Building trust with communities in policing

There have been concerns in relation to falling levels of trust and confidence in the Police in England. In particular, different communities have reported declining feelings of trust and negative perceptions of how the Police respond to their needs. To address such concerns, a polite project lasting 12 weeks was formed among a small number of front-line officers in Keighley and Ilkley in Bradford District.

While West Yorkshire Police has a very good record of engagement with communities, we sought to strengthen and enhance this progress through a project using the application of Procedural Justice (PJ).  This concept considers interactions between authority figures such as the Police and people and whether such interactions are considered as fair and reasonable. The key features include Trustworthiness – whether Police show their interest for the public and community.

In this project, we employed an approach based on principles of action learning where groups followed a cyclical process of learning about PJ, application with communities, reflection on interactions and review. Four meetings were planned, which started on 17/18 October 2022 with further meetings planned every 4 weeks.

It soon became clear that the everyday uncertainties of policing and issues such as training and shift changes did mean a degree of disruption. Some meetings were poorly attended. Nevertheless, for the officers that were able to attend for the full process, they could enact PJ and together were able to provide evidence of impact.

Evidence from reviews showed that officers were able to engage better through listening more carefully and build rapport in a range of interactions. This allowed them to set expectations more clearly. One immediate outcome for officers was that they were making people feel valued and that ‘they have been heard’. In difficult situations, they were able to create calm, turning the interactions in a different direction. Officers were able to learn and observe how trust building was working in their interactions, building the public’s appreciation of police competence. In some cases, officers had been able to restore trust, after previous negative experiences.

As a result of this pilot, it is intended to roll out this approach across West Yorkshire Police over the next 2 years. For more information about this project, you can read ‘Improving Community Relations in the Police through procedural justice and action learning initiative’.

Jeff Gold
Professor of Organisation Learning, Leeds Beckett University