MODULE 9

CHAPTER IV POLICE-COMMUNITY RELATIONS

Learning objectives:

At the end of the lesson, the learners should be able to;

1. Define and understand Police-Community Relations, the objectives of PCR, Police and community
roles, and Crime prevention.

Definitions of Police-Community Relations (PCR)

• An attitude; an attitude of concern that needed government services are delivered to people in an
efficient and humane manner.
• A kind of behavior that shows this attitude

Therefore, PCR is the development and retention of attitudes and behavior on the part of the police that create
mutually supportive relationships between their agency and the community.

Police personnel should act in such a way that people in need of assistance (a service), protection (another
service), and/or control (yet one more service) are provided with the requisite service impartially and humanely.

- Police Community Relations are the product of internalized attitude plus externalized behavior.

The police have a mission and have various roles to fulfill while providing service to the community.

Objectives of Police Organization

1. Order Maintenance
2. Law Enforcement

Order Maintenance - handling of disputes, or behavior which threatens to produce disputes, among persons
who disagree over what ought to be right or seemly conduct or over the assignment of blame for what is agreed
to be wrong or unseemly conduct.

Law Enforcement - the officer is expected to either make an arrest or act so as to prevent the violation from
occurring in the first place. His task is the seemingly ministerial and technical act of either apprehending or
deterring the criminal.

ORDER MAINTENANCE FUNCTION

Order maintenance also requires that the police have an available and wider range of options for
handling disorder that is afforded by the choice between making an arrest and doing nothing. Family service
units should be formed which can immediately assist patrolmen in handling domestic quarrels. Community
service officers should be available to provide information, answer complaints, and deal with neighborhood
tensions and rumors.

The most significant changes will be in organization and leadership in order to increase the officer's
familiarity with and sensitivity to the neighborhood he patrols and reward him for doing what is judged
(necessarily after the fact) to be the right thing rather than simply the "efficient" thing

LAW ENFORCEMENT FUNCTION

There is a law - enforcement function, and it is in any given case hard to separate from the order-
maintenance function. Law enforcement ideally should be organized differently from order - maintenance.

It deals with the enforcement of criminal laws whose primary tasks are criminal investigation, collection
of evidence, interrogation of suspects, arrest of suspects, maintenance of order and safety, and combating
organized crime suppression of disturbances and riots.

The Community
The community is an element of the police organizational environment. For the working police officer, the
community generates police activity either law violations or calls for service activity and provides a setting
within which police work must be performed. For the police, the community represents a source of both support
and complaints and most importantly, is the final arbiter of the quality of police services and the effectiveness of
the police department.

The Police Role in Urban Society

The public had developed such high expectations of its police that these expectations moved beyond
reality to something that could be better described as faith. As the public came to have faith in the police to do
all things, the police came to have faith that they could do all things; when disillusionment set in, the singers lost
faith in the song, in each other, and in themselves".

Two Police Roles:

1. Community Service
2. Law Enforcement

Community Service Role Police provide essentially a social service to the community, intervening in
domestic quarrels handling those who are under the influence of alcohol or drugs, working with dependent and
neglected children, rendering emergency medical or rescue services, and generally acting as a social agency of
last resort, particularly after 5:00 in the afternoon and on weekends for the impoverished, the sick, the old, and
the lower socio-economic classes.

POLICE ROLE AND DEVELOPING COMMUNITY RESOURCES

Communicating with the Public

Every police agency should recognize the importance of bilateral communication with the public and
should constantly seek to improve its ability to determine the needs and expectations of the public, to act upon
those needs and expectations of the public, to inform the public of the resulting policies developed to improve
the delivery of police service.

1. Every police agency should immediately adopt policies and procedures which provides for effective
communication with the public through agency employee, those policies and procedures should:
2. Every police agency which has racial and ethnic minority groups of significant size within its jurisdiction
should recognize their police needs and should develop an appropriate means to ensure effective
communication with such groups.
3. Every police agency which has a substantial non-English speaking minority within its jurisdiction should
provide readily available bilingual employees to answer requests for police services. In addition, existing
agency programs should be adapted to ensure adequate communication between such non-English
speaking minority groups and the police agency.
4. Every police agency having more than 400 personnel should establish a specialized unit responsible for
maintaining communication with the community. In smaller agencies, this responsibility should be the
Chief Executive's, using whatever agency resources are necessary and appropriate to accomplish the
task.

