Where community policing fits into the rebuilding process

Community policing is more than just an integral part of law enforcement in the UK, it is critical to the application of the rule of law and the protection of citizens from harm, equally, it is essential to community safety and the administration of justice.

The events of the summer 2024 are for politicians, social scientists, psychologists, sociologists to understand: the UK’s egalitarian police service is the backbone of our society, no bias, no favouritism, no prejudice, no preference, total impartiality.

The abhorrent use of violence felt like an ignorantly backward expression generated deep within communities. Looting, rioting criminals dominating city streets in a self-delusional cognitive state of apparent impunity were a symptom of disaffection after years of neglect, depravation, destitution, desperation, isolation, inferiority, weakness, hopelessness. That said, it will always be categorically unacceptable, it has no place in civilised society and will always be extinguished with the guilty protagonists punished to the full extent of the law.

There generates a supposition that news reporting articles, publication of official assessments, and social media, have instilled a belief of invisibility if not invincibility in the criminal elements of our towns and cities. Rightly, the quasi-political agenda of extremism undermining the rules that govern acceptable behaviour produces repugnance within communities. The restoration of social norms is solely down to the commitment, sacrifice, dedication, bravery, of police officers, facilitated through the unequivocal support of our communities, the government, her ministers and local Leaders.

Cause and contributing factors will rightly be discussed infinitum, however, a legitimate line of enquiry recognises a contributing factor being a decade of underfunding of the police service.

There is a developing perception that community policing has suffered a setback in last few years for very good reasons despite its previously strong foundations. It is compounded by emphasis on theories of neighbourhood policing being implemented within the service which were then restricted by local interpretation, practical obstacles, dogmatic approaches, self-aggrandisement, ignorance, or denial of opportunity.

Equally, public concern has not tempered following disclosure two years ago of nearly 400 police stations having closed in England and Wales.  A profound contribution to undermining the fabric of civil society is the annual assessment of Policing in England and Wales 2023 by the HMICFRS: “…too often the police aren’t getting the basics right… seeing so many neighbourhoods that have got zero per cent detection rates for some of these crimes, it’s not acceptable. If the chances of being caught are so low, that is not a deterrent.”

Furthermore, anger is conveyed through the superlatives of consternation, dismay, and disbelief I use to describe a Dispatches television programme broadcast by Channel 4 on July 16, evidenced that across the length and breadth of England and Wales between 2021 and 2023, police forces in 167 areas had not identified a single suspect in their recorded neighbourhood crime statistics.

There is a necessity for a fundamental interpretation to be explored; that of clarity in the understanding of community and neighbourhood policing, is there a distinction?  The complexity is an involved one for police forces as illustrated by a 2017 Westminster Debate offering insight into government paronomasia: “The term neighbourhood policing is often used interchangeably with community policing, but it tends to be used to describe the rather more specific arrangements by which police forces deploy small teams of officers and civilians to work with communities on a local level. The term encompasses a broad range of policing practices and has been defined in numerous ways.”

This conjecture is magnified in a College of Policing Report (2021) stated that: “In its 2016 Police Effectiveness Report, HMICFRS raised concerns that local policing had been eroded and that many forces had failed to ‘redefine’ neighbourhood policing in the context of reduced budgets and changing demand’.

Accepting and incorporating the duality of community and neighbourhood principles a commitment to providing universally accepted policing at the heart of communities required a strategy; at the turn of the century the UK Government enacted the Police Reform Act (2002) introducing the National Intelligence Model (NIM). Operational implementation was designed to be delivered in-part through community-based policing, the forefront of the century’s law enforcement’s commitment to community cohesion saw Neighbourhood Policing as both a policy model and a reassurance tool for its citizens.

Neighbourhood policing by its very existence informs and directs the protection of civil society at all levels to that of enlightening national security and wider international agreements. Neighbourhood Policing promotes community safety, protects the vulnerable, prevents criminal, antisocial behaviour, and civil disorder. It directs policing resources and ultimately safeguards service delivery. It ensures accountability, transparency, oversight, and local control; simply put, it sits at the heart of civil liberties. It is not an exaggeration nor is it being over-emphasised that for individual members of the public, through local communities, villages, towns, cities, and ultimately the state, Neighbourhood Policing protects one and all.

The values and principles of neighbourhood policing have not been abandoned by the police service: “There have been different approaches to neighbourhood policing and, on occasion, different names, however, a connection to the original foundations has remained throughout…the focus was on establishing public priorities to reduce crime and the fear of crime and improve public confidence in the police, recognising the importance of this for maintaining police legitimacy…” (College of Policing 2024).

Clarification of neighbourhood policing as not community policing is too facile; it does not explain the operational applications, practical methodologies or explore the intricacies of the principles, however, for the purpose of discussion, accepting neighbourhood as geographic, affords recognition of community as including those of gender, ethnicity, colour, political persuasion, class, age; be it cultural, religious, socio-economic or race divergent within a locality, be they suburbs, districts, hamlets, zones, wards, rural areas, regions, counties.

