Community Policing: A concept of community participation in policing.

In the first article the five pillars of community policing were mentined but not discussed. Here in part two, the origin of community policing will be discussed before moving to the pillars of community policing. 

 

Community policing had been in existence for a long time and had it's existence traced to the year 1829 when Sir Robert Peel formulated nine policing principles as follows 

1.To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

2.To recognize always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behavior, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

3.To recognize always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing cooperation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

4.To recognize always that the extent to which the cooperation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

5.To seek and preserve public favor, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humor, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.

6.To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public cooperation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

7.To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence. 

8. To recognize always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging

  individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

9.To recognize always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

All the aforementioned principles of policing formulated by Sir Robert Peel in 1829 led to the mordern policing techniques which community policing is part of.

Principle seven laid emphasison the fact that public are members of policing agencies and policing agents are members of the public and this is the origin of community policing. 

Watch out for part three.

Adedoyin Olanrewaju Nureni B.Sc, M.Sc, ACA, FCAi.