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Community Policing in the 21st Century: The case of the Ottawa Police Service

Despite the seemingly widespread support and acceptance of community-policing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it remains unclear among academics and practitioner's how much community policing continues to influence the service delivery model of police services in Canada. Instead, some believe that community policing is potentially being overshadowed by new policing innovations. This research used Normandeau and Leighton's (1990) definition of community policing as an analytical framework to identify community policing in practice as implemented by the Ottawa Police Service. Five research questions were developed to examine the knowledge and perceptions of community policing among eight police officers and five community members currently involved in community policing. These perceptions were then supplemented by direct observation at five police-community meetings and analysis of the Ottawa Police Service website. The findings have demonstrated that indeed community policing is well perceived by police and community members involved in community policing. However, it is unclear how prevalent these perceptions are outside of those directly involved in community policing. There was no consensus among police officers that a community policing philosophy has become part of mainstream policing. It's clear that the Ottawa Police Service has philosophical, organizational and tactical components of community policing currently in place but the extent to which they are emphasized is unclear. The findings suggest that, regardless of the future direction taken by The Ottawa Police Service, they must take into account several developments since the inception of community policing and most importantly strive to maintain accountability.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/28574
Date January 2010
CreatorsDagg, Zachary V
PublisherUniversity of Ottawa (Canada)
Source SetsUniversité d’Ottawa
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Format129 p.

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