Based on your reading assignment and by web research using the COPS library, explain how community-oriented policing is an approach toward crime that addresses the underlying causes of crime and endeavors to apply long-term problem solving to the issues through improved police-community partnerships and communication. How is this possible when the average tenure of a police chief is just over three years? Will top management changes derail long-term partnerships?

Reading Assignment

For several decades, police chiefs and academics throughout the United States have discussed changes in the traditional methods of policing and have explored new ways of accomplishing the police mission. Corporate strategies are these alternative methods to accomplish the police mission. The National Institute of Justice and Harvard produced a series of monographs that have shaped the current state of police thinking. These monographs discussed community policing, problem-oriented policing, police values, corporate strategies of policing, crime and policing, policing and the fear of crime, the history of policing, police accountability, and drugs and the police. Harvard's Executive Sessions on Policing identified three corporate strategies that are presently guiding U.S. policing: (1) strategic policing, (2) community policing, and (3) problem-solving policing. This type of policing uses a nontraditional approach that emphasizes how crime is caused by underlying social problems and attempts to deal with those underlying problems rather than just responding to each criminal incident. Problem-solving or problem-oriented policing seeks to solve problems and have an outcome. An example of problem-solving policing would be police painting over graffiti. If left alone, the presence of graffiti could contribute to further crimes. Once the graffiti is removed, the likelihood of similar crimes would diminish. Research on the effectiveness of community-oriented policing has yielded mixed results. Many experts are not overly enthusiastic about community policing. A concern that has been raised by some law enforcement leaders is whether the activities officers are engaging in under the umbrella of community policing (recreational roles, tutoring roles, social work roles) are the type of activities that law enforcement officers should be doing. The actual practitioners have many concerns about these issues as well.

Reading Assignment

The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) is compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Police departments all over the country send in reports to the FBI concerning their jurisdiction. These reports reflect only reported crimes. The National Institute of Justice also issues a report on crime. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a random sample of U.S. households, asking them if a crime was committed against anyone in the household during the prior six months. This survey hopes to find out about crimes that were not reported to the police. There is considerable debate on which of these two reports reflects the true crime rate. According to the case of Delaware v. Prouse (1979), a police officer may not just randomly stop a vehicle. Stops must be made either on probable cause of a violation or on some reasonable suspicion. There are exceptions, which include roadblock checks where officers check every vehicle that goes through. Police officers get hunches about things routinely. Remember that police officers are extremely suspicious even when there is nothing to be suspicious about. A

reasonable suspicion is when an officer can articulate in words or writing why he or she is suspicious. With a hunch, the officer only has a feeling and nothing to corroborate it. This is a misconception brought about due to television. The Miranda warning only relates to interrogations. Many times arrests are made and no Miranda warning is given. The reason for this is because the police officer does not intend to ask the suspect questions. Many times the detectives are the ones who question the suspects. So the answer is no, a case is not dismissed because a police officer did not read a suspect the Miranda warning.

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