Community policing has a couple different faces.

The ideal face, when administrators come up with a community policing plan, is that police officers work directly with the community they serve to meet their needs directly - maybe the police are focusing on one problem when another is more important.

This works through community meetings and liaisons with citizens. So let's say you work early week midnight shift, when there aren't as many drunks on the road or rowdy parties in your community. You meet with some local businesses, maybe even just walk in, and ask them what has been bothering them. A lot of people don't report things like transient issues, graffiti, minor thefts, etc. If the police make a good relationship, the odds are good that citizens will feel more comfortable participating in law enforcement, rather than thinking they can't get help.

In reality, it doesn't often work that way. There are a lot of reasons for that. The face that community policing usually takes is the following:

2/3rds of a department works, essentially, at night. That's a simple but effective obstacle to communication. Coming in on a day off is an option, but a poor one - even if your department will authorize the comp or overtime, it's not a whole lot of fun to flip your sleep schedule and come in on a day off so you can meet with some people at what is essentially 1:00 AM for you.

Another issue is that there isn't usually any accountability. Sure, the administration says, "All right, guys, get with the business owners, HOAs, and other groups in your beat. Do some meetings, get some good intel. I want results!" But afterwards, there isn't any follow up. It becomes a bullet point for the department website, safety brochures, and press releases, but nobody is actually doing it.

Let's throw another thing into the mix - most cops feel like the community they serve ignores them at best, and hates them at worst. I feel really strongly about this, but there aren't any easy solutions. I think that realistically, most people are pretty ambivalent about cops - there are some bad ones, and some great ones, and most of them are okay, just like anybody else. But all the training cops get (everybody is out to get you) coupled with the occasional media frenzy focusing on the truly terrible cops, coupled again with the strong sense of brotherhood leads to a vicious "us vs them" mentality in some departments. So if you really think that most of the people in your town think you're a dick, you're not real likely to schedule a bunch of meetings and ask them what scares them.

I think the last big obstacle is communication. A lot of departments leave the community policing to a "crime prevention officer" or two. This position gives a cop a chance to wear a "soft" uniform, have a day shift for a few years, and he doesn't have to ride around, responding to calls or dealing with drunken assholes for a while. This often shuts other cops ears, so when he comes back and says, "Hey guys, the businesses on north Main St have been telling me they've been cleaning a lot of gang graffiti on the back sides of their businesses - can we get over there and do some extra patrols?", they typically blow him off because they see him (even if it's just for the duration of this assignment) as the guy with the easy job who is just giving them info so the bosses can't say he isn't doing his job.

Now, this isn't everywhere - I think it works great some places, if they take care to overcome the obstacles listed above (and more). I also think that responding to the community's needs is the easiest way to actually lower crime. I subscribe to the Robert Peel's (paraphrased here) thought that everybody's duty is to help fight crime, cops just get paid to do it full time and give it all their energy. The only way to do that is to get truly involved with the city you serve and make sure that the citizens are equal partners, but when you start talking like that, cops eyes glaze over

That's my view on it - it's how every department should work, in an ideal world.