Relational continuity in community policing: Insights from a human-centred design perspective

Community policing prioritises building positive relationships between police officers and local communities. The approach focuses on working with communities to identify and address the causes of crime and disorder, rather than just reacting to calls for service. Officer’s continuity in community policing has been a concern, with calls for greater consistency in the posting of officers to local neighbourhoods. Through the Cutting Crime Impact (CCI) project, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) identified that when community police officers leave their post, knowledge and relationships they've built with the community are lost. This jeopardises citizens' trust and perceptions of the police. To preserve the important connections that community policing officers build in their neighbourhoods, GMP adopted a human-centred design approach to research and develop a novel handover protocol. This work has enabled development of a conceptual framework for 'relational continuity' in community policing, inspired by research into therapeutic relationships in health care disciplines.