Because of the gaps in the knowledge about both the results and the difficulties of community-oriented policing, it should not be accepted uncritically. However, the traditional model of police professionalism -- devoting resources to quick radio-car response to calls about specific crime incidents -- makes little sense at a time when the principal threats to public order and safety come from collective, not individual, sources, and form problems, not incidents. Even if community-oriented policing does not produce the dramatic gains that some of its more ardent advocates expect, it has indisputably produced one that officers who have been involved in it immediately acknowledge: it has changed their perceptions of the community. Where once police were dealing with "losers," in community policing they are dealing with good citizens and helping them solve problems.