Police officers use different types of patrol in order to ensure the safety of the community. Random patrol is a policing strategy that can be defined as performing patrol in a non-sequential order with varied times and locations so as not to create a specific patrol pattern. This policing approach has three main goals, including detecting ongoing crimes, providing a response to crime calls, as well as creating a sense of police omnipresence (Hess et al., 2018). Random patrol can be considered both proactive and reactive measures as it helps the police to decrease the chances of crime commitment, as well as to react rapidly to existing incidents. However, it cannot be utilized to target serious crimes, which require more complex intelligence and personnel involved.
Another policing strategy is aggressive patrol, which can be used to deal with specific types of offenses. This strategy is also called a directed or specialized patrol as it provides more police activities in high-crime areas and during times of increased criminal activity (Hess et al., 2018). Aggressive patrol can be defined as a special law enforcement activity involving additional intelligence and resources to target specific crime incidents in the area. Police officers can use crackdowns, saturation, interrogations, traffic enforcement, as well as unusual activity detection to reduce the intensity of criminal activity and address a specific crime situation in the area. This approach can lead to dissatisfaction on the part of the community as it targets long-lasting negative crime patterns. However, aggressive patrol can contribute to the deterrence effect by preventing people from committing the same crimes in the area.
These two types of patrolling would be the most effective in my local area. My community is quiet and does not often have any serious crime incidents. However, it has a problem of driving under the influence and drunk fights between the locals. The random patrol would be helpful in creating an illusion of police omnipresence, which will strengthen the bond between law enforcement and citizens, creating a sense of safety. Additionally, this type of patrolling will help police officers to react quickly to possible cases of fighting or drunk driving in the area. The aggressive patrol would be effective in targeting the problem from time to time in order to reduce its incidence due to the deterrence effect. It can help the police not to spend additional resources to react to crime calls making prevention efforts more efficient. Aggressive patrol can be implemented to target drunk drivers and aggressive citizens at night and evening on the weekends.
References
Hess, K., Hess Orthmann, C., & Cho, H. L. (2018). Introduction to Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice. Cengage Learning.