(Curiously, the coterminous 'tough on crime' movement served mostly only to increase America's prison population to intolerably high levels, without producing any real appreciable, independent, measurable effect on reducing crime).

Between 1994 and 1999, the United States national government advanced some seven and a half billion dollars to over 12,000 local law enforcement agencies for community policing initiatives.

But what exactly is 'community policing'? And would the American construction of it work in big residential inner-city communities in Jamaica? Certainly, our foremost and popularly regarded crime buster, Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams, doesn't think so.

In answering, what is community policing, I would like first, though, to direct our attention to what community policing is not. I do so because, in conversations on the topic, I have found that most people do have an intuitive feel for what they think community policing is, or for what it entails. Usually turns out, however, that that 'feel' is not altogether correct.

WHAT COMMUNITY POLICING IS NOT

Community policing, with all due respect to folks I've come to regard highly in the police top echelon, is not public relations.

Improved public relations is a welcome by-product of community policing, not its sole or even primary goal.

Unlike police-community relations, community policing is not a programme, an add-on or unit whose mission is to improve the department's image.

Though well-intentioned, outreach 'Commissioner-for-a-day' and police and citizen fix-up projects tend to offer sizzle without providing much steak.

Community policing is not soft on crime.

A favourite sentiment in our machismo-driven, what a popular newspaper columnist calls 'mindless', society is that police mus lick shot pon dem.

Critics furthermore suggest that community policing's broad mandate and its focus on using tactics other than arrest to solve problems detract from a proper focus on serious crime. The reality is that officers designated as community police officers (CPOs) can and do make arrests, just like any other officer; and of course they may resort to permissible, appropriate use of force.

But, more to the point, crime analysis shows that, anywhere in the modern world, the majority of calls for police service come from a relatively small number of locations. The CPO who makes routine home and business visits to places that are plagued by serious problems may be able to identify new solutions to persistent problems that offer the hope of averting even more serious crimes in the future.

Who can say whether a CPO's visit to a troubled family where neighbours often call to report hearing a woman or child screaming might not prevent a murder?

Community policing is not top-down. In traditional policing, the power to make decisions concerning how the police will operate resides in the centralised authority of the police command. Dr. Peter Phillips and Commissioner Francis Forbes tell the community and nation what the police agenda will be, and they issue orders to underlings in the force concerning how police policy will be implemented.

Community policing de-centralises decision-making, opening departments and structures so that new ideas can surface.

Community policing provides the police agency with grass-roots input, from both community residents and line officers. Most important, genuine community policing cannot be managed or directed from out of the Commissioner's office by control technocrats and paid consultants skilled in 'organisational management'. To gain the full confidence of residents, which it must for it to succeed, community policing will have to be driven from the ground up.

WHAT COMMUNITY POLICING IS

Community policing is a philosophy of policing. It is based on the concept that police officers and private citizens working together in creative ways can help solve contemporary community problems related to crime, fear of crime, social and physical disorder, and neighbourhood decay. The philosophy is predicated on the belief that achieving these goals will require police agencies to develop new relationships with the law-abiding people in the community, allowing them a greater voice in setting local police priorities, and involving them in efforts to improve the overall quality of life in their neighbourhoods.

I'll try getting in here, briefly, two essential operational departures of community policing from traditional policing.

The first is that community policing shifts the focus of police work from handling random and crisis calls to solving community problems. Community policing goes beyond problem-oriented policing to include problem-solving approaches.

Problem-oriented policing rightfully recognises the benefits of involving the police directly in the community.

Take, for instance, the traditional call and police response to the crime of robbery at a particular bus or taxi stand.

In normal or traditional policing, the way it's handled, is that, e.g., the Hunt's Bay police station gets the call for service, naturally after the crime has been committed. By the time the police officer arrives on the scene, the officer usually does little more than take a report, since the culprits have long gone. We might improve that wasteful situation with a problem-oriented approach. A technique like crime mapping would flag the department to the persistent problems at that particular stand. An officer skilled in problem-oriented policing would investigate why that particular stand has so many robberies.

He'd likely suggest one basic solution: remove the stand or change it to a different location, without really checking back to see if that had solved the problem. If no more robberies were reported from that location, the officer would have reason to feel confident that the problem had indeed been solved.

But that would depend on people not calling to report any more robberies at that location.

Community policing, which emphasises both problem-oriented and problem-solving approaches, would approach that same situation differently. The CPO assigned on foot-patrol to that area might very well have uncovered the problem on her own rather than to have it flagged to her attention by Area 4 Headquarters. In fact, a CPO might well discover problems headquarters never did, since many victims never report crimes to the police. A CPO might employ the same problem-solving tactics to our robbery example: having the taxi stand removed. But her presence in the community would also allow her to find out whether those solutions actually worked.

The next departure is more challenging. That is, community policing is power sharing. A community policing agenda is influenced by the community's needs and desires, not just the dictates of the police or national security apparatus. It provides a quid pro quo. The community-policing officer says to people in the beat area: If you provide information and assistance to us, you will in exchange receive an opportunity to have input into the police priorities in your community.

Empowering average citizens also requires an important adjustment in the line officer's thinking. Traditional officers who believe their authority and police uniform should be sufficient to demand compliance (as in 'come ya to mi bwai') may find it difficult to make the shift to sharing power demanded by community policing.

All things considered, I suggest that implementation of community policing in any area of Jamaica is less a problem of logistics and infrastructure than of institutional change, and overcoming resistance to change.

Nothing I have described here is impossible, or in the long run unworkable in, for example, inner city Kingston. Colonel Trevor MacMillan's vision was to have police officers rise in stature in the eyes of residents they serve and protect, so that they would supplant in influence and prestige the don.