Policing Styles free essay sample

In order to deal with a vast and varying array of problems and situations in the line of duty, the police department employs a multitude of operational strategies. Also they can employ a series of specialized strategies and techniques for more detailed and complex investigations which would take place over a longer period of time. A few examples of core police strategies include: preventative patrol, aggressive patrol, and directed patrol. Preventative patrol is defined as an attempt to stop crimes before they happen. (This can be implemented through several strategies such as a beat cop keeping an eye out for trouble whether he’s – or she – is on foot, bike, or horse.) Aggressive patrol can be seen whenever the police cracks down on a suspects and arrests them for their wrongdoing. Directed patrol, however, keeps the police patrol time centered in high crime areas and neighborhoods. When it comes to the style of policing, you must first take a look at the different situations that a police officer might come upon. We will write a custom essay sample on Policing Styles or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page In crowd control, a police officer would want to use preventative patrol. Doing this would mean that he is keeping an eye out for any troublemakers and would be able to take care of them quickly if anything should happen. (This would also put the crowd at ease, as he wouldn’t be aggressive towards those who weren’t causing trouble.) In arresting a suspect/apprehending an offender, the police officer would want to use aggressive patrol as he would need to crack down on him before he could do anything else wrong. In other words, he wouldn’t want to be passive about someone doing something wrong and would want to take action. Helping someone in need would be considered a form of directed patrol, as the officer would have his attention focused solely on who needed his help. (Thus, his attention wouldn’t be directed elsewhere.) Community policing is defined as a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques, to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime. In theory this means that the police and the community work together and become partners to keep the crime in a neighborhood down. If anyone in the community sees anything that could be considered suspicious activity from anyone in the neighborhood, they would call the police and the  police would take a look into it. It’s a benefit for the community because they know that they have the backing of the local police department if anything happened and it’s a benefit for the police because it shows that the community trusts them to do their jobs.