Community Policing and Anti-terrorism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Community Policing and Anti-terrorism - Essay Example The essay will attempt to link some of these agencies with the police department, community policing strategies and antiterrorism efforts. (Abrams, 2003) Community policing attempts to foster partnerships solve problems and transform organizations. One cannot underestimate the potential that community policing represents in terms of preventing crime. This is because community policing embraces all the stakeholders involved in crime prevention and it is also instrumental in dealing with the after effects of crime. Proactive policing is an issue that has gained a lot of acceptance in current policing practice. Research conducted in the late nineties indicated that this practice has increased by a whooping thirty percent. One would assume that such figures ill only increase with the passage of time. However, after a dramatic event such as the September eleventh attacks, it the police department was under pressure to adopt more conventional policing strategies. However, ignoring community policing strategies in terrorism prevention will be the wrong way to go because of the following reasons. First of all, community policing is a proactive strategy. It places more emphasis on prevention rather than response to crimes already committed. Furthermore community policing allows citizens and government agencies to participate in crime prevention by collaborating with the police. ... It usually moves away from a hierarchycal structure because this will slow down decision making problems and it will also reducing accountable. Instead, community policing fosters horizontal integration. Here, members of the organization; even those located in the lowest levels are given the mandate to make their own decisions. Normally, specific officers are given a specific area in their community. Cultural and geographical differences between the officers and the community must not be too intense in order to facilitate cooperation between the two parties. By bringing law enforcement closer to the community, the police department is empowered in the process of crime prevention. There are four main steps involved in problem solving and these are as follows; Scanning Analysis Response Assessment In the scanning phase, police asses what are the likely problems facing the community. Afterwards, there is a need to examine what could be the possible causes of those problems hence the analysis stage. Thereafter, there is a need to come up with solutions to these underlying causes; this constitutes the response phase. Afterwards, police are supposed o examine how effective their strategies were in dealing with the problem. It should be noted that these steps can become a cycle because whenever the last step is completed, there will be a need to make some changes in all the other stages too. It should be noted that community policing is quite advantageous because it takes account of the fact that the police my have some inadequacies when dealing with crime. They may not be fully aware of all the issues affecting a community or they may not have the ability to make use of all the resources necessary in