Arlington, TX: A Community Policing Story Arlington, TX - A Community Policing Story | Page 12

Officer DeAndrel Scott (left), parent Lisa Dagley (right), and her son, Malik (center), at a Mentoring Arlington
Youth Program dialogue circle at Sam Houston High School in 2016
His statement, undoubtedly the most high-profile public acknowledgment of the decades
of harm visited upon communities of color by the criminal justice system, encouraged law
enforcement to recognize—and subsequently invest in—public trust as a formal metric of
departmental success.
However, a renewed emphasis on public trust does not constitute a new direction in policing;
on the contrary, this emphasis can be traced back to the nine principles of policing established
by Sir Robert Peel of the London Metropolitan Police District in 1829. His model, which
serves as the foundational philosophy behind community-oriented policing, argues in his
second principle that “the ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public
approval of police actions.” 10 This principle, and the larger framework for ethical policing
it represents, remains “unique in history and throughout the world because it derive[s] not
from fear but almost exclusively from public co-operation with the police, induced by them
designedly by behaviour which secures and maintains for them the approval, respect, and
affection of the public.” 11
10. ‘Sir Robert Peel’s Nine Principles of Policing,” New York Times, April 15, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/
2014/04/16/nyregion/sir-robert-peels-nine-principles-of-policing.html?mcubz=1.
11. Charles Reith, A New Study of Police History (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1956), 140.
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Arlington, TX: A Community Policing Story