Chapter 2

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

This chapter presents the literature that has bearing and relationship to the

present study. This gave the researcher broader perspective which aid the researchers

in conceptualizing and understanding of the study of Police visibility. The literature and

studies cited will help the researchers in the interpretation of findings.

Local literature

Director General Nicanor A. Bartolome, Chief of the Philippine National Police

(PNP), ordered all policemen doing office work to go out and render at least four hours

of security patrols in their areas of jurisdiction.“They will now be conducting patrol

before they go to the office and before they go home,” said Bartolome. The target time

will be from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. in the morning and from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in

the afternoon. According to Bartolome, the PNP objective is to make use of that time on

matters that need the police concerns most, which is patrolling the streets”. It was

implemented by Bartolome in Metro Manila while he was director of the National Capital

Region Police Office (NCRPO).

After the assessment that it was effective, Bartolome said he wants to implement

it across the country because aside from policemen doing office work, he said some

policemen in other units will also be required to conduct beat patrol.

He, however, clarified that only those assigned in areas where the threat of big

rebel groups like communist and Moro rebels will be tapped for patrol. “Some of those
assigned in internal security operations will be used for visibility because we all know

that it is an essential component to prevent crime,” said Bartolome.

Moreover, Abat (2013) stated that in Davao City, the police station is increasing

police visibility in communities to reduce the numbers of crimes. Most of the policemen

are outside for advocacy programs and to maximize visibility. And also don’t let the ride

in a mobile since mostly they are on foot patrol to observe more the community safety,

this way they could easily establish connection with the community against criminal

acts. Policemen also go house-to-house in different villages in subdivision within the

area of their responsibilities to make sure that they are safe by the police force.

Hence, Rińen (2014), stated that Cebu City is further strengthening police

visibility in public areas where implemented by the police as part of their strategy to

lower street crimes in program dubbed Metro Cebu Comprehensive Deployment

System (MCCDS) which in this program they will maximize police visibility out in the

streets to prevent crimes from happening and witness more augmentation of policemen

out in the streets in beat, foot, and mobile in covert operations. “The response to street

crimes is always police presence”, apart from increasing the number of policemen in

foot and mobile patrols, other strategies that will be employed the establishment of

checkpoints, deployment of covert personnel and with all these done in random manner.

Therefore, safety is a freedom from harm or danger and the state of being safe

which every person assures in the place they were living and for their daily lives. People

need to feel safe at all times under any circumstances. It does not matter if you are at

home, at work, at school, travelling at social event or in desperate need of emergency

assistance.
 Police visibility became a most powerful tool of the Philippine national police in

preventing crimes and the so called would be criminals.

It is important to know the age or the maturity of the respondents in order to

obtain better information from them. According to study, maturity can be understood as

a developmental concept, including the categories of physical, intellectual, emotional

and social development. It is the processes of physical and intellectual development are

usually completed during adolescence; it is the categories of emotional and social

development that are of most relevance in considering the maturity of young adults.

Development of those areas of the brain concerned with higher order cognitive

processes and executive functions, including control of impulses and regulation and

interpretation of emotions, continues into early adulthood; the human brain is not

‘mature’ until the early to mid-twenties.

Foreign Setting

In every states there will always be different methods or programs established for

the safety of everybody, most especially in the prevention of crimes in order to maintain

peace and order. The high visibility of the police is the major requirement for the

community to stay at peace and the most common police operation of the law enforcers.

According to the research (Bohm & Haley, 2005), law enforcement is locally

controlled and structurally decentralized so that each department is responsible for the

policies and procedures that govern how the organization will carry out its statutory

duties to serve the community. The major functions of a police department include the

following: protect life and property; enforce the laws; prevent crime; preserve the peace;

arrest violators; and serve the public. Local, county and state governments, as well as
the federal government, enact laws that give authority to the individual agencies to carry

out these assigned duties. Crime control, one of the primary duties of law enforcement,

is carried out through the services of patrol officers and criminal investigators.

Police departments must provide service to the community often with limited

resources. When crime is discovered by an officer or reported to the police department,

the first officer arriving on the scene is usually the patrol officer in whose district the

incident occurred (Adams, 2001). It is logical therefore that the first responding patrol

officer would be in the best position to gather valuable and timely information about the

crime. Assigning a patrol officer to conduct a preliminary investigation maximizes the

chances for the case to be closed at, or shortly after, the first contact with the scene

(McDevitt, 2005).

The likelihood that a crime is detected and its offender charged is a central

component of the standard economic model of crime. The economics literature has

barely devoted any attention to studying the determinants of crime detection in detail.

