An in-depth study into Community Oriented Policing (C.O.P) as a new and effective way of fighting crime
The paper analyzes the concept of community policing and examines how effective the strategy of community policing has been. It studies the guidelines on which the concept of community policing is based – the concept has forced the police departments to develop a friendly relationship with the law-abiding people in the community and to cooperate with them in several security and crime prevention related issues. The paper studies the approaches through which the police personnel are trained to deal with a wide array of situations and a range of behavioral problems. Finally it examines the effectiveness of C.O.P in different societal settings and analyzes the use of some other approaches to policing in situations where the concept does not seem to work effectively.
“The roots of community based policing can be dated back to the era of Sir Robert Peel, who adopted the system for the London Police department and who is considered to be the father of the modern Police system. According to him, the police should consider itself as a part of the general public and the public should also held itself accountable for certain police related activities. Though the concept of community policing was introduced in that time but it didn’t succeeded because of a number of reasons. The primary reason for its failure at that time was that the police department itself lost sight of the principles defined by Sir Robert Peel i.e. defining the relationship of police with the public.”