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.