Mr Peter Branca1, Mr Peter Bitton1, Dr Maho Omori1
1Victoria Police, Melbourne, Australia
Led by the Chief Commissioner, in early 2022 Victoria Police implemented a state-wide neighbourhood policing (NHP) framework, aiming to improve its response to community safety concerns and sentiment at a local level. An emphasis was placed on visible policing and more importantly, problem-solving by strengthening working relationships with community and partner agencies. A project team was established to develop a NHP framework in order to build community policing capability within Victoria Police and foster innovation to navigate challenges highlighted in existing research.
The most significant challenges for the project team were how to develop a method of capturing community issues/sentiment that can be analysed and responses are formulated upon (e.g., McLay, 2019), encouraging and formalising better community partnerships that then lead to joint problem-solving, and communicating outcomes of issues raised back to the community (closing the loop). Moreover, an emphasis was placed on the members gaining understanding of NHP through a level of ‘specialisation’ as opposed to reactive policing (Higgins, 2018).
This presentation will describe how Victoria Police incorporated best practice and innovation approaches to implement a significant organisational change. Importantly, it will highlight how 1) the establishment of Local Safety Committee in each police service areas acts as a platform where police and community partners discuss local community issues together, and 2) an IT solution was successfully developed to capture community sentiment and improve both the effectiveness and responsiveness of police to public concerns, with an aim of enhancing public trust and confidence. Victoria Police’s novel approach to NHP, albeit still in the infancy of implementation, will provide a practical implication for the development of a NHP approach whilst anchoring NHP practice within operational policing.
Biography:
Biographies to come