Can you use community policing for counter terrorism? Evidence from NSW, Australia

Abstract

A contested question in the international policing literature is whether it is possible to undertake effective anti-terrorism community policing. The NSW Police Force's Counter Radicalisation Strategy involved a community engagement initiative that used community liaison officers, mostly working with Sydney Muslim communities. This study reviews the success of this initiative, drawing on data from a survey of Sydney Muslims. The community engagement initiative was found to have direct contact with the community, it was public, and it involved aspects of partnership and relations of depth. For these reasons, the initiative was within the community policing paradigm. There was strong community awareness of the programme, and a majority saw it as successful. There remained pockets of community suspicion and critique, which require attention. The respondents recommended an enhancement of the community policing aspects: more (and wider) contact, visibility and partnership. The findings affirm the utility of community policing for counter-terror work.

The Colombian National Police and the Politics of Crime Control Evaluations

“…For several decades, policing scholars in the Global North have developed a robust IJCJ&SD 21 Online version via www.crimejusticejournal.com literature base for the paradigms of hotspots policing (Braga et al 2014; National Institute of Justice 2009), community-oriented policing (Gill et al 2014;Maguire et al 2019;Skogang 2006), problem-oriented policing (Rogers 2010;Weisburd et al 2010) and procedural justice (Johnson et al 2017;Maguire et al 2016;Mazerrole 2013). Many of these same law enforcement strategies-often developed and studied in the United States (US)-have been applied and evaluated in cross-national contexts, including Australia (Dunn et al 2015), Colombia Mejia et al 2013; Fundación Ideas Para La Paz 2012), Russia (Gilinskiy 2005), Trinidad and Tobago (Maguire et al 2017) and the United Kingdom (Weinborn et al 2017). Consistent with the importation of these strategies by several Latin American police forces (Frühling 2012;Ungar and Salomon 2011), the MNVCC reflects a hybrid combination of these practices.…”

Serious Games: An Attractive Approach to Improve Awareness

“…Motivation for engaging citizens in this community driven policing framework is also crucial. Community policing has been used successfully in crime reduction (Gill et al 2014), extremism prevention (Schanzer et al 2016), and even in counter terrorism (Dunn et al 2016). In all cases, it was based on direct face-to-face or over-the-phone interaction between the community and LEAs.…”

On the successful deployment of community policing services the TRILLION project case

“…Motivation for engaging citizens in this community driven policing framework is also crucial. Community policing has been used successfully in crime reduction [3], extremism prevention [4], and even in counter terrorism [5]. All these cases were based on direct face-to-face or over-the-phone interaction between the community and Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs).…”