Police Departments and the Importance of Community Outreach

Community outreach and engagement is often overlooked, but it is an important part of police work. The media too often portrays the relationship between police and their communities as combative, but the reality is that most departments work hard to engage, get to know and work with members of their communities in positive ways.

Individual officers engage in outreach, and many police departments also often have specific programs dedicated to outreach. The importance of community outreach to building trust, reducing crime and combatting substance abuse problems cannot be overstated.

The Goals of Community Outreach

Community outreach by police departments is an effort to engage with community members proactively, and not in a reactionary way. Outreach is an important part of community policing, which is defined by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics as “a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques between the police and the community.”¹

Community policing and outreach addresses focus on the conditions that can cause issues for public safety. Police departments partner with community members and get to know them, but they also work with social agencies and service providers in the community to develop relationships and engage with the people they serve. There are several important and more specific goals of this community approach to policing:

• To create more opportunities for police and community members to engage in positive ways
• To build relationships and trust between police and community members
• To develop greater understanding between police and members of a diverse community, including refugees
• To provide greater transparency for the community about what police do
• To reduce crime rates in communities
• To protect police officers

Examples of Community Outreach Programs

Many police departments throughout the country have developed community outreach programs. Some have a specific focus, such as increasing understanding and awareness in culturally diverse communities or reaching out to and educating young people, while others are more generally focused on developing positive relationships with all community members.

Many communities around the U.S. have seen a significant increase in refugee and immigrant populations. Outreach programs can help police engage with these newcomers and establish positive relationships. In Minneapolis, the police department has worked to engage their Somali community by actively recruiting Somali police officers. By the fall of 2016 the department had seven new Somali officers, an important step in helping to engage that specific community and improve cultural understanding.²

A more general approach to engaging the community and helping to improve understanding and trust is through the use of Citizen Police Academies (CPAs). Many communities use these programs to allow residents to learn more about what their police departments do. The goals of the academies are to help the public better understand what police do, to build partnerships between individuals and the department, to increase communication between citizens and the department, and ultimately to reduce crime.

A study of 31 CPAs in Tennessee that were conducted over a 20-year period found that there were positive benefits of this kind of community outreach.³ One important benefit achieved was that the programs helped members of the community become more familiar with their local departments, with crime in their communities and individuals within the police department. The study also determined that the participants left CPAs with a more positive outlook with respect to policing.

Youth outreach programs are often a big part of overall police outreach, and in fact many departments have several such programs. The results are proven to be beneficial to the community. In Columbia Heights, a suburb of Minneapolis, the police department has reported a 40-year crime low as well as a significant drop in youth arrests—from 251 in 2008 to 90 in 2015—after several years of youth programs.⁴ These included an open gym program with police officers, an anti-bullying reading program, educational programs, and a partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters.

The Importance of Community Outreach in Combatting Substance Abuse

Another crucial element of outreach in local police departments is the battle against substance abuse, addiction and drug overdoses. Overdose deaths, mostly caused by opioids like heroin and prescription narcotics, have increased significantly in the U.S. The number of deaths from opioids increased five-fold from 1999 to 2016.⁵

Community outreach by police departments can have a positive impact on the overdose and drug abuse epidemic. In some locations, for instance, departments are offering assistance for anyone who needs help getting addiction treatment. There are no strings attached, and the goal is to ensure citizens feel comfortable approaching officers for help without fear of being arrested.

The Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative (PAARI) is one organization that is helping departments better engage with and help those with addictive disorders.⁶ The philosophy of the program is to help, rather than arrest, addicts. PAARI works with local police departments to help them encourage people struggling with addiction to look for treatment, to actively connect people with a substance use disorder to treatment centers, and to provide officers and first responders with Narcan/naloxone, an effective antidote to opioid overdoses.

The impact of PAARI in just its first year is significant and positive. The program has trained officers in 143 departments. More than 400 people entered addiction treatment thanks to the assistance offered by the program. Some of the communities that worked with PAARI saw reductions in crime of up to 25 percent.

Community outreach by police departments is important in many ways. It helps increase understanding between residents and officers; it develops trust; it helps officers better relate to diverse communities; and outreach actually has a significant and positive effect on crime reduction. In the crucial area of substance abuse, addiction and the epidemic of overdoses, community outreach is actually saving lives and making a real difference.