Title: The Police-Community Relationship
Headings: Recent Publications
Recent Publications
Etienne Marais
Introduction
The Role of Police-Community Relationships in the Achievement of Affordable Personal Safety
The Nature of Policing
Preconditions for Effective Policing
Public Input into Policing Strategy
Approaches to Policing and the Community
Defining the Problem
The Ideal of Consensus
Beyond Consensus - The "problem" of Community Diversity
The Nature of Communities
Communities in conflict
The Crisis in Policing - A Crisis of Relationships?
Towards an Analysis of Police-Community Relations in South Africa
Historical Background
The Character of South African Policing and Police Accountability
Police Accountability
Some Conclusions and Recommendations
Towards Community Policing?
Other Recommendations and Conclusions
At the Political Level
At the Organisational Level
At the local level
Notes:

Content: Police in a democratic society are delegated their authority by the state on behalf of the people and are, in the final analysis, supposed to be accountable to the people they serve. There are two key features of policing which arise from the definition of the role of the police. The coercive power of the police. The police are the only agency in society which is granted the legal authority to use force (violence) in the exercise of their duties. At the same time the police are able to deprive individuals of the very rights and freedoms which democratic societies regard as so important. While the law provides the basis upon which police operate, this and the various police regulations do not in general determine precisely what police should do. 4 This means that policing is essentially a discretionary activity. 5
The enormous powers of the police combined with the discretionary nature of policing, mean that actions of the police are easily seen as threatening and unjustified, 6 when people do not perceive them to be fair and in the interests of the community. This difficult nature of policing means that one of the "most important regulating factors is that the police must secure public approval for their actions" (Pike 1986:23). Preconditions for Effective Policing
The second level of concern for sound police-community relations relates to the importance of the "partnership in policing".