Community policing is one of the more misunderstood concepts in law enforcement. While politicians, citizens and cops alike enjoy throwing the term around like some sort of panacea for situations with no easy answers, it’s essentially a philosophy of working alongside the community to pursue public safety. As stated many years ago in Peel’s principles, “The police are the public, and the public are the police.” 

While many agencies give away free food or throw police-funded parties in pursuit of the concept, a truer expression is found in programs that actually work with the public to address law enforcement issues. Some communities allow citizens to integrate their business surveillance cameras so that law enforcement analysts can access them on demand. Others encourage and coordinate neighborhood watch groups. 

In Charlestown, Rhode Island, a relatively innocuous decision by the local police department has some residents up in arms. A small beach town of less than 2,000 people, Charlestown deals with problems that many similarly situated towns experience. The town has a seasonal ban on driving on certain parts of the beach, and the police department is tasked with enforcing it. This summer, the police department decided it would start accepting time-stamped photos of offending vehicles as evidence to issue citations for violations. 

Steven Brown, the executive director of the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, called the policy “disturbing.” He claims that the “… idea of delegating private citizens to engage in this type of law enforcement activity seems quite inappropriate.”

It may be unusual where Brown is from, but it’s hardly without precedent in the United States. Many states still have statutory provisions for citizen arrests, and some states allow citizens to file criminal complaints directly with a court or their local prosecutor. Citizens providing photo evidence of a crime for local police to pursue is hardly a new concept. 

Charlestown resident Scott Keeley is an advocate for shoreline access. According to him, the policy creates “vigilantes.” The term has its roots in the “vigilance committees” that were formed in many of the lawless frontier towns of the Wild West. Upset and concerned at the activities of lawless gangs, citizens often banded together in groups that pledged to mutually address crime and disorder. 

While residents may disagree with the law and anything that makes it easier to enforce it, this type of cooperative effort is more akin to community policing than Wild West vigilantism. Community policing was heralded as one of the major solutions to ongoing law enforcement issues in America by the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing in 2014. It’s also been cited frequently since then as a laudable goal for the law enforcement profession to implement. Given its increasing prevalence, the reaction from this small town may provide lessons in the unexpected pushback that agencies might expect to receive when implementing programs and policies geared toward community policing. 

The reality in Charlestown is admittedly complicated, apparently stemming from an ongoing dispute among citizens in the area. A local group (the Nope’s Island Conservation Association) owns land on part of the beach and is apparently behind much of the effort to restrict beach access. Keeley claims that their intent is to “… privatize the beach.” 

“I’m surprised that the Charlestown Police would support that,” he said.

It appears that both groups want the police to take sides in the issue. It may not be vigilantism, but maybe it’s not unlike the old west, after all.