B’dos Police superintendent champions community policing across region

Superintendent of the Barbados Police Service, Christine Standford, while delivering a message that can be adapted regionally and within Guyana, expressed that improving the public’s trust and perception of the police is necessary if efforts to improve public safety are to be successful.
She emphasized that this can only be achieved if persons within communities feel they are being treated fairly, and provided with good customer service.

She was at the time addressing 16 officers from the Regional Security System (RSS) Member States who had recently completed a two-week Community Policing course, hosted by the RSS Training Institute with support from the 11th European Development Fund Project.
Superintendent Standford pointed out that law enforcement officials currently face challenges in building relationships with the public they serve, due to a history of negative interactions with the police or “depressed intergenerational socio-economic circumstances.”
“You would expect that public trust and support for the police would be at an all-time high when the crime rate is low… but with recorded low crime rates and the best-trained officers we’ve ever had, the public’s perception of the police has not improved. Research has shown that people do not care as much about the crime rate as they do about how they are treated by the police.

“If they have not personally felt mistreated by the police, they have heard stories from friends who have. Those bad stories stick for a long time. Rebuilding trust in a community where it has been broken or damaged can be done most effectively one interaction at a time,” she stated.
The police official added that officers should listen to individuals as they tell their side of the story, explain what they are going to do and why, clarify why action is being taken, and allow everyone to maintain their dignity.
“I promise you, if every community officer does these four things in their community relations contacts, it will dramatically improve cooperation in the various communities and the overall level of support for the police,” she maintained, noting that police officers at all levels must see community engagement as a priority in community policing.

She proposed that to effectively engage communities, law enforcement officials must embody inclusion, communication, empowerment, and feedback in their engagement, affirming that “investing time and resources in community engagement will invariably pay dividends in the future.”
Team Leader for Security, Justice and Human Rights at the European Union, Alessandro Tedesco, stated that his organization was proud to have supported such an initiative, and lauded the Community Police Officers for their work in what he described as “a crucial job.”
“There are a number of things you can detect in neighbourhoods that would otherwise go unnoticed—signs on streets, words and lyrics of songs, things to which we may not pay attention—but for a Community Policing Officer, this could be an interesting way of obtaining information on relevant matters,” Tedesco pointed out.
Meanwhile, Director of Strategic Services and International Affairs, Rhea Reid-Bowen, indicated that the RSS had acknowledged the challenges faced by police as they attempted to implement a more citizen-oriented approach to policing.
The course, therefore, was one of the RSS’ efforts to support the professionalisation of the police forces across its Member States, while embracing a more inclusive and participatory approach to crime solving.
Mrs. Reid-Bowen asserted: “It is this sustained effort towards trust-building with the public that will enable community policing philosophies to thrive. There is a willingness by citizens to cooperate with law enforcement institutions to address the issues of crime, and there exists a yearning for citizen-security-oriented approaches to crime control and security.”