COMMUNITY POLICING FOR CRIME CONTROL IN RURAL COMMUNITIES A PANACEA FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

The security of the lives and property of the people is paramount and considered the primary responsibility of any government at any level. In the past, rural communities were seen as safe places for residents, travelers, investors, and tourists. However, in recent times, the story has changed as most rural communities in Nigeria are faced with a high level of insecurity ranging from banditry, ilitancy,insurgency, criminality of all sorts communal clashes, farmers-herdsmen crisis and killings to the current spade of kidnapping. These high levels of insecurity and crime have helped to scare investors,crippled economic activities, and hindered the development of most rural communities in the country.The Nigerian police force established by law to ensure internal peace and security is seemingly unable to cope with the incessant and alarming rate of crime and insecurity in the Nigerian communities.There is now an increasing clamor to adopt community policing to complement the efforts of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) in ensuring peace and security of lives and property in our rural communities.It is believed that the involvement of community members in patrolling and supplying relevant pieces of information to the police force will go a long way to curb criminality and insecurity tendencies in our rural communities. This is premised on the fact that community police personnel are in a better position to identify or detect the criminal elements in their various communities, in terms of their mode of operation and various places of their hideouts. This will go a long way to help fish out these criminals and make our rural communities a safe and more conducive place to dwell. In this regard, this paper examines the issue of community policing in crime control in rural communities as a panacea for ensuring sustainable development