When East Meets West-Best Practices of Community Policing in Taitung(英文)
When East Meets West
-Best Practices of Community Policing in Taitung
Yu-Lan Sandy Yeh, Ph.D.[1]
Yuan-Ching John Shih[2]
Cheng-Feng Lee[3]
Wen-Chu Cheng[4]
“The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen…”
--Sir Robert Peel
A Historical Review of Policing Evolution
Regardless of the difference of races, nationalities and localities, the convergence of problems and opportunities place all of us at an historical crossroad. It is agreed, almost unanimously, that in the last three decades of the 20th century, many cities in the world faced a severe challenge resulting from rapid changes in social and demographic patterns, and emerging problems such as crime, drugs, fear of crime, and urban decay. Crime became the nightmare of urban dwellers in almost every city. As the interactions of the global village getting more and more frequent, Chinese Taipei have not had the luck to be exempted from the attack of the crime wave, although we enjoyed a low crime rate for decades. Since the causes of crime are more and more complicated than ever before, an increasing number of cities have begun experimenting with new approaches to police work and expanded functions with an attempt to solve the root cause or these problems, and hence to improve the quality of life. Among the most prominent of the new approaches is the concept of community policing.
The successful stories of community policing are available everywhere.
The policing model in the 20th century has gone through several important changes. Many remember Sir Robert Peel in 1829, the founding father of modern police, but it was not until the early 1900s when police departments were recognized as a public force with specific organizational structures and functions including crime prevention and control and order maintenance, and provided a wide variety of social services as well. The focal task of police in that period emphasized on working closely with local politicians and maintaining close contact with people; the police played a linkage role between the politician and community (Kelling & Moore 1988: 5-8). It was known as the political era of policing. Due to the primitive communications and transportation provided, the police relied heavily on foot patrol and face-to-fact contact with citizens. The policing model in the political era had one major strength: foot patrol integrated police into the neighborhoods they served and the community believed that police patrol helped to prevent crimes from happening and in solving them when crimes occurred (Repetto 1978). Yet, the intimacy with community and the decentralized organization design resulted in several drawbacks of policing: corruption, inefficiency, and disorganization.
To remedy the weaknesses of policing in the political era, O. W. Wilson launched the first shift of the policing paradigm by systematically testing the ideas and theories in police administration which he and his mentor, August Vollmer, had invented. Wilson was brought to lead the corrupt Chicago Police Department in the early 1960s, in the wake of the Summerdale (“Cops as Burglars”) scandal, to launch necessary and sweeping changes in the police department and its' relationship with the local community. The model established by
“In retrospect, the reform strategy was impressive. It successful integrated its strategic elements into a coherent paradigm that was internally consistent and logically appealing. Narrowing police functions to crime fighting made sense. If police could concentrate their efforts on prevention of crime and apprehension of criminals, it followed that they could be more effective than if they dissipated their efforts on other problems. The model of police as impartial professional law enforcers was attractive because it minimized discretionary excesses which developed during the political era.”
But these best efforts did not produce the necessary results: a reduction in crime and an increased sense of individual safety and neighborhood order, despite large increases in the size of police departments and expenditures for new equipment. Instead, several difficulties of the reform strategy were observed:
1. Regardless of the quantitative indicators used to measure police effectiveness, police failed to meet expectations about their capacity to defy crime or prevent crime.
2. Fear of crime rose dramatically in cities with an inconsistent level of crime (crime rates).
3. Police failed to play an impartial role and more police mistreatment and brutality to minorities were heard.
4. Being more efficiency driven, police spent less and less time with their clients, and created an image of being indifferent and distant to people.
Some cities found themselves in fiscal difficulties and could not sustain their financial support for police to improve and update their equipment and personnel.
And, all the above observations laid a ground for the rising of community policing.
Rising of Community Policing
Community policing has roots in the history of policing in the western world dating back to the Robert Peel and the passage of the London Metropolitan Police Act of 1829. In stating his nine principals of policing, Peel captured the essence of community-policing by pointing out that “the police are the public and the public are the police” (Lee, 1901: ch 12).
