Community Policing
Community policing is a philosophy, management style, and organizational design that promotes proactive problem solving and police-community partnerships to address the causes of crime and fear as well as other community issues. With rising concerns about violence, drugs, and crime, citizen collaboration with the police is increasingly seen as the most effective way to safeguard lives, neighborhoods, and cities. Community policing in Pacific Grove represents a shift from reactive, incident-driven police service to a more proactive, problem-solving approach.
Community policing is based on the premise that partnerships between police and citizens will help increase public safety and reduce crime. A seemingly simple concept, community policing will actually require a complex and challenging mix of changes to our police department’s organizational culture and structure. These changes will need to be combined with innovative approaches to fighting or preventing crime that may call for extensive community cooperation, planning, and outreach.
Community policing is built on the twin foundations of community building and problem solving. Community policing not only expands the roster of problems in which the police become involved, it expands the range of options that officers can use to solve problems, from short-term solitary interventions to long-term collaborative, community-based problem solving.
One of the core elements of community policing is solving problems. Whether through innovative new solutions or simply the judicious execution of proven strategies. The commitment to community policing in Pacific Grove is a shift for the whole organization, not the creation of a special unit or program. This new philosophy on policing reassesses who is responsible for public safety and redefines the roles and relationships between our police department and our community. Community policing requires shared ownership, shared decision making, and shared accountability.
Problem solving refers to a process of identifying problems and priorities in Pacific Grove through coordinated community-police needs assessments; collecting and analyzing information concerning the problem and developing or facilitating responses that are innovative and tailor-made with the best potential for eliminating or reducing the problem.
Community policing is a management style that embraces a collaboration between community stakeholders and the police department for the shared goal of a providing a safe community in which to live and efficient use of our available resources.
Community-Oriented Government
Community policing must share strategies and the skills, expertise, and resources of other community and government agencies to be effective and resolve mutual problems. Fundamental causes and conditions that create community problems are many and complex; often, local problems can only be solved through cooperation among our city departments and other agencies. It is rare to see a community-based law enforcement problem in Pacific Grove for which the solution did not involve working with many different sectors, including politicians, policy-makers, community service groups, neighborhood associations, local businesses, parks and recreation departments, and transportation, health, and housing organizations. When communication across agency lines is well established, our city’s limited resources are more likely to be well applied, with minimum redundancy.
Ten Principles of Community Policing
- Philosophy and Organizational Strategy
- Commitment to Community Empowerment
- Decentralized and Personalized Policing
- Immediate and Long-Term Proactive Problem Solving
- Ethics, Legality, Responsibility and Trust
- Expanding the Police Mandate
- Helping Those with Special Needs
- Grassroots Creativity and Support
- Internal Change
- Building for the Future
