Community Policing Module  (Not Available in the Basic / 'Lite' Edition)

The concept of Community Policing is very popular with many law enforcement agencies. While many agencies state that they engage in community policing, law enforcement administrators largely disagree on the definition of what community policing really is. These varying definitions make automating community policing activities difficult at best. Therefore we have focused on what we consider to be the simplest and most fundamental way to define the essence of community policing. We define Community Policing as follows:

Community Policing is the process of solving or addressing both criminal and non-criminal related issues that directly effect the perception of safety and the social conditions of a community.

With this definition in mind we have created a generic Community Policing Module.

The community-policing module provides a method to document and coordinate various situations and conditions (generically referred to as Problems). Each problem record has five basic elements. These elements are defined as follows:

Identification: This consists of a simple title used to refer to the problem; a date that the problem was officially identified and recognized; a location where the problem usually exists and a code to indicate the current status of the problem.

Definition: This is a detailed explanation of the problem including the basic who, what, when, where and why information which describes clearly the nature of the condition or situation you are attempting to impact.

Coordinator: This is the officer who either identified the problem, or has been officially assigned to coordinate all activities and efforts associated with an identified problem.

Strategy: This is a detailed Tactical Action Plan (TAP) which has been developed and is understood as the best approach or course of action to be taken by individuals to resolve the problem condition. This plan should be referred to by all persons involved in impacting the problem condition in order to ensure a coordinated and unified approach, and maintain consistency among different officers. Remember that the plan is not necessarily the enforcement of laws or ordinances.

Actions: This is a chronological summary of each action taken or performed in conjunction with the identified problem. These actions should simply represent the practical implementation of the defined strategy.

By defining problem conditions in this format several fundamental issues are addressed. This format provides a repository of defined problems and solutions, which have been used as, background research information to address the community conditions. Obviously some solutions are better than others and the Actions log can be used to determine the effectiveness of any given action and the underlying strategy. Additionally this model provides a simple mechanism to coordinate the efforts of many different officers and citizens in the understanding and implementation of a common unified approach to a problem.