In the early to mid-1980s, the focal point of the police reform movement shifted to the community. Strategies for closing the physical and psychological distance between the police and citizens were pursued. Although crime rates stayed stable, programs to enhance foot patrol, create mini-stations in the neighborhoods, and increase police contacts with citizens were experimented with in cities and appeared to have a positive impact on citizens’ perceptions of crime and the police (Rosenbaum, Yeh, Wilkinson 1994). These efforts to increase police visibility and contact with the public were highly welcomed by the public, however, these reforms did not necessarily address the crime-related problems facing neighborhoods. Hence, innovative police departments shifted their attention to solving problems in the middle to late 1980s, and the problem oriented policing model became the dominant form of police innovation (Goldstein 1990).
The concept of community policing evolved from a 1967 President’s commission report and from team policing experiments in the 1970s . Later on in the late 1970s, a series of foot patrol experiments were conducted in
By definition, community policing is a renewed philosophy of policing, based on the concept that police officers and private citizens, working together, in creative ways, can help solve contemporary problems related to crime, fear of crime, social and physical disorder, and neighborhood decay (Trojanowicz & Bucqeroux 1990). It aims to reduce the fear of crime and social disorder through problem solving tactics and community-policing partnerships. Its focus is upon quality of life issues and upon preventing crime before it occurs (COPSe, 1999). Core components of community policing are problem-solving, partnerships, and transforming police agencies to support and empower frontline officers, decentralize command and encourage innovative problem solving. It is a philosophy that embraces the notion of assigning officers to permanent zones at decentralized locations with the expectation that they will form partnerships in order to solve crime and disorder problems within the neighborhoods to which they have been assigned[5]. It accomplishes these goals by combining the efforts and resources of the police, local government and community members. From this perspective, community policing might be defined as a philosophy of policing where the same officer patrols and works in the same area on a permanent basis, from a decentralized location, working in a proactive community partnership with citizens to identify and solve problems.
Community policing envisions the police department striving to improve the quality of life by focusing on problems in neighborhoods. It stresses the crucial and active role of the community as partners in promoting the quality of life, not as a passive audience. The essential partner of the community policing efforts include six groups ((Trojanowicz & Bucqeroux 1993: 2):
1. The police department: including all the personnel, from the chief to the line officer, civilian and sworn.
2. The community: including everyone, from formal and informal community leaders such as presidents of civic groups, ministers, and educators; to community organizers and activists, to average citizens on the street.
3. Elected civic officials: including the mayor , city manager, city council, and any county, state, and federal officials whose support can affect community policing’s future.
4. The business community: including the full range of businesses, from major corporations to the 7-11 stores on the corners.
5. Other agencies: including public agencies (code enforcement, social services, public health, etc.) and non-profit agencies, ranging from boys and girls clubs to volunteer and charitable groups.
6. The Media: both electronic and print.
In the early stage of community policing, although many police chiefs and public officials found this concept attractive and promising, they jumped on the bandwagon with many doubts in their minds, provided the absence of any given clear understanding of what constitutes community policing and the shortage of carefully designed studies to examine how this concept had been operationally defined and whether such operations have achieved their desired results. Many outreach programs to test community policing concepts were not institutionalized as part of the police function, but were simply grafted onto the organization as a specialized unit. As a result, they often disappeared when the funding spigot was turned off. This problem was alleviated when Bill Clinton began his 8 year term as U.S. President in 1993. With the strong support of President Clinton, the federal government has allocated nearly $9 billion for expenditures authorized by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (Crime Act ) to facilitate the local police departments’ transition from traditional policing to community policing. The federal invention was administered through the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program with four listed goals intended to change both the level and practice of policing in the
1. To increase the number of officer deployed in American communities.
2. To foster problem solving and interaction with communities by police officers.
3. To encourage innovation in policing.
4. To develop new technologies for assisting officers in reducing crime and its consequences.
Partnership with Trust-building
Community policing has become a key element in the quest for more efficient strategies to cope with complicated inter-related social problems. When it was first advocated, police departments saw it as a paradigm for dealing with many of the demands being placed on them by the public, interest groups, and the supervisory levels of government. Experts in law enforcement were hailing community policing as a revolution in policing. It was seen as a new philosophy professing that only through close cooperation of police and citizenry. Only through a sense of partnership, and mutual trust between the police and the public, can there be progress in the battle against crime, or in solving any crime-related problem. What Makes Community Policing Different? Many believe that being free from the over-quantified performance measurements in traditional policing, more effective and innovative ways have been allowed to solve ongoing problems. Through partnership building initiatives, government and community leaders are increasingly cognizant that they must accept a share of the responsibility for problems caused by lapses in many areas of society. Police have long borne a disproportionate share of this burden.
