Community Policing: Fighting Crime or Fighting Colleagues?

Community policing continues to enjoy much favour as a principal alternative to traditional, law-enforcement-oriented policing. A large body of research suggests, however, that it confronts a range of organisational obstacles. These obstacles arise largely from the endurance of an organisational form developed to support a law-enforcement-oriented approach, and which has engendered both working practices and an occupational culture inhospitable to the pursuit of community policing. Drawing on field research in the London Metropolitan Police and Surrey police forces, the paper identifies key obstacles to the delivery of community policing. It also indicates some of the conditions under which successful community policing can be achieved. These entail both changes in the organisational environment in which community policing is placed, and changes in prevailing conceptions of the nature and role of community policing. In particular, it is argued that community policing needs to move emphatically away from approaches based on community building and ‘outreach’, and towards a construction of community policing based firmly on its role in crime control.