Community safety is at the heart of civil society, for it’s an adhesive that cements factions together be it by size or description, because everyone lives somewhere, everybody eats, drinks, shops; at one point in everyone’s life they had a relative, some have neighbours, cars, pets, even lawyers, gang members, associates, colleagues, club-mates, acquaintances, contacts, paramours, right down to the ubiquitous old school friend.

Expanding the debate directs attention to a further clarification, the distinction between community policing and community intelligence.

Community Intelligence is the product of the NIM, a business practice not confined to or restricted for specialist usage. It is relevant to all areas of law enforcement: crime and its investigation, disorder and community safety; overall a model for operational policing.

An adherence to NIM has its strategic and tactical strategies dictating policing priorities and subsequently its intelligence business model requirements, problem profiles, and target profiles. These limitations determine what intelligence is processed, but more importantly what information is tasked [sought]. The consequence is police staff are directed in the information they are to obtain, process, retain and disseminate. Likewise, intelligence processing can ignore, omit or discard data not identified as priority or in line with an intelligence requirement.

The evolution to Community Intelligence-Led Policing Methodology (CILPM) has succeeded. Frontline policing is about the victim, crime, the criminal and criminal behaviour – community intelligence-led policing is about addressing these confrontations, this leads to addressing the gamut of political, criminal, religious, racial, ideological, urban, rural, ecological, denominational understanding in the context of police intelligence.

CILPM is an information repository, an intelligence reservoir. It is a facility for officers and staff to communicate observations, knowledge, concerns, hunches, opinions; submit a contribution on an event, investigation, complaint, action, incident, accident, crime, or on anti-social  behaviour; either about a person or persons unknown, of an inanimate object, vehicle, building, an occurrence; for want of a more accurate description, it is about protection from harm through community safety.

What CILPM encourages is the inclusion of all employees of a police service, on or off duty, fostering those who in their private citizen capacity attend public forums, neighbourhood watches, council meetings, village associations, religious gatherings, protests, ceremonies, formally or informally, officially or unofficially, those who shop, walk their dogs, exercise, garden, socialise within their communities or neighbourhoods to contribute to their community’s safety. It bridges from observations to conversations undertaken within the ritual private and professional everyday life.

CILPM is the raw material that will inform analysis, artificial intelligence and machine learning. It will brief senior command teams, apprise political overlords, direct operational tactical and strategic planning, enlighten local crime prevention agreements, guide community initiatives, instruct operational interventions, prepare community safety, advise officers and the public alike, plus, it will restore trust in policing.

CILPM is not only conditional on the consultation, continuity, and consensus apparatus of community policing, it is dialogue, it adds a layer of authenticity, scrutiny and accuracy to intelligence products, furthermore, it tempers exuberance; for society reassuringly requires transparency in terms of trustworthiness, accountability, safety, equality and justice.

Proportionality is applicable as due diligence must be exercised by policing in all her duties. The right to privacy and the right to security are morally justifiable, they are ethical, principled and lawful. Likewise, both surveillance and privacy protect the rights of the individual, of communities, neighbourhoods, the general public and that of policing by consent itself.

The benefits for policing at grassroots level, within multiethnic, multicultural, urban, rural, domestic neighbourhoods informing on the insignificance of everyday life; CILPM is a system devised to corroborate and underwrite incident reports, occurrence notifications, crime complaints, intelligence submissions, evidential investigations, or partner-agency referrals.

There is hyperbole when presenting CILPM, this is because at its core it is a pragmatic, proactive, transformative methodology. The principle is not just a system and programme for policing, it is a doctrine of change – one of improvement, accountability, evidenced based practice, putting community safety at the heart of the strategy through the protection of the public from harm.

Community policing is inconspicuous, unremarkable, and underappreciated, its officers are unassuming yet are the living heartbeat of policing. Policing by consent is recognisable simply through the professional endeavours of each officer rostered to a community beat.  Commitment and dedication are bywords often used but seldomly quoted in a correct context, this is not the case with neighbourhood policing. Communication, rapport, flexibility, tolerance, adaptability, openness are its essential qualities, what better vehicle for the capture of information pertaining to life of local communities.

Steve Dodd is a retired South Wales Police detective. He is a subject matter expert on police intelligence having authored the force’s Community Intelligence Force Policy. An adviser on the College of Policing’s Intelligence Professionalisation Programme, he was deployed on the Government’s working group on the Western Balkans Serious Organised Crime strategy. An international liaison officer, he is an international airline certified extradition officer, plus National Financial Investigator qualified. He is currently writing his ‘Community Intelligence-Led Policing Methodology’ including the octahedron pyramid, a transtheoretical approach, and an inverted strategy thesis.