Each neighborhood in a community has its own network of diversion resources, its own ideas about what ought to be prosecuted harshly, and its own customs and folkways determining when something is more deviant than criminal. For example, in some neighborhoods, the presumption of guilt is on the person losing a fight rather than standard police procedure for arresting the least injured person as the assaulter. Community policing requires that departments see arrest as one tool among many. Therefore, departments need to know what the community prefers as nonarrest options, advise what legal ground these stand on, and find out what resources the community has or needs to have. The second social problem is fear of crime.
Fear of crime is inversely related to crime itself due to vicarious experience and media contagion.
The third social problem is disorder. An example of what not to do would be contests on who has the loudest sound system in their vehicles, and police departments ought to work with audio system installers in curtailing these kinds of promotions. The fourth social problem is decay. These have usually been handled by lighting, phone boxes, or surveillance equipment, but community policing addresses it by organizing and coordinating citizen clean-up efforts, much like National Night Out programs. Graffiti removal is one of the hallmarks of community policing.