COMMUNITY POLICING

Community policing has made the transition from being a promising experiment to being the way that progressive police agencies work with the community to make neighborhoods better and safer places in which to live and work. Community policing embraces the philosophy that it is average citizens who have the power to make their neighborhood safer, and that the criminal justice system should be there to help them achieve their goals. Through training, outreach and our speakers' bureau, Crime Victims for a Just Society supports community policing reform.

Of concern, however, is that some police agencies have adopted the rhetoric of community policing without the commitment to share power with the community. Community policing pioneer Robert Trojanowicz insisted that the appropriate role of the community in community policing is as full partner. It is the community that should work with the police to nominate, prioritize and solve problems of crime, fear of crime and disorder.

Crime Victims for a Just Society's executive director Bonnie Bucqueroux is co-author, with the late Dr. Trojanowicz, of two books on community policing (Community Policing: A contemporary perspective and Community Policing: How to get started. A survivor of domestic violence herself, Bucqueroux has written about how community policing offers new answers to the complex problem of family violence. Through policing.com, Bucqueroux continues to work with police agencies attempting to implement community policing.

She is joined in this work by board member Drew Diamond, the former chief of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Diamond is now senior research for the Police Executive Researh Forum and former director of the Community Policing Consortium in Washington, D.C. Diamond was a pioneer of the community policing movement, known also for his important work, "Policing from the Perimeter," about the way in which police had previously dealt with crime and violence in low-income, minority urban communities.

Crime Victims for a Just Society not only supports community policing, but our mission of work with the community includes education and training for community residents, so that they can function as full partners with the police in community policing.