Opportunity knocks

The National Intelligence Model (NIM) is synonymous with intelligence management across policing. Devised for the Home Office by the National Centre for Police Excellence, it was introduced in 2000.

It is a business process that is designed to take, “information from a wide variety of sources relevant to policing, from community intelligence at neighbourhood level to intelligence on serious and organised crime and terrorism at a national and international level”. NIM (3.3.1.3.)

The pressure on neighbourhood policing teams will rise inordinately in order for them to satisfy expectations. Increased government financial support, new primary legislation, College of Policing’s professional training programme, and protected duties for officers, are arguably the most significant package of measures introduced for decades.

It is a quarter of a century since the then Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) produced its ‘Winning the Race – Embracing Diversity. Consolidation Inspection of Police Community and Race Relations 2000’.

In it, HMIC stated: “Community intelligence may be defined as: Local information, direct or indirect, that when assessed provides intelligence on the quality of life experienced by individuals and groups, that informs both the strategic and operational perspectives in the policing of local communities.”

In the application of the NIM, issues relevant to all areas of diversity and culture, such as race, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity and age, will be taken into account. NIM (1.3.1.)

The expected outcomes are improved community safety, reduced crime and the control of criminality and disorder leading to greater public reassurance and confidence. NIM (3.1.1.)

A reality is manifesting itself as a national roll-out of the Neighbourhood Policing Pathway (NPP) approaches. Piloted in 11 forces, it covers issues specific to the role of being a neighbourhood police officer or police community support officer (PCSO).

Sir Andy Marsh, chief executive officer at the College of Policing, comments: “Dedicated training for neighbourhood officers by the College of Policing will help transform the service policing provides to local communities and help deliver trusted and effective policing that cuts crime and keeps people safe. This programme is based on years of evidence of what works and I’m confident it will make a real difference.”

The majority of police interventions in the lives of citizens is predominantly post-incident: from the violence of assault, murder and rape, to road traffic offences, drunkenness and theft, burglary; even dealing with anti-social behaviour can be retrospective.

Likewise, operational uniformed patrol officers are conditioned to attend complaints post-incident; occurrence reports, to use a colloquialism, last year were at: 47,000 vehicle related offences, 363,000 thefts from persons and 409,000 burglaries across England and Wales.

Neighbourhood policing is seen as the opposite.

It is going to be far from business as usual for those officers identified for the NPP. These selected officers will have successfully completed their initial training programme embedded in a two-year probationary period; accordingly, they will become experienced, proficient and effective officers having served as sector policing’s response officers for a further number of years.

It should be emphasised that for the authorities, the importance of neighbourhood policing lays at the very heart of confronting the levels of crime in the UK. Consider for one moment, the initial NPP course is being delivered directly by the College of Policing; this indicates how significant it is seen as being because it is designed to provide skills sufficient to:

1. Reduce crime and anti-social behaviour.
2. Increase public trust and confidence.
3. Solve complex problems in partnership.
4. Target those who cause harm.

Neighbourhood policing reform may only present as one small characteristic, but I acknowledge it as the predominant public debate in current policing vernacular. Nonetheless it is only one aspect of service delivery for chief constables and police and crime commissioners. Similarly, it is no more significant to victims of violence, or sexual abuse, than the right to free legal advice for perpetrators, but, for policing’s rank and file innovative it is not; ground-breaking may be a more apt descriptive.

The Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee is a Home Office initiative focused on strengthening community policing by increasing the number of officers dedicated to local areas and improving responsiveness to community needs. This involves placing 13,000 more officers in neighbourhood roles by 2029, ensuring a named, contactable officer for each neighbourhood, and increasing visible patrols, particularly in town centres.

It has five pillars of associated commitments:

1. Police back on the beat.
2. Community-led policing.
3. Clear performance standards and professional excellence.
4. Crackdown on anti-social behaviour.
5. Safer town centres.

The practical application of the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee has far reaching consequences for the 43 county forces; whereas compromise is not an operational option, local strategies may offer innovation, interpretation and foresight when it comes to implementation.

NIM should enable police forces to trace the continuum between anti-social behaviour and the most serious crime and then to identify those local issues in most urgent need of attention’.

The Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee has a balance, an equilibrium, there’s even a symmetry. We are looking at a political perspective contrasted against historical policing methodology; That said, the doctrine of the ‘Safer Streets’ mission is complex as it appears inconsistent to contrast the balance of guidance and support against political interference and domination.

The Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee promise is impressive; an obligation of public funding dedicated to making local communities safer balanced against the deceptively innocuous sacrifice of merely having to ‘published online metrics of police performance enabling the public to hold their force to account’.

The guarantee includes enactment of a national standards protocol for neighbourhood duties designed to protect officers from abstractions, ensuring a visible presence and guaranteeing clear-up rates. These are commendable ambitions. That said, familiarity of government policy announcements and parliamentary debates are all too common.

Policing, per se must have supporting voices preparing society for its forthcoming struggles not just promoting successes but emphasising the depth of the challenges.

Over the past year I have presented opinion on a number of aspects of law enforcement endeavouring to improve awareness while highlighting a progressive strategy that can be embedded in neighbourhood policing, that of a Community Intelligence-Led methodology.

Presentations thus far have contributed to discussions on the broad aspects of neighbourhood policing and that of community safety oversight. I have focused attention on single operational necessities as with missing persons, alternatively expanding the debate to emphasise the depth community intelligence’s adoption would contribute to operational infrastructure, eg, the EU’s Serious Organised Crime Threat Assessment. I have compared rural and urban intelligence requirements within the range of neighbourhood responsibilities, whether discussing the summer riots of 2024 or similarly contrasting missing persons to the demise in trust and confidence in UK policing.

