Multicultural Response Strategies

Multicultural Response Strategies
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Multicultural Response Strategies
Community Policing refers to a partnership between the local community and the police where both parties identify strategies that upon implementation will decrease crime rates, combat problems related to public safety and at the same time enhance traffic safety. Community policing is a main aspect in any discussion related to the immigrant populations as well as multicultural groups. Community policing services (COPS, Community-Oriented Policing) were made law under the administration of Clinton leading to the development of COPS office in the United States (Wilson and George, 2002).
The establishment of the COPS office led to a layout of objectives and goals that were to be achieved. These objectives have spilled down to the current community policing strategies, and one of the objectives is to reward grants to local and tribal law enforcement agencies. Other objectives include creating and implementing inventive policing strategies, train and hire law enforcers, as well as buy and use technologies that reduce crime levels in the region. The COPS office also aims at providing technical assistance as well as teaching all law enforcers how to advance community levels as well as how to foster citizens interaction with the police officers.
Accordingly, upon implementation of activities to achieve these goals, the community policing has become a major benefit to both the law enforcers as well as the local community. First, through community policing, the police officers are able to work with the citizens’ beyond the conventional channels. It also enables the local community to have knowledge about the law enforcement culture and practices. Thirdly, community policing encourages innovative ways and new, unique strategies of handling peacekeeping and crime (Wilson and George, 2002).
Chicago has proved to be one of the states that have successfully implemented community policing. In 1993, Chicago implemented CAPS (Collaboration Alternative Policing Strategy) which involves a partnership amid residents, polices as well as other agencies who work for the common goal of reducing crime. CAPS activities, as well as meetings, have been held with the citizens to find new ways in which to combat crime, as well as find out how to better the existing crime fighting techniques being implemented. Through this, Chicago has shown 34.4% decline in violent crimes in 2007 as compared to the violent crimes in 1998(Levine, Olson and Harris, 2010).
COPS offices should be built such that they are available to the community at the shortest time possible. As such, the offices should be of three types; School front Offices, which should be mainly located in the school. These offices will help at combating violent act of the young individuals; teach the young school goers on how to ensure they uphold the law and what types of crimes to report. The offices are also allocated at the storefront, that is, in the shopping center and business offices (Ward, 2002). This is mainly because these are business areas where crime is expected to hit more since there is an assumption of there being cash in every office. The storefront office is meant to protect the businesspeople, as well as their customers from incidences of crime, and thus ensure them of security. Thirdly, there are the Neighborhood Offices that are mainly located in residential areas. Residential areas are prone to house breakings, street muggings and thus the offices across both the police and the citizens will be able to ensure security of the estates as well as report any weird sings that may be an indicator of potential crime.
There is a similarity in the community programs implemented globally. The similarities are seen in the police problem solving where the police get to interview all the witnesses before reaching a major verdict. Citizen participation, as well as police collaborative outreach, is also a similarity (Taylor, 2008). Gang criminal threats and activities have proved to be a major task to overcome for the community policing. This is because, at national level, there have been reports on use of violent by local street gangs during crime acts. The gang members are also seen to have migrated from urban to rural or suburban areas where comm...