Community Policing

Defined
The Primary Elements of Community Policing

Nonprof its / Service Providers

Using the Crime Triangle
1Community Policing Defined

Community policing is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies that support 

the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques to proactively address 

the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, 

and fear of crime.

Community policing 

comprises three 

key components:

Community Partnerships

Collaborative partnerships between the law enforcement agency and the 

individuals and organizations they serve to develop solutions to problems and 

increase trust in police

Organizational Transformation

The alignment of organizational management, structure, personnel, and 

information systems to support community partnerships and proactive 

problem solving

Problem Solving

The process of engaging in the proactive and 

systematic examination of identified problems 

to develop and evaluate 

effective responses
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Community 

Partnerships

Collaborative partnerships between the law enforcement agency and the 

individuals and organizations they serve to develop solutions to problems 

and increase trust in police

Community policing, recognizing that police rarely can solve public 

safety problems alone, encourages interactive partnerships with relevant 

stakeholders. The range of potential partners is large, and these partnerships 

can be used to accomplish the two interrelated goals of developing solutions 

to problems through collaborative problem solving and improving public trust. 

The public should play a role in prioritizing and addressing public 

safety problems.

Other Government Agencies

Law enforcement organizations can partner with a number of other 

government agencies to identify community concerns and offer alternative 

solutions. Examples of agencies include legislative bodies, prosecutors, 

probation and parole, public works departments, neighboring law enforcement 

agencies, health and human services, child support services, ordinance 

enforcement, and schools.
3Community Policing Defined

Community Members/Groups

Individuals who live, work, or otherwise have an interest in the community—

volunteers, activists, formal and informal community leaders, residents, 

visitors and tourists, and commuters—are a valuable resource for identifying 

community concerns. These factions of the community can be engaged in 

achieving specific goals at town hall meetings, neighborhood association 

meetings, decentralized offices/storefronts in the community, and team beat 

assignments.

Nonprofits / Service Providers

Advocacy and community-based organizations that provide services to the 

community and advocate on its behalf can be powerful partners. These groups 

often work with or are composed of individuals who share common interests 

and can include such entities as victims groups, service clubs, support groups, 

issue groups, advocacy groups, community development corporations, and the 

faith community.

Private Businesses

For-profit businesses also have a great stake in the health of the community 

and can be key partners because they often bring considerable resources 

to bear in addressing problems of mutual concern. Businesses can help 

identify problems and provide resources for responses, often including their 

own security technology and community outreach. The local chamber of 

commerce and visitor centers can also assist in disseminating information 

about police and business partnerships and initiatives, and crime prevention 

practices.

Media

The media represent a powerful mechanism by which to communicate with 

the community. They can assist with publicizing community concerns and 

available solutions, such as services from government or community agencies 

or new laws or codes that will be enforced. In addition, the media can have a 

significant impact on public perceptions of the police, crime problems, and 

fear of crime.
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Organizational 

Transformation

The alignment of organizational management, structure, personnel, and 

information systems to support community partnerships and proactive 

problem solving

The community policing philosophy focuses on the way that departments 

are organized and managed and how the infrastructure can be changed to 

support the philosophical shift behind community policing. It encourages 

the application of modern management practices to increase efficiency and 

effectiveness. Community policing emphasizes changes in organizational 

structures to institutionalize its adoption and infuse it throughout the entire 

department, including the way it is managed and organized, its personnel, and 

its technology.
5Community Policing Defined

Agency Management

Under the community policing model, police management infuses community 

policing ideals throughout the agency by making a number of critical changes 

in climate and culture, leadership, formal labor relations, decentralized 

decision making and accountability, strategic planning, policing and 

procedures, organizational evaluations, and increased transparency.

Climate and culture

Changing the climate and culture means supporting a proactive 

orientation that values systematic problem solving and partnerships. 

Formal organizational changes should support the informal networks and 

communication that take place within agencies to support this orientation.

