For police officers engaging out in the community, the
following techniques can be used:
- Have an
influence/impact chart: The engaging police officers should
be able to identify the influence and impact their community
policing actions have in the community.
- Having a
Power/Interest grid: Similar to the above chart, the level
of power or authority that the police have and the level of
interest that the community exhibits should be identified.
- Identify the level of
importance: The amount of importance that is given to
community policing initiatives should be analyzed. This shall help
the engaging police officers to know what to expect.
- Identifying the
important stakeholders: There may be n number of
stakeholders in a community. But there is a need to identify the
ones that are needed to make a difference.
Issues of using an internal evaluator from the police
department to conduct the evaluation:
- There are chances of influencing the evaluator internally,
knowingly or unknowingly.
- There is an ingrained bias towards the police force for an
internal evaluator.
- Even if there is no bias, it is difficult to prove that there
has been an impartial evaluation by the internal evaluator. All
community stakeholders may not agree to it.
- It may cause trust issues between the community police officers
and the people of the community.