Police Responses to Community Policing

good deal of analysis has been done on organisational change within police bureaucracies and on operational changes in the streets. The link between these two processes of change in the transition to a community policing model needs to be better understood. Of course, management style and work culture are notoriously difficult to measure. It seems a reasonable assumption, however, that if community policing depends for its success on an increased flow of information between police and the rest of the community, then an increased flow of information among police is also necessary. Some interesting and important evidence of this need for more information is provided by serving police officers studying at tertiary level. This paper analyses a set of assignments on the topic of community policing. All of them were written by police undertaking their second year of part-time study for a Bachelor of Social Science (Policing Studies) Degree offered as part of the external studies program from the Riverina Campus of Charles Sturt University (CSU). They reveal complex attitudes to the theory of community policing and its practice in Australia. On the other hand there is a general consensus that the level of communication about the goals and objectives of community policing needs to be improved