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Reducing community fear of Crime

Reducing community fear of crime requires, among other things, an active police force. The police must be willing to patrol the streets and focus on improving the quality of neighborhood life. Residents who are afraid to sit on their front porches have lost control of their neighborhoods. Police departments like New York City's are helping to restore control by using a concept known as community policing.

People tend to fear crime less when they have freedom of movement within their communities. An example is Maria Hernandez Park in the heart of Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood. The park was named for a woman who are accidentally shot by drug dealers who once controlled the area, turning it into an open-air market for the selling of heroin, crack, and cocaine. Now the park is filled with elderly residents, young mothers, and children. The difference is the decision by the New York City Police Department to locate one of its substations in the park. The substation is just a trailer, but it makes potential criminals aware that the police are always nearby. As one Brooklyn resident put it, "There used to be all kinds of drugs, fights, robberies, everything around here. Everything is much quieter since they put that [police] trailer in" (Beiser, 1995, p. 39).

The trailer in Maria Hernandez Park is a part of a community policing program that has been quite successful in New York City. The program was started by New York Police Commissioner William Bratton. When Bratton took office, he increased the number of officers on the force by 7,000. He insisted that he wanted to run the police department like a private corporation, "Criminals are our competition. In the private sector, you always keep an eye on what your competitors are doing and try to stay one step ahead of them" (Beiser, 1995, p. 39). Bratton not only got tough on crime, he got tough on his own officers, replacing dozens of precinct commanders who were no...

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Reducing community fear of Crime. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 18:29, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1707831.html