success
The measure of success is that a police officer must know all locations, sittings, and residents in the area. People use to share the personal information, and the big measure of success is catching the culprits by using this information. Another big measure of the success of this program is the open communication of residents with the police departments, which is a big data source (Richmond.ca, 2017).
2-Community-Police Council
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Program Summary
The community police council is consisting of different representatives from several sectors. For Instance, the representatives from local government, community agencies, youth group churches, and law enforcement are part of this community program. The purpose of this community program is to identify the loopholes in the society and eliminate the crimes and disorders. This council is an effective community relations program, which not only builds the trust but also develops the ability to contain the open communications (Cabq.gov, 2017).
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Improves Police-Community Relations
This program improves the relationship through collaborations of different representatives. Interestingly, the administration is looking to facilitate the engagements in different aspects, which makes people assertive in meeting with each other. In addition, the law enforcement representatives often intend to change the perceptions of people, which also motivate people to sustain the relationship and contribute accordingly (Cabq.gov, 2017).
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Measures of Success
The pertinent success measure of community police council is immediate information to take actions. The law enforcement agency can have a contact with each stakeholder, and immediately, they can provide the response to face any uncertainties. People according to guidelines of representatives use to take actions at their won end, and this is a big success measure (Cabq.gov, 2017).
3-Community Service, Columbia Heights
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Program Summary
This community service is prominent in Columbia, which has also justified the purpose community engagement objectives. In the programs, all police officers must have to spend 10 hours in the community services. For examples, class shattering, dividing food, participating in events and open hours with the residents are several activities, which make this program different from other community engagement initiatives. This is a remarkable approach to engage with the community members and produce the results (Prather, 2013).
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Improves Police-Community Relations
Community service, Columbia Heights is a good initiative by the police department to engage with people and retain and sustain the relation for a long run. For Instance, the police officer has to choose his interest or group of people. People contain the positive perceptions t through these volunteer services. People feel free to chat with the officers and share different issues in society as far as the security and disorder are concerned. In addition, on the other hand, the police officer can also sustain good relations through sharing the personal experience when performing duties for people (Prather, 2013).
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Measures of Success
The measure of success is the confidence in people, which evolved with the passage of the time. Moreover, when a police officer depicts the interest to integrate with people, he actually wants to be assertive in developing the relationship in that particular era. Thus, a big measure of success is the intention of police officers, as comparatively, this community engagement has been observed with the perspective of law and enforcement agencies (Prather, 2013).
4-Citizen Police Academy
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Program Summary
Citizen Police Academy has been developed to increase the collaborations between general public and police officers. The main purpose of this program is to have informed citizens. It is an effective community engagement initiative to create better relations with people and let them know the legalities when dealing with different things in the community. Valuable information of people is good to make them informative and ethical in the society. It looks a special initiative for people to let them integrate with the new trends in the community. Due to change in the communities, some medications in-laws should be communicated. Successfully, citizen police an academy is justifying the purpose to meet both, short and long-term goals (Gould, 2015).
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Improves Police-Community Relations
Citizen police academy programs have improved the relations through pertinent information. For Instance, the laws change with the passage of the time, and police officers reveal some new insights about the laws, which are benefits for people to get their rights. The relationship improves through continuous information on time, which also builds trust, loyalty, and satisfaction. In addition, this program helps the community members to make collaborative and better decisions. Through sharing information, the law enforcement organizations intend to build the community it and enable the long-term sustainability (Gould, 2015).
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Measures of Success
The measure of the success of this program is quite different due to the uniqueness of the program. Interestingly, activities of people in the community is a biggest a measure. According to the information, people conduct different activities, which are pertinent to law, ethics, and responsibilities. Usually, people in the community do not a have awareness of law, security and its implications. However, through this program, people are quite aware of it. Another, the key measure is a growth of people in the community. People have to carry different activities according to law. It seems worthy to act in the community legally an ethically, as chances of growth are usually high through this considerations. Therefore, growth and activity are two key measures of this effective program (Gould, 2015).
Conclusion
In end, this is to conclude that the community engagement is an integral part of effective policing in the communities. Law enforcement agencies or organizations are depicting on the community engagement program or initiatives to obtain the data and engage people in different decisions for the betterment of the community. Community and law enforcement agencies work together to meet the goals. Obviously, the primmest reduction has been seen due to these initiatives. In this study, main aspects were the community engagement, community relationship, intention of criminal justice organizations, and several community-related programs. The community program, which, discussed in the study are Community walks Richmond, Community Police Council, Community service, Columbia Heights, and Citizen Police Academy. Furthermore, these programs are linked with the summary, impact on relationship improvements and different measures of the success. In this modern community era, law enforcement agencies and people have to come closer to design new goals and implementation plans.
References
Cabq.gov. (2017, November 8). Community Policing Council. Retrieved from https://www.cabq.gov/police/community-policing-council
Gould, N. (2015, December 2). City’s initial Citizens’ Police Academy deemed a success. Retrieved from http://www.capitalgazette.com/bowie_bladenews/news/ph-ac-bb-academy-1203-20151202-story.html
Prather, S. (2013, January 15). Columbia Heights police officers get out into the community. Retrieved from http://www.startribune.com/columbia-heights-police-officers-get-out-into-the-community/186787621/
Richmond.ca. (2017, November 23). About Walk Richmond. Retrieved from https://www.richmond.ca/parksrec/sports/walkrichmond/walk.htm
Worldbank.org. (2016, January 12). Community Engagement Key to Success in Rural Development. Retrieved from http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2016/01/12/community-engagement-key-to-success-in-rural-development
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