The Formative Development of Community Policing

Community policing is the product of the fourth Western policing revolution, since its emergence in the sixties of the last century, popular in the global police community, the police model of each country has had a far-reaching impact. In the 1970s the Houston Police Department in the United States took the lead in the return to community policing, many countries around the world, such as Canada, France, Britain, Australia and Asia, Japan, Singapore and other countries have also practiced community policing.

As early as 1829, Sir Robert Peel put forward the famous "Peel Principles" when establishing the London Metropolitan Police, pointing out that "the police are the public, and the public are the police". One of its main thrusts was to make the functions of the police more publicly recognized than linked to the law.

But until the 1970s, "Peel's Principle" was not implemented in Western policing, and has been followed by what is called "traditional professional policing", emphasizing that fighting crime and maintaining public order are the only police functions. Functions, the pursuit of professional construction and development of police, such as the expansion of police officers, the pursuit of a high ratio of police to the public, the pursuit of high technology prevention, the pursuit of sophisticated equipment, etc., the result is that the crime rate has not decreased, the public has a crisis of confidence in the police, the police are tired of running and crime is still growing, the social security is increasingly serious.

The deterioration of relations with the public has become a more and more serious problem faced by the police in developed countries in the West. The reason for this is twofold: first, the police have fewer opportunities to communicate with the public; second, the public demand for more police services is growing, while the police usually spend more time dealing with cases rather than police-public relations. As a result, traditional policing is no longer compatible with the special service objectives of the grassroots police. 1970s police in Western countries re-recognized the value of the "Peel Principles", began to trace the origin, back to the basics, so that the police and the community to re-integrate to encourage close cooperation between the community and the police, and at the same time require the entire police department*** to adopt the same strategy, and seek governmental support for this strategy, as well as to the police. At the same time, the entire police force was required to adopt this strategy and seek the support of the government and other organizations, which was the beginning of the community policing strategy. Thus, the formation of the world's fourth policing revolution has intensified since the 1970s, and has become the mainstream of today's world police policy.