As vaguely defined, community policing is a collaborative effort between the police and the community. It builds alliances with all elements of the community in the search for solutions to crime and social disorder problems Such partnerships bring the police together with the community, local government, other service agencies, both public and private, and the criminal justice system. They help empower citizens to become involved in issues of their own public safety. They help empower police officers to think creatively, make independent decisions, and commit available resources to the solution of problem within the zones to which they have been assigned.
Partnerships come in many sizes and shapes. They may involve homeowner associations, business groups, or small ad hoc community groups committed to single issues. They could be stable, large organizations focusing on many issues. They might involve a single block of residents experiencing high levels of burglary or an entire neighborhood facing abandoned or otherwise dilapidated housing and neighborhood trash piled high by the side of the street. Whatever the nature of the partnership, they are all committed to reducing the level of neighborhood crime, fear of crime and to improving the overall quality of life.
The partnership, as advocated in the new policing model, seeks the input and talents of all members of the community in the effort to safeguard our neighborhoods. It recognizes the value of bringing the people back into the policing process. All elements and available resources of society must pull together as never before if we are to deal effectively with the unacceptable level of crime and all other problems identified by the majority of the community, in other words, by consent. To make it work, establishing and maintaining mutual trust is the central goal of community partnership. Trust will give the police greater access to valuable information that can lead to the prevention and solution of crimes. It will also support police activities and provide a basis for a productive working relationship with the community that will find solutions to local problems. Given the current climate of distrust in many of our communities, the police will need to make a concerted and persistent effort to forge bonds of understanding and cooperation with community members. Building trust will require ongoing effort, but it is essential to effective community policing. The collaborative efforts undertaken by the law enforcement agencies to restore trust and partnership with the community include:
1. engage directly with residents and community leaders to prioritize community needs;
2. coordinate the work of other prosecutors in the office to fight crime strategically;
3. cultivate relationships and trust in the community that result in better witnesses, stronger evidence and more convictions;
4. enlist the community to work together with the prosecutors so that criminals cannot "slip through the cracks;" and
5. use tactics that will prevent crime and reduce local residents' fear of crime.
In community policing, the public should not be viewed as the consumers, customers, recipients, and clients of police service. They are also the producer of safety in their neighborhood. All the above strategies can only be accomplished by the police and community collaboratively, and should be tailor-made on the community bases in order to be more effective.
Policing in
Taitung, situated where with ocean in front and mountains behind, is the home country of the nature. It’s long and narrow in contour. With the
High mountains, longitudinal valleys, plains and extensive coasts profile the major geographical features of Taitung. The coastline of Taitung, including that of Lan Yu and Lu Tao islands, is nearly 231 km long; its area, at about 3,515 sq. km, claims one tenth of the total area of Chinese Taipei, making Taitung the 3rd biggest county.
At present, Taitung has a population of about 250,000 and its administration is composed of one city, two towns and thirteen villages.Obstructed from the outside by mountains and oceans, Taitung is an isolated Garden of Eden. The earlier settlers, such as the Ami tribe, the Bunun tribe, the Rukai tribe, the Paiwan tribe, the Yami tribe, etc., and the immigrants at later period have contributed to the diverse humanity of current Taitung.
To keep this heterogeneous
Taitung County Police Department, as one of many progressive police departments in Chinese Taipei, has been implementing community policing since 2001. With the stress on autonomy, diversity, individualization, and localization, Taitung has a very unique policing model named “Self-sufficient Policing”. They incorporate SARA (Scanning, analysis, response, assessment) model of community policing with QCC (quality control circle) technique of TQM, and have won great appraisal from the public. Taitung ranked the second highest public satisfaction out of 23 county/city police departments in national public poll, and has won the National Service Quality Award in 2004.
