Watching Police, Watching Communities

From the early 1980s in England, community policing has been held up as a new commitment to the ideals of service and the rejection of coercive policing styles. The idea was to encourage a partnership between the public and the police in which community needs would be met by officers on local beats. Today, British government ministers and senior police officers depict Neighbourhood Watch, the centerpiece of the scheme, as a great success. However,Watching Police, Watching Communitiesreveals that most schemes are dormant or dead. The authors trace the causes of scheme failure to the lack of commitment to community policing by police forces. Most importantly, they find a police rank-and-file culture which celebrates aggression, machismo and the assertion of authority especially in areas where ethnic minorities and other disadvantaged groups reside.