Community Policing and National Security A Study of Selected Local Government Areas in Bayelsa State, Nigeria

The rising crime rate, especially violent crime involving terrorism, armed robbery, Fulani herdsmen attack, banditry, ritual murders, political assassinations, ethnic and religious violence, kidnapping, pipe line vandalism, election violence are becoming very serious problem to the Nigerian society. It is therefore imperatives to know that crime is an obvious risk and possess major threat to orderly coexistence of the citizenry, hence the need for community policing. The purpose of this work therefore was to establish if there is any relationship between community policing and national security in selected local government areas of Bayelsa state, Nigeria. There are two competing theories for our theoretical framework Democratic, and Community implant theory of community policing, but we adopted the later. The study adopted the descriptive research design to survey 2,277,961 populations of Bayelsa, using the Taro Yamane formula to draw a sample size of 400 judgmental sampling technique was used in the study. The major instruments used in generating data for this study were questionnaire, observation and interview. The structured questionnaire titled “Community policing and national security A study of selected local government areas in Bayelsa state, Nigeria”  COPNSSLGABSNQ . The collected data were analysed using the simple percentage and Chi square x2 statistical tool to test the various hypotheses. The study findings are as follows i That there is a link between community policing and national security ii the national security problems which exist is as a result of poor community policing relations in the area of the study iii poor communication channel between the police and community hinder the effective fight against crime under community policing framework, and iv the study revealed that police inability to keep secret the identity of informants has an effect on crime fighting. Based on the above, the following recommendations were made i that to achieve national security objective through community police relation residents should be paid for their services rendered in providing useful information to the police ii the identity of informants should be kept secret iii scale up communication outlets and iv that this research be extended to other geo political zones and the scope broaden, deepened and widened. A number of references were finally made for further review. Aristotle Isaac Jacobs "Community Policing and National Security: A Study of Selected Local Government Areas in Bayelsa State, Nigeria" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-5 | Issue-1 , December 2020, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd38204.pdf Paper URL : https://www.ijtsrd.com/humanities-and-the-arts/social-science/38204/community-policing-and-national-security-a-study-of-selected-local-government-areas-in-bayelsa-state-nigeria/aristotle-isaac-jacobs