In many neighborhoods, community policing is preferable to reactive, incident-driven law enforcement. But it also raises troubling questions. Community policing casts officers as social service or treatment professionals, roles for which they rarely have appropriate training. It pulls social service agencies into relationships with police that compromise their ability to serve the most marginalized people, who often have good reason to avoid law enforcement. Police presence at a social service organization is sufficient to turn away the most vulnerable unhoused, who might have outstanding
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