Argumentative Essay: Community Policing

Community policing is a tool that allows police forces to be in close contact with the community. The purpose for this is to control and reduce crime in an area and to also establish a close relationship between the law and the common person. However due to the large amount of people who are victims of profiling each year, tensions are rapidly growing between the police officers and the communities that they serve. Even though the exact number of people who experience this is unknown, it is a big issue that causes problems for both the community and the officers themselves. Since the community will be less likely to trust the officer, the officer will have a more difficult time doing their jobs and thus nothing is achieved. In order for the two to be able to cooperate again, sensitivity training is in order for officers before they are put into specific areas.
Community policing began in the 1900’s when, “Police managers assigned officers to rotation shifts and moved them frequently from one geographical location to another to eliminate corruption,” (ncjrs.gov).
As stated before the purpose of putting the police in community settings is so that they can connect with the people there, whilst simultaneously performing their duties. If that is their job then why do we keep seeing time after time again reports of people being terrorized and profiled by the people put there to protect them? Some people may say that it has something to do with the Criminal Justice system in its entirety, and they wouldn’t be wrong. However, the mindset of the officer has a great deal to do with this as