While the institution with the responsibility for crime detection, the police, has been the

focus of much recent work, most such efforts have been directed to studying its reduced

form effect on crime. Typical approaches include examining whether police numbers,

police composition or high visibility patrolling are associated with lower crime rates. The

implicit assumption is that a change in these variables can lead to higher chances of

catching offenders, which has an immediate deterrence effect as well as an

incapacitation effect over longer horizons. However, very little work has examined

directly whether the police can actually increase the detection rate with either higher
numbers or, especially, with different operational practices (Di Tella and Schargrodsky

2004, Klick and Tabarrok 2005, Becker 1968, Ehrlich 1973).

The most important and most controversial instrument used by police forces to

apprehend offenders is responding rapidly when alerted to a crime. The effectiveness of

rapid response policing seems self-evident. By arriving more quickly, police officers

should be able to arrest any suspect and/or prevent the destruction or contamination of

physical evidence. Arriving at the crime scene relatively quickly should, however, allow

an officer to find witnesses to the crime, question them before their recollections worsen

and encourage witness and victim cooperation by signaling efficiency and dedication.

Moreover, suspect will be named relatively more often when the police are faster in

attending the scene.

According to the research, (UN, 2004 and Ekablom, 2005), the meaning of crime

prevention is the act of reducing the opportunity to commit crime it entails any action

designed to reduce the actual level of crime and the fear of crime. This prevention

include primary crime prevention for example avoiding disorganized community,

abandoned buildings and broken down cars which can be used as a cover for criminals,

second crime prevention for example prediction and identification of spotted places,

people and environment that may influence crime to occur, and take measure for the

prevention for example, setting security cameras, alarm systems, visibility of police

officers for patrolling, this make offenders to be afraid of being arrested when

committing crime. Tertiary crime prevention, this focuses on prevention after a crime has

occurred for example arresting the offenders soon after the crime and send them to the

court of law.
 Michael (2005) stated that crime is one of the main threats to public and individual

safety, and is an obstacle for social, political, and economic development worldwide. In

the world crime, is influenced by globalization, technological development, economic

hardship, religious beliefs, and need for power, the crime rate in developed and

industrialized countries is considered to be higher than under developed countries.

Interpol (2013) also stated that most of the North America Countries, like Canada and

United States, South America countries like Brazil, Argentina Uruguay, Paraguay,

Mexico and Colombia and southern Asia countries, are the leading nations to have high

rate of crime because of highly and organized criminal groups. For example the rate of

crime for those countries for the period of 2013 are, Guatemala 71.31, Honduras 68.32,

Canada 68.70 México 50.40 Elsalvador 64.35, Costa Rica 61.40, United states 50.15,

Venezuela 81.50, Afghanistan 82.51, Pakistan 63.75, also the kind of crimes which are

common in those countries are, fraud, money laundering, homicide, motor vehicle theft,

cyber crime, house breaking, kidnapping, robbery, terrorism, illegal drug business.

According to African Policing civilian oversight forum (2010), to their book

common standards for policing on East African, point out the role of the police as:

Protect life, liberty and security of the person, maintain public safety and social peace,

adhere to the rule of law as an essential element to human security, peace and the

promotion of fundamental rights and freedoms. They also argue that, the police will fulfill

their functions in accordance with the rule of law. The police will not arbitrarily arrest or

detain and will only deprive persons of their liberty in accordance with the law, promptly

inform accused persons of the reason for their arrest and any changes brought them –

this must be communicated to the accused persons in a way and manner they

understand, act in a manner that upholds the presumption of an accused person’s

innocence until proven guilty in accordance with the law, ensure that arrested persons

are brought promptly before an authorized and competent judicial authority, ensure that,

upon arrest, detention and charge, there is a presumptive right to bail or bond, ensure

the right of detained person to challenge the lawfulness of their detention.

It is important to distinguish between the ideas of ‘police’ and ‘policing’. ‘Police’

refers to a particular kind of social institution, while ‘policing’ implies a set of processes

with specific social functions. ‘Police are not found in every society, and police

organizations and personnel can have a variety of shifting forms. ‘Police’, however, is

arguably a necessity in any social order, which may be carried out by a number of

different processes and institutional arrangement. A state-organized specialist police

organization of the modern is only one example. The police are agents of the state,

established for the maintenance of order and enforcement of law.

The most popular strand of political economy is the Marxist model. Its main

argument is summarized by the famous statement by Karl Marx in the Preface to A

Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1970). According to Marx, in the social

production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are

independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in

their development of material sources of production. The totality of these relations of

production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which

arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of

social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general

process of social, political and intellectual life. Marx strongly argued that the economic

structure of society determines the character of the superstructure, which includes the

political, legal, cultural and religious relations, and institutions of society. However, this
does not imply a unidirectional model. Account is also taken of dialectical relations a

form of feedback process in which the superstructure also influences the economic

substructure. (http://repository.out.ac.tz/494/1)