Introduction
Enhanced partnership between police officers, community residents, activists and other public agencies have been significant in crime management, with statistics showing that community policing have capacity to control crime.
Community policing is favored by the increased crime rates motivating community engagement, police allocating resources and communities’ plurality of deliberations making a crime to be prevented in multiple ways. Crimes such as robbery and burglary can be effectively controlled before and when being committed. There was significant crime reduction in San Fernando Valley by 1993, this is 18 months after innovation of community policing in Los Angeles. For example homicide declined by 5% after 17% increase in 1991, rape case dropped by 14% compared to previous increase of 15%. In Devonshire Division, community policing have been in the right direction with statistics showing small increase in crime e.g. robbery cases were up by 11% compared to 1991 when robbery cases increased by 66% .the same applies to North Hollywood Division where robbery increased by 16% and West Valley by 7% . Since police devoted their energies in partnership with community control programs in Van Nuys division, robberies declined by 15%, “compared to a 39% increase from 1990 to 1991”(Meyer 2) .Community policing have organizational decentralization programs which are policy oriented ,e.g. jeopardy program where police partner with the youths potential of joining gang, this help to reduce truancy, gang involvement, violent or inappropriate behavior .The youths improve their conflict resolution with the restorative justice having a follow -through collective obligation of compliance to victim- offender agreements.
Reduction, small increase or constant crime rates after innovation of community policing shows effectiveness of community policing e.g. burglaries declined in foothill as it remained fairly constant in west valley; however there was small increase of 4% in Devonshire and 10% in Van Nuys with reported cases of homicide significantly declining in North Hollywood and Devonshire even though it increased by 24% in the West Valley and Van Nuys due to increase in gang violence. There were 21 homicide crime committed in west valley unlike the previous year which had 17 homicides. This help to dispel the notion that community policing could predispose residents to more crime due to minimal police patrol and slow response when crime is committed.
Curbing crime needs proactive and interactive collaboration between police and community residents. This will reduce police brutality which may instigate further crime, improve public confidence in police, enhance public and police cooperation in scanning, analyzing, responding and assessing crime prevalence. Calling for Crucial strategies like foot patrols, door to door visits, meetings, education, store front ministrations and neighborhood watch groups.
Work Cited
Meyer Josh “Study Finds Drop in Some Major Crimes: Statistics: Community policing is partly credited for the reduction in serious offenses.”Los Angeles Times, January 8th 1993.Web, 27th March 2013. < http://articles.latimes.com/1993-01-08/local/me-924_1_community-policing-program/2>
