Community Policing in Practice: Ambitions and Realization

This paper deals with the question of the extent to which the ambitions of community policing are realized in practice. Five elements may be considered as the main ambitions of community policing: proximity, a focus on a wide range of problems in the neighbourhood, prevention, cooperation with other agencies and the promotion of citizen involvement. This observational study of community policing in the Netherlands shows that in practice, these ambitions are only realized to a limited extent. This implementation deficit is a result of several factors: the vague, blurred professional image of community policing (in many cases also for community police officers themselves), its open and indefinite nature, the way this work is often embedded within police organizations, the limited capacities, skills and expertise of community police officers and the increasing managerial emphasis in the Dutch police on so-called core business tasks.