Community Policing in Canada: Pretense and Reality (From Police and the Community: Contributions Concerning the Relationship Between Police and the Community and Concerning Community Policing, P 131-144, 1990, Thomas Feltes and Erich Rebscher, eds.)

• NCJ Number: 129780
• Author(s): C Murphy
• Date Published: 1990
• Length: 14 pages
• Sale Source: Felix-Verlag
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: German
• Country: West Germany (Former)

Annotation

This report describes and evaluates the application of the United States concept of community policing in Canadian cities.

Abstract

Police departments in Toronto, Halifax, and Edmonton have recently changed their organization and deployment strategies to encourage closer relationships with the community. Innovations include storefront police stations, foot patrols, citizen advisory councils, decentralized crime investigation, and home visits. Empirical evaluations are unavailable, but general trends have emerged. Community policing requires a more flexible, decentralized police management and extensive delegation of responsibility to individual police officers. However, few departments have made these changes; the traditional police hierarchy continues. Thus, increased foot patrols and easily accessible police stations remain isolated strategies without philosophical and practical application to the entire department. In addition, most police officers consider themselves mainly to be crime fighters and view citizen groups as helpful resources rather than sources of genuine authority. Many theoretical issues also require clarification. 17 references