Overcoming barriers to communication between police and socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods: a critical theory of community policing

This research paper explores barriers to communication between police and residents of socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods (SDNs). Using a participant observation approach, research in a poor, high-crime, muiti-ethnic neighbourhood in Vancouver, Canada examined communication between police and neighbourhood residents. Communication problems that were apparent included one-way dialogue between police and neighbourhood residents, the inability of police to effectively communicate with minority and special needs groups, and the promulgation of community policing as a purposive rational model which obfuscates an empathetic dialogue between police and SDN residents. These communicative problems limited the success of community policing and crime prevention in this neighbourhood and perpetuated the asymmetrical relations between many residents and the police. Indeed, traditional community policing models have generally failed SDNs because they do not recognize how police communication with residents can continually reproduce an asymmetrical power relationship between the two. The infusion of Habermasian critical theory into community policing represents one means to overcome the communicative obstacles that perpetuate the asymmetrical power relations between police and SDN residents. lt does so by emphasizing a communicative action that attempts to expose and deconstruct asymmetrical social and personal power relationships and replace them with modes of communication that result in a more empathetic relationship. The communicative emphasis in a critical theory of community policing is a commitment to forward policing in SDNs as a democratic and empowering process. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.