1997 Community policing is sweeping across the United States. In this flurry of activity, community policing has come to acquire many meanings.
Much confusion exists in police departments about what is community policing.
To sort through this confusion, the staff of National Center for Community Policing and the Behavioral Sciences Unit at the FBI Academy collaborated to study community policing across the United States. Community policing faces many obstacles that challenge its viability. Some administrators claim they are engaged in community policing when they are not. To fully implement the philosophy, a department must make a long-term commitment to this manner of policing. Many people are still unable to distinguish between problem solving and community policing.