We approach a crossroad in expectation, of illusion, disappointment, even indulgence. A Faustian bargain it may be not, but nevertheless an obligation.

Statistics are a fact of life no matter how much contempt Benjamin Disraeli had for them. They are both the justification for and persecution of policy as public attention is not going to wane, neither will demands on policing.

Crime is not going to miraculously disappear, if anything it will increase as policing implements reimagined reporting requirements. Police partnership and business engagement will dramatically address shop theft and the protection of shop staff from violent assault, likewise anti-social behaviour will come front and centre in all neighbourhoods where public prioritisations will determine local resource reconfiguration.

Community Safety has been in policing vocabulary for some time, dating back to the primary legislation of the Crime and Disorder Act of 1998 and the Morgan Report of 1991 before that.

Evolution will require commitment, where communities may remain apprehensive is comparing lived experiences to that of statistical data as publicly tracked headline measures will report local police performance.

I am excited by the prospect of NPP officers directly contributing to addressing local criminality because what the average member of the public endures has a far more significant impact on their opinion, being that it is reinforced by their local experiences; what must be recognised is that the public are exposed to all the negative aspects society has to offer, in its many forms on a regular basis.

I designed Community Intelligence-Led Policing Methodology (CILPM), specifically to address a shortfall in law enforcement provision, but just as importantly to make it accessible and easy to use for officers, analysts, statisticians and ultimately forces alike. An emphasis on capturing intelligence in the routine of everyday policing is an attention-grabbing idiom, it is clearly not just a romantic notion but I see it as a pragmatic approach in the cause.

Policing understands its responsibilities; it knows its funding limitations and is cognisant of its public’s expectations. Territorial interoperability, demographic profiles, rural expanses, and urban conurbations are the mere tip of the iceberg. Restorative innovation, be it strategic, tactical, or technical, is being developed in an ever-evolving vacuum of communities.

Neighbourhood policing is not one intervention, it is the application of the recommended pillars of the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, plus, by including a pathway for the collection of first-hand information and its subsequent, assessment, appraisal, analysis, sharing a deeper preventative and investigatory insight will be formed through community intelligence policing.

As I touched upon earlier, a community intelligence-led framework must now be implemented across England and Wales. Police interoperability is evidence enough of justification for the argument as the singularity of neighbourhood officers identified with only a local borough is as incongruous as the absence of access to national community intelligence.

Community intelligence is a proactive weapon; it is a pre-emptive strategy. The octahedron principle of CILPM maintains top-down instruction invoking bottom-up action while fostering bottom-down intervention permitted through top-up authority.

There are many elements to neighbourhood policing; the embodiment of intelligence-led policing is assimilation, the practical application of observation, it is understanding the elements of cohesion within a collaborative picture. Where police intelligence is corroborated information, community intelligence is vigilance of patrol, emphasis on communication, integration, local knowledge whilst cognisant of the new, unknown, unattributed, indistinguishable, undefined, or irrelevant – this is community safety, this is intelligence-led policing, a structured framework for information capture, recording, process, analysis and sharing.

A CILPM will sit equally as well for independent forces as it will for those with interoperability arrangements in place. Sharing of information or perhaps more accurately, accessing material is essential in confronting rural and urban crime alike.

Obtaining the data in the first place is the greatest problem for policing as evaluation of online community incident logs, crime complaints, occurrence reports and graded intelligence submissions do not provide sufficient depth for insightful community analysis.

The pooling of information or disclosure of specific knowledge across specialised units and forces similarly has revolutionised the fight against opportunist criminal gangs and organised crime alike, where development is required is in a laminated all-encompassing protocol at grassroots level across England and Wales to confront crime.

The integration of community patrolling within an intelligence-led policing policy will foster confidence, knowledge, awareness, and unity of kinship; here is the second delineation that manifests in a ‘before, during and after’ countenance. Recording and reporting the insignificant, approaching the indistinguishable, engaging the unknown, questioning the incomprehensible, noticing the imperceptible, confronting the violent, safeguarding the vulnerable, indoctrinating intelligence is the heart of neighbourhood policing.

A collective relationship, a unifying bond of citizen and neighbourhood officer; restored through agreement, built upon trust, instilled with confidence, reinforced by reliability, security and rewarded in community.

Understanding the theory explains the interactions that community intelligence-led policing’s foundations are constructed on; the ability of police forces to obtain grassroots word-of-mouth information live-time; corroborated by officer’s own evidence.

A problem for governance is delivering a unified solution for problems that are not unified; in general terms criminal acts are not integrated and the many vagaries of their commission vary by causation, here is where another core strength of community intelligence lies.

The structure of a community intelligence supported data base will enable analysis of criminal intelligence identified interactions and the connections and associations of enterprise exposing criminal activity and co-operation.

The efficacy of neighbourhood policing will be determined by the relationship between public and police, and State and police; in this context the impact of crime can also be assessed as a consequence of offender action on the victim. Where intelligence enters the picture is regulated by the structure of the information, its manipulation, and the attribution of data in context of community.

Neighbourhood and community imply an esoteric term of social control imposed at a far more local level than the concept of civil society; consequently, the relationships between the factors affecting crime intelligence require a business framework along the lines of CILPM to manage the material data.

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.