I used the opportunity of our jeep tour in Wadi Rum to illustrate the principle of Four Wheel Drive Policing.
Coactive Policing can be compared to a four wheel drive vehicle. When all the wheels are pulling together in the same direction, the vehicle can cover some difficult terrain. In the same way, a community that pulls together can overcome many community problems related to crime, fear of crime, and neighborhood decay and disorder.
One wheel represents law enforcement and local government. The other three represent the other components of the community – the business sector, the academic sector, the faith-based sector, and the citizens themselves. That’s why I am so supportive of the Character Cities initiative because it brings all of these community sectors together to work toward common goals in a coactive manner.
[…] pull us out of that rut, we need Four-wheel Drive Policing. This is the Coactive model where we get the other components of the community engaged and pulling […]
I do trust all the concepts you’ve presented to your post. They’re very convincing and can definitely work. Still, the posts are too quick for beginners. May you please extend them a little from next time? Thanks for the post.
Thanks for your feedback. Typically I try to keep the videos to under 5 min because people’s attention spans on the internet seem to be so short. My aim is to break the training segments up into shorter bits with the idea that you can view them one after another to get the whole concept. Although I understand that the nature of a training blog can make it difficult for someone who is new to the material. However, I am currently working with the International Public Safety Academy to put the entire Police Dynamics program together into an online training experience. Stay tuned for more on this project as it develops…
Sheriff Ray
[…] a moment. Think back to the illustration I used in the Dynamic of Coactivity where I talked about four-wheel drive policing. We first imagined that your jurisdiction was a passenger car powered by one drive wheel. Now […]
[…] Think about the Crime Watch organizations that you have been affiliated with in your law enforcement career. How many of them last past the first few meetings? Yet there are some Crime Watch groups that have been successful long term. Those are the ones that have learned to build accountability into the community policing philosophy. Mutual accountability involves us (the police) giving the citizens permission to hold us accountable. But it also requires them to give us permission to hold them accountable, a critical step in the Coactive Policing model. […]