Status of organization culture in police academies for adoptation of communty policing philosophy and a model proposal

As a result of human-centered approach that give importance to wishes and needs of community and service quality, community policing philosophy and practice emerged as reflection of that understandings. Community policing is a model that aiming to develop a cooperation with community and to ensure participation of the public in determining the security policies. And also community policing is a philosophy that try to solve all social problems of community by investigating the main reasons, especially regarding crime, and it is supported that decentralization as organizational strcture. Adopting to the principles of community policing by all police officers in the organization seems important for the effectiveness and efficiency of security services. Additionally before becoming police officer in basic training of Police Academy stage, Adopting of community policing to police cadets will ensure that to be part of organization culture all over the organization in the future. So that the purpose of this study is examine what extent organization culture support of community policing in Turkish Police Academies and to develop a model that underpin organizational culture transformation for community policing. The study was conducted in 28 different Police Academies established in different province of Turkey by using survey model. The datas for this study were collected from police cadets, instructors and executives working at that 28 different Police Academies. The 5-point Likert type scale named "organizational culture level support by adoptation of community policing" was applied to 1078 participant. At the stage of data analysis, The quantitative datas have been analyzed with SPSS 17.0 Statistic Computer Program. At the result of research the level of support of commuity policing effected by the existing organizational culture in Police Academies were found high degree for both cadets, intructors and executives. When considering Police Academies, Gaziantep, Hatay, İzmir Bornova, Konya Ereğli, Kırşehir and Rize Police Academy were found high level of support for commuity policing. But Any Police Academy could reach culturally the highest level of support of commuity policing. In the study it is exist different dimensions. When results as measured by dimensions it was found high degree culturally support level of commuity policing for the dimension of values, artifacts, uniform as symbol and accountability. But for the dimension of relationship with public, police solidarity and organizational policies were found in moderate level. The findings also might indicate that the support level of organization culture towards community policing philosophy in Police Academieswas seen to be different according to acedemy and class as independent variables. However it was not differentiated according to independent variable of gender. Another finding is that academy cadets, studies in first year, have higher support level of organization culture towards community policing than the cadets studies in second year. And also one of the important findings of study is that executives attendant to Police Academy have high level seniorty as official but the instructors have low level seniorty as working time in police traning centers. At the end of the study a model proposal, which will contribute to cultural transformation of Police Academy regarding support of community policing philosophy, was developed based upon the result of research and literature.