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		When Sir Robert Peel chartered the London Metropolitan Police in the early 19th century, he set forth a principle which is the seed of community policing: "...the police are the public and the public are the police." Unfortunately, throughout the 20th century, a number of factors including professionalization, centralization of control, random patrolling and technological advancements have driven a wedge between the police and the community. Patrol cars replaced the friendly foot patrol officer; 911 calls left officers little time for crime prevention; computers generated data on crime patterns, increased dispatch efficiency and calculated police response effectiveness, until rapid response became an end in itself. During the civil protests of the 1960s and 1970s, overburdened and poorly prepared police came to symbolize all of society's ills. An attitude of "us versus them" prevailed between communities and the police. Meanwhile, the social fabric of the country was changing radically and crime was on the rise in urban, suburban and rural communities. Policing philosophy had to change. Recognizing the police force's inability to handle urban unrest, three Presidential commissions - between 1968 and 1973 - spent millions of dollars on criminal justice education for law enforcement workers. In the 1970s, the community policing movement emerged. Newly formed activist groups joined with veteran groups and conducted landmark research studies to reevaluate policing methods. Out of this research came prototypes for community policing. At first, when police leaders tried to institute innovations, they were suspect -considered to be manipulated by outside pressures. Now, many of the strategies developed in the 1970s are considered necessary and the strongest proponents for community policing are police officers themselves. In 1993, the Community Policing Consortium was created to deliver community policing training and technical assistance to police departments around the country. Then, President Clinton's Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994-popularly known as the "Crime Act"-authorized spending $8.8 billion over six years on grants to local policing agencies to add 100,000 officers and promote community policing in innovative ways. To implement the new law, Attorney General Janet Reno created the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) in the U.S. Department of Justice to administer these programs. As of May, 1999 18,000 agencies had received community policing grants and 100,000 new police officers had been added. President Clinton's FY 2001 budget requests $1.3 billion for the COPS program to add officers to the beat, enhance crime fighting technology and support crime prevention initiatives. Source: Community Policing Consortium Home | Story | Community Policing | Paramilitary Policing | Filmmakers | Resources | ITVS