Leadership

Leaders serve as role models for taking risks and building collaborative 

relationships to implement community policing, and they use their position 

to influence and educate others about it. Leaders, therefore, must constantly 

emphasize and reinforce community policing’s vision, values, and mission 

within their organization and support and articulate a commitment to 

community policing as the predominant way of doing business.

Labor relations

If community policing is going to be effective, police unions and similar forms 

of organized labor must be a part of the process and function as partners in 

the adoption of the community policing philosophy. Including labor groups 

in agency changes can ensure support for the changes that are imperative to 

community policing implementation.

Decision making

Community policing calls for decentralization in both command structure 

and decision making. Decentralized decision making allows frontline officers 

to take responsibility for their role in community policing. When an officer 

is able to create solutions to problems and take risks, he or she ultimately 

feels accountable for those solutions and assumes a greater responsibility for 

the well-being of the community. Decentralized decision making involves 

flattening the hierarchy of the agency, increasing tolerance for risk taking in 
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problem-solving efforts, and allowing officers discretion in handling calls. In 

addition, providing sufficient authority to coordinate various resources to 

attack a problem and allowing officers the autonomy to establish relationships 

with the community will help define problems and develop possible solutions.

Strategic planning

The department should have a written statement reflecting a departmentwide commitment to community policing and a plan that matches operational 

needs to available resources and expertise. If a strategic plan is to have value, 

the members of the organization should be well-versed in it and be able 

to give examples of their efforts that support the plan. Components such 

as the organization’s mission and values statement should be simple and 

communicated widely. 

Policies

Community policing affects the nature and development of department 

policies and procedures to ensure that community policing principles and 

practices have an effect on activities on the street. Problem solving and 

partnerships, therefore, should become institutionalized in policies, along with 

corresponding sets of procedures, where appropriate.

Organizational evaluations

In addition to the typical measures of police performance (arrests, 

response times, tickets issued, and crime rates), community policing calls 

for broadening police outcome measures to include such things as greater 

community satisfaction, less fear of crime, the alleviation of problems, 

and improvement in quality of life. Community policing calls for a more 

sophisticated approach to evaluation—one that looks at not only how 

outcomes are measured but also how feedback information is used.

Transparency

Community policing involves decision-making processes that are more 

open than traditional policing. If the community is to be a full partner, the 

department needs mechanisms for readily sharing relevant information on 

crime and social disorder problems and police operations with the community.
7Community Policing Defined

Organizational Structure

It is important that the organizational structure of the agency ensure that 

local patrol officers have decision-making authority and are accountable 

for their actions. This can be achieved through long-term assignments, 

the development of officers who are generalists, and using special units 

appropriately.

Geographic assignment of officers

With community policing, there is a shift to the long-term assignment of 

officers to specific neighborhoods or areas. Geographic deployment plans can 

help enhance customer service and facilitate more contact between police and 

citizens, thus establishing a strong relationship and mutual accountability. 

Beat boundaries should correspond to neighborhood boundaries, and other 

government services should recognize these boundaries when coordinating 

government public-service activities.

Despecialization

To achieve community policing goals, officers have to be able to handle 

multiple responsibilities and take a team approach to collaborative problem 

solving and partnering with the community. Community policing encourages 

its adoption agency-wide, not just by special units, although there may be a 

need for some specialist units that are tasked with identifying and solving 

particularly complex problems or managing complex partnerships.

Resources and finances

Agencies have to devote the necessary human and financial resources to 

support community policing to ensure that problem-solving efforts are robust 

and that partnerships are sustained and effective.

