History of Policing in America

Just like anything else, policing has a long history with different eras.  These include the Political Era, the Professional Era and today's Community Problem Solving Era.

The Political Era
It is called the Political Era because this is when politicians had the power to appoint who they wanted to be police officers.  This lead to corruption within the ranks of the police.  Many people who were chosen to be police officers by elected officials were people who helped get them elected.  The elected officials owed them a favor so they made them police officers.  This also meant that police officers would turn a blind eye to anything these politicians may have been doing.

The Professional Era
It is called the Professional Era because this is when policing finally started becoming a profession instead of gifts from politicians.  These people actually went through training and policing was their career.  During this era there was a lot of focus on fighting crime.  They wanted to arrest as many criminals as they could.  The police during this era cared only about arrest rates and not the community as a whole.

Community Problem Solving Era
This brings us to the Community Problem Solving Era.  This is the era we are currently in.  During the Community Problem Solving Era police have begun to focus on the community as a whole.  Instead of focusing solely on arresting individuals and crime fighting they look at the bigger problem and try to fix that instead, because if they get rid of the problem crime will stop.  During this era police try and work with their communities.  They share information on how to deter crime and they communicate with members of the community to see if they have noticed anything suspicious.

Policing has come a long ways in its time.  I think that today's approach is by far the most effective way for policing to serve its community.  Law enforcement cannot be every where at once so they rely on the communities to be their eyes and ears.  With the help of their communities police can be much more effective.                

The Problem Analysis Triangle

One of the most effective ways to analyze a problem is by using the problem solving analysis triangle.

According to Peak and Glensor "the problem analysis triangle helps officers visualize the problem and understand the relationship between 3 elements" (89).  The three elements are require for a problem or crime to occur.


The first element needed is the offender.  This is the person or persons that commit the crime.  The second element needed would be the victim or victims that the offender victimizes.  The last element needed for the problem analysis triangle is a place or location.  This is a location that crime can occur.

The problem analysis triangle works on the basis that if police can just change on the elements on the triangle then no crime will occur.  Lets say that law enforcement uses the crime prevention through environmental design to change a dark alley into a well lighted area that you can easily see from the street.  Law enforcement has taken the location away from the offender so no crime can occur there now and the problem is solved.  This also work with the other two elements.  If police arrest the offenders crimes will stop occurring or if they convince potential victims to no go to certain locations then there will be no one that can get victimized.

There is one more triangle that can be placed outside the original and main one.  The second triangle contains handlers, guardians and managers.  Handlers are usually parents, teachers or neighbors.  These are people that want to help try and convince the offenders to stop what they are doing and to help them.  Guardians are people that have control over one of the elements in the triangle.  These people include law enforcement, parents and probation or parole officers.  Managers are the people that focus on the locations.  This includes property owners and managers of stores in the area.

As you can see there are many different people that can have an effect on one element of the problem and prevent crimes from occurring.  By changing one element of the triangle a person can easily prevent crimes from occurring there.  

Four R's of Policing

        

The Four R's of Policing are one of the most important concepts when it comes to community policing.  The four letters stand for reliability, responsiveness, reassurance and results.  These four r's like S.A.R.A are an important tool in law enforcement to serve their community.  

Reliability

Reliability means that the police are reliable and the community can count on them no matter what the situation is to respond to calls and to do their job.  If police are not reliable the community will begin to lose faith in them and make seek other ways to fix their problems.  

Responsiveness

Responsiveness is how fast the police or law enforcement respond to calls.  If law enforcement does not respond to calls quick enough things and turn really bad.  Take a domestic violence call for example, if the police arrive in a timely manner they can break up the fight and separate the people before it gets worse.  However, if they take too long one person could be seriously injured maybe even killed.  It is vital that police respond to calls in a timely manner.

Reassurance

Reassurance, this may not sound like a huge deal to some people, but for many people in the community it is extremely important.  Citizens want to be reassured by the people protecting them that they are safe and don't have to worry about being victimized.  Or in the case that they have already been victimized they want to be reassured that everything will be alright and law enforcement will do everything in their power to try and bring the perpetrator to justice.

Results

The last R citizens want to see from their law enforcement agency is results.  The community wants to see the results of all the efforts of police and see if what they are doing is in fact helping the community.  If a police department is spending a lot of money on something that is not really helping the community, the community can let them know that they are not happy with that and something needs to change.  Results are extremely important for police departments because they can share the information they get with other police departments and figure out what the best course of action would be for the problem they are facing.

The Four R's of Policing are an important tool in law enforcement's fight against crime and to serve their community.

S.A.R.A. The Problem Solving Process

S.A.R.A is the problem solving process used by law enforcement. There are four steps that are used in the problem solving process for law enforcement, which is where the S.A.R.A acronym come from. S stands for Scanning.  A stands for Analysis. R stands for response.  The last A stands for Assessment.

Scanning
Scanning is used by officers to identify problems.  One thing officers can do is to look for problems while they are on their shift.  A problem is usually when the same type of crime is committed in identical ways in a small area and would cause a concern for law enforcement or the public.  Officers can look for patterns in behavior, locations, people, times and events.

Analysis
Analysis is one of the most important steps in the problem solving process.  In the analysis step law enforcement breaks down the information they have obtained from scanning to figure out what the problem is and an effective way for dealing with the problem.  Analysis uses all of the different types of information they obtained to decide what would be the most effective path to take to combat the problem.

Response
After the problem has been correctly analyzed, the next step is to issue a response to the problem.  This sis the stage where law enforcement takes action against the problem in the hopes that it will fix the problem or incidents that are occurring.

Assessment
After the response has been issued the last stage in the S.A.R.A. problem solving process is the assessment of the response.  This is where law enforcement asses how effective their response to the situation was.  This allows law enforcement to determine if the method was effective or not and what they can change in the future.

As you can see each stage greatly relies on the stage before it to be effective.  The S.A.R.A problem solving process is an extremely effective tool in law enforcement's fight against crime.
 

   

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design

Introduction

Many people wonder what they can do to prevent crimes from occurring.  Crime prevention through environmental design or CPTED is an effective way to deter crime.  CPTED is defined as the "proper design and effective use of the environment that can lead to a reduction in the fear and incidence of crime, and an improvement in the quality of life" (Peak and Glensor 89).     

3 Principles

Natural Access Control-This includes objects such as shrubs, trees, door and gates.  These objects are used to prevent entrance to an area and make the criminal feel as though the target is to dangerous to attack.

Natural Surveillance- This includes objects such as lighting, windows and landscaping to show that people care about the area.

Territorial Reinforcement-  This includes objects such as sidewalks and porches.  Sidewalks are a sign of a connected community and porches provide people places to watch the neighborhood from.  

Information needed for CPTED

There are 5 pieces of information that are needed in order for CPTED to be effective. The first is crime analysis information from a crime analysis specialist.  This includes crime mapping, incident reports and victim and offender statistics.  Another important bit of information is the demographics of the area.  These are the people that lives their such as race, gender and ethnicity.  The third bit of information that is needed is the land use information.  This includes information on how the land is being used.  Such as if there are school or park zones.  The fourth bits of information needed are observations of the area.  Is the area well kept?  Are there any broken windows?  If so it could mean not many people care about the area and that makes it an easy target to criminals.  The last bit of information that is necessary for CPTED is resident information.  This is found out by completing crime surveys and interviews with them.  With this information in hand police are able to give recommendations to neighborhoods and stores to help them take measures to prevent crimes from occurring against them.