| dc.description.abstract | Community policing is 'a policy and a strategy aimed at achieving more effective and efficient crime control, reduced fear of crime, improved quality of life, improved police services and police legitimacy, through a proactive reliance on community resources that seeks to change crime-causing conditions. It assumes a need for greater accountability of police, greater public share in decision making and greater concern for civil rights and liberties.
Community policing could therefore be used as a way to forge links between police and previously excluded communities, build trust between the two, and facilitate a change in the perceptions of the community towards the police. Both the community and the Police must create a working partnership and mutual confidence to solve security problems and desist from unnecessarily blaming each other. Communication plays a pivotal role in establishment of trust, which in return helps in building strong community contact, which yields to community partnerships; in essence, there cannot be any reasonable partnership without establishing a mutual contact first.
The study set out to investigate socio-demographic factors (age, gender and education level) relationship with trust in community policing and the relationship between police communication and accountability with the levels of trust. Social exchange theory and symbolic interactionism theory governed the study; empirical investigation was carried out in Ruai Township community. This was because the township was the first site where community policing programme in Kenya was launched. As a result of this tremendous accomplishments were expected to have been achieved in the locality. The research design used was a cross-sectional survey research from which a sample of 203 respondents was purposively drawn randomly depending on their availability and convenience.
Analysis was carried using SPSS. Chi-square test was used to test association between variables and levels of trust while Phi test was used as a measure of that association. The recommendations of the study are that, the police and the community should share responsibility and decision-making as well as sustained commitment from both the police and community, with regard to safety and security needs.
Police should also direct their actions strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary, example, in the recent cases of extrajudicial killings. Serious institutional reforms must be applied to transform the Kenya police from a force to a service. Improved transparency and fairness of police personnel administration will be a key step to ensuring accountability. The chief enemy of accountability is impunity which only exists due to lack of effective mechanisms for investigating and punishing police misconduct | en_US |
