Community-Oriented Policing and Counterinsurgency

Community-oriented policing is a model for police operations used in many countries. The goal of policing is to provide law enforcement of behaviors that a society considers criminal and to help the society in the process of control of those actions that may not be criminal but are undesirable in a community. It consists of three main elements: strategic, neighborhood-oriented, and problem-oriented policing. This method encourages community input into the government system and that helps establish needs and priorities for government and social services. The successful British counterinsurgency in Malaya is used as a case study to examine the community-oriented policing model in the light of concrete experience. The case study reveals that the pattern of operation and the final organization of the security forces in Malaya conformed closely to the community-oriented policing model laid out in chapter 2. The model is then compared to current operations in Afghanistan to see what recommendations may be made. This paper concludes that community-oriented policing is a model useful for counterinsurgency, that U.S. military policing doctrine be expanded and improved, and that the U.S. ability to provide policing and police training abroad be expanded.