Horizons fits perfectly within the community policing mold of reaching out, helping parents, working with kids and supporting alternatives in enforcement. It isn't always easy to understand and convey that police and counselors can work together. Everyone is busy, and it can be hard to maintain that broad vision we are working toward. Counselors should be required to do ride-alongs with officers and go to police briefings regularly. Officers can learn what we are about, and we can hear their perspective.
Mutual respect is essential.
Such a partnership requires the active support of police command staff. Also essential is an organizational, cultural change within the law enforcement agency, one that embraces the philosophical shift from a hierarchical command structure to the decentralization of community policing. As reaching out to the networks around us for solutions becomes woven into the fabric of organizational thinking, we have a new opportunity to learn about each other. It will be only one of the ways that we find partnerships within the community. In This Issue Giving Citizens a Voice in Policing Policy .