Personnel

The principles of community policing need to be infused throughout the 

entire personnel system of an agency, including recruitment, hiring, selection, 

and retention of all law enforcement agency staff, from sworn officers to 

civilians and volunteers. Personnel evaluations, supervision, and training must 

also be aligned with the agencies’ community policing views.
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Recruitment, hiring, and selection

Agencies need a systematic means of incorporating community policing 

elements into their recruitment, selection, and hiring processes. Job 

descriptions should recognize community policing and problem-solving 

responsibilities and encourage the recruitment of officers who have a “spirit of 

service” instead of only a “spirit of adventure.” A community policing agency 

also has to thoughtfully examine where it is seeking recruits, whom it is 

recruiting and hiring, and what is being tested. Agencies are also encouraged 

to seek community involvement in this process through the identification of 

competencies and participation in review boards.

Personnel supervision/evaluations

Supervisors must tie performance evaluations to community policing 

principles and activities that are incorporated into job descriptions. 

Performance, reward, and promotional procedures should support sound 

problem-solving activities, proactive policing, community collaboration, and 

citizen satisfaction with police services.

Training

Training at all levels—academy, field, and in-service—must support 

community policing principles and tactics. It also needs to encourage creative 

thinking, a proactive orientation, communication and analytical skills, and 

techniques for dealing with quality-of-life concerns and maintaining order. 

Officers can be trained to identify and correct conditions that could lead to 

crime, raise public awareness, and engage the community in finding solutions 

to problems. Field training officers and supervisors need to learn how to 

encourage problem solving and help officers learn from other problem-solving 

initiatives. Until community policing is institutionalized in the organization, 

training in its fundamental principles will need to take place regularly.

Information Systems (Technology) 

Community policing is information-intensive, and technology plays a central 

role in helping to provide ready access to quality information. Accurate and 

timely information makes problem-solving efforts more effective and ensures 

that officers are informed about the crime and community conditions of 
9Community Policing Defined

their beat. In addition, technological enhancements can greatly assist with 

improving two-way communication with citizens and in developing agency 

accountability systems and performance outcome measures.

Communication / access to data

Technology provides agencies with an important forum by which to 

communicate externally with the public and internally with their own staff. 

To communicate with the public, community policing encourages agencies to 

develop two-way communication systems through the Internet that allow for 

online reports, reverse 911 and e-mail alerts, discussion forums, and feedback 

on interactive applications (e.g., surveys or maps), thereby creating ongoing 

dialogues and increasing transparency.

Technology encourages effective internal communication through 

memoranda, reports, newsletters, e-mail and enhanced incident reporting, 

dispatch functions, and communications interoperability with other entities 

for more efficient operations. Community policing also encourages the use of 

technology to develop accountability and performance measurement systems 

that are timely and contain accurate metrics and a broad array of measures 

and information.

Community policing encourages the use of technology to provide officers with 

ready access to timely information on crime and community characteristics 

within their beats, either through laptop computers in their patrol cars or 

through personal data devices. In addition, technology can support crime/

problem analysis functions by enabling agencies to gather more detailed 

information about offenders, victims, crime locations, and quality-of-life 

concerns and to further enhance analysis.

Quality and accuracy of data

Information is only as good as its source; therefore, it is not useful if it is 

of questionable quality and accuracy. Community policing encourages 

agencies to put safeguards in place to ensure that information from various 

sources is collected in a systematic fashion and entered into central systems 

that are linked to one another and checked for accuracy so that it can be 

used effectively for strategic planning, problem solving, and performance 

measurement.
Problem 

Solving

The process of engaging in the proactive and systematic examination 

of identified problems to develop and evaluate effective responses

Community policing emphasizes proactive problem solving in a systematic 

and routine fashion. Rather than responding to crime only after it occurs, 

community policing encourages agencies to proactively develop solutions to 

the immediate underlying conditions contributing to public safety problems. 

Problem solving must be infused into all police operations and guide decisionmaking efforts. Agencies are encouraged to think innovatively about their 

responses and view making arrests as only one of a wide array of potential 

responses. A major conceptual vehicle for helping officers to think about 

problem solving in a structured and disciplined way is the SARA (scanning, 

analysis, response, and assessment) problem-solving model.