Problem-Solving and SARA Model
In 1979, Herman Goldstein, a professor of Law at the
Problem-solving and community partnerships are the key components to community policing. An in-depth focus on crime, fear and disorder problems is essential to the success of community policing. According to Goldstein (1979, 1990), a problem is an event or a series of similar events that occur more than once, represent a community concern, and are viewed as something about which the police ought to be doing something (Goldstein, 1990: 34, 66). Compared to “traditional policing,” which is largely incident-based (Eck and Spelman, 1987:4)[6], that is responding to calls for service, problem-oriented policing focuses, after responding to a citizen’s call for service as it would under “traditional policing”, seeks out the underlying causes and problems, should they exist, underlying the call. In short, problem-oriented policing rests upon the assumption that underlying conditions create problems which in turn generate citizen calls for assistance from police departments. These conditions might involve the characteristics of different types of offenders and victims, the social setting in which people interact, and the physical environment (location) in which people are found. Until such underlying problems are solved, incidents emanating from certain locations will continue to occur and calls will continue to be made to police departments asking for assistance. By dealing with these problems, calls for assistance from these locations will be reduced or eliminated, thus freeing officer time that can be dedicated to the completion of other tasks[7].
Without any doubts, solving problems highlights the principal service of the police. Goldstein advocated moving from an efficiency policing model to an effectiveness model, placing less emphasis on numbers (e.g., of arrests and summonses), and more on impacting crime. For instance, under the professional model of policing, we used the number of arrests made at a drug location as a measure of success. Under a problem- solving approach, we would measure the effectiveness of the strategies implemented to shut down the operation. Arrest is only one of the several strategies, and all strategies are assessed by how effectively the drug dealing is stopped. If one strategy is ineffective, then others are tried.
Problem-solving is one of two key community policing components. Without problem- solving, community policing is merely community relations. Focusing on impacting crime, fear and disorder problems is an essential part of community policing.
The linchpin of problem-solving is knowledge: developing a thorough understanding of the targeted problem. Problems must be analyzed thoroughly so that solutions are specifically tailored to them. Solutions are not randomly selected, but rather, are based on thorough inquiry into the cause of the problem. To help the problem solving strategy easily to be implemented, SARA model was developed and tested in
The SARA model consists of scanning, analysis, response, and assessment.
Scanning: Two or more incidents similar in one or more ways constitute a crime, fear or disorder problem in a community. A problem is different from an individual or isolated incident. Individual incidents that come to the police's attention are few, and these incidents should be looked at individually. However, much of the crime, disorder and fear in our communities is connected (e.g., a street corner where repeated drug dealing occurs), not individual or isolated. In other words, crime is concentrated.
Analysis: Analysis is the most difficult step in the SARA model, and the one that officers and citizens tend to skip most in their enthusiasm to develop timely solutions. Without understanding the targeted problem, there is a high risk of developing solutions that don't work in the long run. The problem will likely persist because solutions are based on guesses, not facts.
Patterns of incidents require some analysis. Problems rarely develop overnight, and quick solutions rarely eliminate them. If we don't do analysis, we tend to rely on our old standard solutions, such as directed or foot patrol.
Police presence is rarely the best solution to a problem, and it generally indicates that a full analysis was not done, or that an officer still feels more comfortable with the professional model of policing.
Response: Response is the third stage of the SARA model. Problems will likely persist if long-term solutions are not tailored to key casual factors.
Creativity should be encouraged. As mentioned earlier, try to steer the audience toward using a wide range of guardians.
To be effective, solutions must impact at least two sides of the crime triangle. Working solely on the offender side often leaves room for new offenders to replace the old ones, because nothing has been done to change the den of iniquity or the sitting duck. Guardians should be employed on two sides of the triangle to produce long-term, effective solutions.
Citizens and police alike are often tempted to apply solutions developed in other communities to similar problems in their own communities. Off-the-shelf solutions are rarely perfect. Causal factors should be examined to see whether they support solutions used in other communities.
Sometimes, community crime problems are so severe that something must be done before a full understanding of the problem is developed. Conditions may be intolerable to those affected by the problem. Although short-term relief may be imperative, long-term solutions should also be pursued. In addition, the problem's impact on the community should influence the types of solutions selected. Solutions are best if they leave the community better able to handle similar crime problems in the future.
Assessment: Assessment should be considered during the analysis stage, as there may be some baseline data that should be collected so that differences can be discerned later on. For example, for a graffiti reduction project, it might be helpful to videotape graffiti locations both before and after applying any solutions.
Both quantitative and qualitative measures should be used to assess impact. The specific assessment measures depend on the problem being addressed. If it's a crack house, measures might include reduction in traffic, citizen satisfaction, reduction in calls for service, photo taken before and after the solution was applied, establishment of a tenant screening process, and so on. It may not always be possible to fully eliminate a problem.
