Community policing has been introduced to combat crime and to build a Essay

Community policing has been introduced to combat crime and to build a bridge between police and the public. Critically discuss the effectiveness of this model of policing in achieving these aims - Essay Example olitan Police believes, â€Å"One of the key principles of modern policing in Britain is that the police seek to work with the community and as part of the community† (web). As a strategy, community policing combats crime by creating a mutual relationship between the police force and the public (Kennedy, et al., 1990). Community policing promotes good relationship between public and police enabling them to report criminal acts to the police. This has resulted to decrease in crime rate in Britain. On the other hand, the police force can obtain important and crucial information from the public. Sir Robert Peel confirms that cooperation between the police and public determines the proportion of force that police require to combat crime (Nazemi, 2009). So far, community policing has made it possible for the British police to use less brutal force in combatting crime, at least in the residential areas. Although community policing has been effective in some areas, it has also failed to some extent due to failure of the community to cooperate. The public have always sympathized with the criminals especially when the criminals are family members. This reduces effectiveness of community policing (Farrington, 1994). The public has always seen the police as a public enemy and therefore declined to volunteer any helpful information in fear of victimization thereby reducing effectiveness of community policing (McKnight, 1995). Additionally, witnessing in murder and crime scene cases is quite hectic and involving. Sometimes these cases take years to solve. Criminals might threaten the public into witnessing against them. This makes the public to shy away from assisting the police in their efforts to do community policing hence compromising effectiveness of community policing. By closing the gap between the public and the police force community policing has enabled criminal to learn tactics applied by the police and this has resulted in an increase in crime (Clifford, 1998). In