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11Community Policing Defined

Scanning: Identifying and prioritizing problems

The objectives of scanning are to identify a basic problem, determine the 

nature of that problem, determine the scope of seriousness of the problem, 

and establish baseline measures. An inclusive list of stakeholders for the 

selected problem is typically identified in this phase. A problem can be 

thought of as two or more incidents similar in one or more ways and that is of 

concern to the police and the community. Problems can be a type of behavior, 

a place, a person or persons, a special event or time, or a combination of any 

of these. The police, with input from the community, should identify and 

prioritize concerns.

Analysis: Researching what is known about the problem

Analysis is the heart of the problem-solving process. The objectives of analysis 

are to develop an understanding of the dynamics of the problem, develop an 

understanding of the limits of current responses, establish correlation, and 

develop an understanding of cause and effect. As part of the analysis phase, 

it is important to find out as much as possible about each aspect of the crime 

triangle by asking who, what, when, where, how, why, and why not about the 

victim, offender, and crime location.

Response: Developing solutions to bring about lasting reductions 

in the number and extent of problems

The response phase of the SARA model involves developing and 

implementing strategies to address an identified problem by searching for 

strategic responses that are both broad and uninhibited. The response should 

follow logically from the knowledge learned during the analysis and should 

be tailored to the specific problem. The goals of the response can range from 

either totally eliminating the problem, substantially reducing the problem, 

reducing the amount of harm caused by the problem, or improving the quality 

of community cohesion.

Assessment: Evaluating the success of the responses

Assessment attempts to determine if the response strategies were successful 

by understanding if the problem declined and if the response contributed 

to the decline. This information not only assists the current effort but also 

gathers data that build knowledge for the future. Strategies and programs can 
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be assessed for process, outcomes, or both. If the responses implemented are 

not effective, the information gathered during analysis should be reviewed. 

New information may have to be collected before new solutions can be 

developed and tested. The entire process should be viewed as circular rather 

than linear, meaning that additional scanning, analysis, or responses may 

be required.

Using the Crime Triangle to Focus on Immediate Conditions 

(Victim/Offender/Location)

To understand a problem, many problem solvers have found it useful to 

visualize links among the victim, offender, and location (the crime triangle) 

and those factors that could have an impact on them: for example, capable 

guardians for victims (e.g., security guards, teachers, and neighbors), handlers 

for offenders (e.g., parents, friends, and probation officers), and managers for 

locations (e.g., business merchants, park employees, and motel clerks). Rather 

than focusing primarily on addressing the root causes of a problem, the police 

focus on the factors that are within their reach, such as limiting criminal 

opportunities and access to victims, increasing guardianship, and associating 

risk with unwanted behavior.

John E. Eck, “Police Problems: The Complexity of Problem Theory, Research and Evaluation,” 

in Problem-Oriented Policing: From Innovation to Mainstream, ed. Johannes Knutsson, vol. 15 

of Crime Prevention Studies (Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press, 2003), 79–114.
About the COPS Office

The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) is the component of the 

U.S. Department of Justice responsible for advancing the practice of community policing by 

the nation’s state, local, territory, and tribal law enforcement agencies through information 

and grant resources. 

Rather than simply responding to crimes once they have been committed, community 

policing concentrates on preventing crime and eliminating the atmosphere of fear it creates. 

Earning the trust of the community and making those individuals stakeholders in their own 

safety enables law enforcement to better understand and address both the needs of the 

community and the factors that contribute to crime. 

COPS Office resources, covering a wide breadth of community policing topics—from school 

and campus safety to gang violence—are available, at no cost, through its online Resource 

Center at www.cops.usdoj.gov. This easy-to-navigate website is also the grant application 

portal, providing access to online application forms. 
U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services

145 N Street NE

Washington, DC 20530

To obtain details on COPS Office programs, 

call the COPS Office Response Center at 800-421-6770.

Visit the COPS Office online at www.cops.usdoj.gov.

ISBN: 978-1-935676-06-5

e051229476

First published 2012

Revised 2014