To many police practitioners and researchers, problem solving and community engagement and problem solving are two inseparable components of community policing. Engaging the community without problem solving provides no meaningful service to the public, and problem solving without engagement risks overlooking the most pressing community concerns. Since the community members know better what goes on in their neighborhoods, it will be of great value for them to engage in problem throughout the four stages of SARA process.
Strategic Planning Techniques
Other than SARA of problem solving, other strategic planning techniques are also introduced and embraced by Taitung County Police in Chinese Taipei, such as SWOT and QCC analyses.
SWOT
A SWOT Analysis is a strategic planning tool used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture. Strengths and weaknesses are internal to an organization. Opportunities and threats originate from outside the organization. A SWOT analysis, usually performed early in the project development process, helps organizations evaluate the environmental factors and internal situation facing a project.
Strengths and weaknesses are attributes that measure the internal capability. Opportunities and threats refer to how the external environment affects your community/police deparment.
Ideally a cross-functional team or a task force that represents a broad range of perspectives should carry out SWOT analyses. For example, a SWOT team in a business may include an accountant, a salesperson, an executive manager, an engineer, and an ombudsman. While in police, a SWOT team may include elected official, media, community member, community officers, and etc.
Sometimes, many factors could appear listed in several categories. For example, if one's competitors initiate an alliance, this comprises a threat. If one becomes part of such an alliance, this could become an opportunity. If an existing alliance causes problems in a supply chain, one diagnoses a weakness. If one's alliances offer a competitive advantage, this indicates a strength.
SWOT analysis can help in turning weaknesses and threats into opportunities, and ultimately into strengths. The exercise can also identify opportunities that will address weaknesses, and strengths that will counter threats.
Lessons Learned in Community Policing in Taitung
Community policing is not a quick fix for surging crime. There are several key elements necessary for effective community policing:
1. Optimizing contact between patrol officers and community members.
2. Establishing and maintaining mutual trust is the heart of partnership.
3. To make community policing work, long-term commitment is needed.
After reviewing the implementation in Taitung, there are several lessons we have learned:
1. The greatest benefit of adopting community policing is the regaining of people’s trust. In Taitung, due to the economic recession and political uncertainty, crime rates in Chinese Taipei are actually on the rise. However, when the community sense the police department’s efforts and sincere engagement in the community policing, the public bestow the police with understanding and full support. As revealed by the polls held in last year, the community has shown greater satisfaction toward the police in Taitung.
2. To avoid unnecessary resistance inside the organization, the police department has to incorporate the community policing philosophy in all phases of training within the police department on a regular basis. This should include retraining of field skills/tactics and community policing strategies.
3. The Police Department should develop a clearly and specifically defined vision and mission statement through thorough discussions and communications among the members of the department. Without a clear vision and mission statement, the strategies and initiatives undertaken will have less impact.
4. Try to involve the stakeholders in the community policing planning process: the public, elected officials, the business community, the media, etc. A well organized, collaborative planning process is especially critical to the success of implementation.
5. The strong desire and support of the top management must be obvious all the time. The initiatives should be of significant magnitude so that the entire police department and the community are aware of their accomplishment.
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[1] Dr. Yu-Lan Sandy Yeh earned her Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis from
[2] Mr. Yuan-Ching John Shih is the commissioner of Taitung County Police Department. Mr. Shih has been in policing since 1972. He is known as a progressive and innovative police chief, and has won many awards in his professional career. He is also working on his MA in Police Administration at
[3] Mr. Cheng-Feng Lee is a police Lt. Col. working as an instructor and a Ph.D. candidate in Criminal Justice at
[4] Mr. Wen-Chu Cheng has been in policing since 1968 from police lieutenant to police chief. He is an instructor at
[5] Community policing, from this perspective, is a philosophy where the same officer patrols and works in the same area on a permanent basis, from a decentralized location, working in a proactive community partnership with citizens to identify and solve problems. Effective community policing has a positive impact on reducing neighborhood crime, reducing fear of crime, and enhancing the quality of life in the community. It accomplishes these things by combining the efforts and resources of the police, local government and community members.
[6] Goldstein (1990), in 1979, was perhaps the first person to talk about incident as being the basic unit of police services. In these terms, a citizen reports an incident to which the police responds and provides an immediate, if only short-term solution. After responding to a call, the police officer return the his or her patrol vehicle to await the next call to which they respond.
[7] One of the earliest instances in which problem-oriented policing was applied was at the Briarfield Apartments in