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"An Garda Síochána is determined to protect communities from the potentially devastating impact of these drugs and firearms"
The senior officer said the operation had been "highly targeted" and had involved "close co-operation" with the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
(source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27087586)

Based on my perception, the word communities has to do with small groups in a society, such as youngsters at schools or on the streets, or even could refer to street kids. Highly targeted has to with targeting the most important figures in charge of an event. And in the last one, although I know the meaning of cooperation, I cannot understand why the writer has written it in a way as if it is an adjective!

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    Communities here could just as well be replaced by people, since the intention is obviously to protect everybody, not just some subgroups within society. Feasibly communities could allude to the particular subgroups who would be more likely to affected by drugs/firearms, but mostly it's just a political buzz-word here. Highly-targeted here means the operation had very specific targets. It's unspecified whether this refers to particular people (certain drug/gun dealers) or objectives (try to eliminate heroin, but don't bother about cannabis, for example).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 19, 2014 at 12:28
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    Note that co-operation here is a noun, not an adjective. There is nothing unusual about the cited usage.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 19, 2014 at 12:29
  • A community is, etymologically, any group which has common identity or interests. As used here it means a geographic community—all the people who live in a given place and have a common interest in security, as opposed to the small groups of criminals and drug users who live among them. As FumbleFingers says, it is a political buzzword, but not I think a meaningless one.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Commented Apr 19, 2014 at 14:23

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"Communities" can refer to any grouping of people. It could be people living in particular towns, people of a particular social class or ethnic background, or people of a particular age. Which groups of people are intended will need to be determined from context.

"Highly targeted" does not necessarily refer to targeting specific people; it means that the operation is very specific in its scope; that it intends to achieve very specific ends. For example: an advertising campaign might be "highly targeted" if it is intended to reach only a specific subset of the population.

"Co-operation" is a noun used as a noun here. Think of how the sentence would read if you replaced it with other nouns or other adjectives:

The operation involved danger.

makes sense. But:

The operation involved dangerous.

does not.

Here "cooperation with the Police Service" is a noun phrase, and works the same way as "danger" does in the first example.

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