Why Community Policing Fails, How It Can Succeed, And What It Has In Common With Psychoanalytic Babble

                                          It is impossible to implement a new program when old dysfunctional programs remain in place. When community policing became the rage, and a source of new funding and revenue, it did not displace that which was already not working. Instead, it became the new add on program to everything that was already dysfunctional.
                                          Community policing was easily absorbed and adopted by inefficient, antiquated police structures. It took on a life of its own, and was perceived as giving new meaning to police work, when in reality it was often nothing other than a new bureaucracy consumed with meaningless paperwork and endless meetings.
                                          Community policing provided employment and grants to the academic world, police departments and other bureaucracies, many of whom to this day will eagerly defend their brainchild. It is not easy to separate the academic world and government structures, including police departments, from revenue sources, any more than it is to separate a baby from the mother that gives it milk.
                                          Community policing, in order to justify itself, had to become something bigger than life. If something is simple and easy to implement, how can the big salaries, ridiculous expenses, government funded salaries, grants and studies be justified? Community policing created its own jargon, language, layers upon layers of paperwork nonsense, meaningless reports, thousands upon thousands of wasted paper pushing hours. It had to appear as something more than what it was. No different then when psychoanalysis was the rage, and people shelled out thousands of dollars to have themselves analyzed by someone that probably knew less about human nature than the average factory worker. Psychoanalysis, like community policing, like some of psychology, religion and other fields, was designed to obfuscate. If something is easy to understand, it becomes far more difficult to separate people from their money. Making things complicated, convoluted, confusing, hard and difficult to understand, is a way that some people are able to confer upon themselves and their institutions power, status and wealth.
                                           Community policing was a surefire way to ensure less policing, less time on the streets, less time patrolling, and more time engaged in paperwork, meetings, administrative engagements.
                                           Drowning police in senseless paperwork put many of the community police promoters in the same boat as the "all the police are criminal advocates", who want a report filled out for almost every single thing a cop does.
                                           Here is a simple model for effective community policing. It is not new.
                                           Cops used to walk beats. Not just a few here and there. Before there were cars and all the modern technology, cops walked beats. Everyday they were in the same neighborhood, and they knew the people and community well. By their daily presence, they not only served and protected, but they also were often positive role models.
                                             Things changed with technology and for other reasons. Just because there is technology does not mean it should be used or that its use is an improvement.
                                              In a typical high crime neighborhood, the cop spends his or her day in a squad car driving to one dispatched call after another. The cop may never get to really know the community. Many of his or her interactions with the public revolve around something negative. Meanwhile, specialized units that are free from responding to 911 and other dispatched calls are driving around looking for people to arrest. Some police departments encourage their officers to make as many arrests as possible, believing that a high volume of arrests translates into a public perception that good police work is being done. Quantity over quality never translates into anything good.
                                             What is lacking are cops on the ground patrolling. Police that walk the same beat day in and day out. That is the essence of true community policing. In order to get more cops out of cars, on foot in communities, certain things are needed.
                                               First, you need motivated conscientious police that want to be on the ground patrolling by foot. It cannot be police that will use a foot post as an opportunity to hide and do as little as possible. It has to be cops that want to be the neighborhood officers. Cops that want to serve, protect, patrol, be part of the community in a constructive way and serve as positive role models. This will also be of benefit to the police who will find this work far more gratifying than riding around in a police car all day.
                                               Police departments have to stop being the sanctuary for politically connected people. There are already far too many wasteful positions, expensive management positions and unnecessary layers of supervisors. There are also far too many able bodied police pushing papers.
                                               Police work has to return to its bread and butter. Cops patrolling in squad cars, some on bicycles, and cops patrolling on foot. Cops patrolling on foot is the essence of true community policing. It does not require a brain surgeon, some professor somewhere, some so called police or criminologist expert to figure that one out. It is time to take the  nonsense out of police work, remove the unnecessary and costly bureaus and paperwork programs, top heavy management jobs, administrative paper pushing positions, and get back down to the basics.
                                                 The cop walking a beat in the year 1900 did more real community policing than all the pretend nonsense community policing that exists now.