POLICE UNDERSTANDING OF THEIR ROLE

Every police agency should immediately take steps to ensure that every officer has an understanding of
his role and awareness of the cultural uniqueness of the community where he works.

1. The procedure for developing policy regarding the police role should involve officers of the basic rank,
first-line supervisors, and middle managers.
2. Explicit instruction in the police role and community culture uniqueness should be provided in all the
results and in-service training
3. The philosophy of defining the police role should become a part of all instruction and direction given to
others.
 4. Middle managers and first-line supervisors should receive training in the police role and should
thereafter continually reinforce those principles by example and by the direction of those they
supervise.
5. Methods of evaluating individual officer performance should take into account all activities performed
within the context of the defined role. Promotion and other incentives should be based on total
performance within the defined role, rather upon any Isolated aspect of life.

PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF THE POLICE ROLE

Every police agency should immediately establish programs to inform the public of the agency's defined
role. These programs should include but not be limited to the following:

1. Every police agency should arrange for at least an annual classroom presentation by a uniformed officer
at every public and private elementary school within its jurisdiction.
2. Every police agency having more than 400 personnel should, dependent upon securing the cooperation
of the local school authorities, assign a full-time officer to each junior and senior high school in its
jurisdiction.
3. Every police agency, where permitted by local conditions, should participate in government and civic
classes offered in local evening adult schools and community colleges.
4. With the agency resources, where they are available, or in cooperation with employee organizations or
local civic groups, every police agency should develop or participate in youth programs including
scouting and other athletic or camping activities.
5. Every police agency should accept invitations for officers to speak to business and civic organizations.
Efforts should be made to provide speakers in response to every reasonable request and to coordinate
the speaker's ability and background with the intended audience. Every opportunity should be taken to
describe the police role and the agency's objectives and priorities.
6. Every police agency having more than 150 personnel should publish a statement about the police role;
the agency's objectives and priorities in filling that role, and the agency's activities to implement its role.
An annual report should be used for this purpose. In addition, the periodic statistical report on crimes,
arrests, and property losses due to crime should be disseminated to the public. These reports should
include an evaluation depicting trends or other interpretations of significance.
7. Every police agency should inquire into the availability of public service resources from advertising and
communication organizations to assist in developing support for the agency and its programs.
8. Every police agency should hold an annual "open house” and should provide other tours of police
facilities and demonstrations of police equipment and tactics when appropriate to create greater public
awareness of the public role.

CRIME PREVENTION

Crime prevention refers to the resolution of social, psychological, and economic conditions that lead to
the desire to commit a crime.

It concerns the elimination of the opportunity for crime through the presence of police patrols and the
hardening of the site to foil the commission of a crime.

Every police agency should immediately establish programs that encourage members of the public to
take an active role in preventing crime, providing information leading to the arrest and conviction of criminal
offenders, and facilitating the identification and recovery of stolen property.

1. Every police agency should establish or actively assist volunteer neighborhood security programs that
involve the public in neighborhood crime prevention and reduction.
a. Every police agency should establish or assist community programs that provide for the marking and
identification of personal property.
b. Every police agency should instruct neighborhood volunteers to telephone the police concerning
suspicious situations and identify themselves as volunteers and provide the necessary information.
c. Participating volunteers should not take enforcement action themselves
d. Police units should respond directly to the incident rather than to the reporting volunteer
 e. If further information is required from the volunteer, the police agency should contact him by
telephone
f. If an arrest results from the volunteer's information, the police agency should immediately notify
him by telephone
g. The police agency should acknowledge through personal contact, telephone call, or letter every
person who provides information.
2. Every police agency should establish or support programs that involve trade, business, industry, and
community participation in preventing and reducing commercial crimes.
3. Every police agency should seek the enactment of local ordinances that establish minimum security
standards for all new construction and for existing commercial structures. Once regulated buildings are
constructed, ordinances should be enforced through inspection by operational police personnel.
4. Every police agency should conduct, upon request, security inspections of businesses and residences
and advise of measures to avoid being victimized by crime.
5. Every police agency having more than 75 personnel should establish a specialized unit to provide
support services jurisdiction-wide coordination of the agency's crime prevention programs; however,
such programs should be operationally decentralized whenever possible.

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