Today, there are a lot of situations that challenge police and community relationships. The community prefers to see transparency in terms of police service and how they do their job. With this in mind, the importance of having good community policing is essential to form a solid foundation of stable police and community relationships.
With increasing community policing, also comes an increase in the interest in law enforcement agencies’ conducting community surveys. As part of the police department involved in community policing, the police would want to know the status of their service based on the perspective of the community’s citizens.
4 Reasons to Conduct A Police Agency Survey
The use of surveys also aims to decrease the longstanding tension between the police and the community by providing constructive feedback to improve community policing.
Here, let us identify the reasons to conduct a police agency survey.
1. Provides Descriptive Information for Quality of Police Services
Through conducting a police agency survey, police agencies receive description information regarding the quality of the services they provide. This information exceeds the data from the periodic statement of arrest activities, workload, calls, and offenses. Instead, it directly gathers full police service success measures by gaining feedback from the direct members of the society which the police serves.
Besides, community surveys also provide information regarding the perceptions of the citizens on criminal victimization, crime, and their willingness to report a crime. The result is the creation of more effective approaches to dealing with crime and focusing on police resources.
2. Improvement in Community Policing
By using surveys, the police can analyze and recognize points in community policing that need modification. In this way, they will be able to identify in which areas they are lacking and do something to improve it. The result of the initial acknowledgment would eventually lead to changes that would make the police and community relationship better.
3. Easily Disseminated and Utilized
Improvement in technology has also made advancements in the conduct of the survey. Disseminating survey forms is now easier. Moreover, the citizens can quickly fill them up and submit them to the police agencies who conducted the study.
To enable useful community surveys that are convenient and reliable, police agencies can utilize software packages like Officer Survey which allow citizens to provide feedback about their interaction with the responding officer(s) in real-time. Moreover, the package comes with practical guides and pointers on how to conduct community surveys in the right way.
4. Opportunity for Community Engagement
While collecting valuable information from the community, the police are also able to engage. They interact with the members of the community simultaneously. Conducting a survey offers an opportunity to form good interpersonal relationships between the law and the community.
In Summary:
There are many good reasons why police agencies should conduct a survey. The police want to receive information regarding their performance to know which points to improve. Using a police agency survey aims to make a community that is safe and secured through the collaboration of both police and citizens of the community.
