Community Policing in Nigeria: A Critical Analysis of Current Developments

IntroductionThe International Code of Enforcement Ethics reveals the primary reason for establishing formal police system in any society thus: as a law enforcement officer, my fundamental duty is to serve mankind and property; to safeguard lives and property; to protect the innocent against deception; the weak against oppression or intimidation, and the peaceful against violence and disorder; and to respect constitutional rights of all the men to liberty, equity and justice (Qadri, 2005). Admittedly, the main role of the police is to enforce law and order, safeguard lives and property, and render other essential services in the society. Put in a different way, fighting crimes and criminals is so difficult that the police and other law enforcement agencies alone cannot perform this task and achieve maximum positive results. Since the most visible part of criminal activities take place at the neighbourhood level, policing agencies need public support and co-operation. Intensive partnership and collaborative efforts of both the formal and informal agents of social control remain preconditions for a possible near 'crime-free' society (a complete crimefree society is utopia); in other words, the idea will lead to a great success in crime prevention and control in the community.However, the police-public relationship has long been estranged, thereby making mutual supports very difficult to establish between the two social actors. That is, every effort to bring the police close to the public, and for community members to see the police as their friends, who require their assistance in policing the society that belongs to both of them, an end in futility. In essence, there must be a solution to this problem. According to Siegel (2008, p. 343), "to remedy this situation while improving the quality of their services, police departments have experimented with new forms of law enforcement, referred to as community policing and problem-oriented policing". From the same source, community policing is a style of policing that requires departments to reshape their forces into community change agents in order to work with citizens to reduce crime at the neighbourhood level. Problem-oriented policing, on the other hand, is a proactive form of policing; rather than responding to crime after it occurs, police identify and respond to potential problems before they occur (Siegel, 2008). The art of community policing and problem-oriented policing are complementary, and none of these approaches can succeed in policing the community without the assistance and cooperation of the public. This is so because the most noticeable aspect of crime-transactions usually occurs at the community level where victims and their offenders live together.Traditional societies, including Nigeria employed the system of 'hue and cry', which literally means angry protests embarked upon by a group of people over something, but contextually refers to a system of community policing whereby members of the community unite with State agents of social control to arrest criminals (for a similar argument, see also Wrobleski & Hess, 2006). Specifically, African societies of old used their various traditional institutions to achieve and maintain maximum level of public safety, orderliness and conformity. With the passage of time, these institutions recorded wide-ranging progress and success in curtailing antisocial conducts by forming a synergy with the formal policing agencies, particularly the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) through community policing (Nnam, Agboti & Otu, 2013). Across cultures and civilisations, community-policing has always been emphasized, encouraged and recommended by individuals, State and non-State social control actors as well as crime scholars as a safety valve for effective policing of society. Community policing entails a systematic involvement and inclusion of credible local guards, vigilance groups, able-bodied civilian youths, and traditional rulers and chiefs into the conventional police subsystem for the purpose of achieving a far-reaching success in crime prevention and control at the grassroots. …