Community policing during the pandemic

ABSTRACT

Community-oriented policing (COP) is a policing philosophy that focuses on the co-production of public safety by police officers and the community members they serve. This paper utilized the extreme context presented by the COVID−19 pandemic to test the theoretical assumptions on which COP is based. The data presented in this paper were collected from 32 community police officers (CPOs) from a Canadian police service who attended six focus group sessions during the fourth wave of the pandemic (July to November 2021). We summarize key findings and insights from these focus groups and provide insights relating to the underlying mechanisms essential to the delivery of effective COP programs. Future studies should continue to examine COP in diverse contexts to understand its benefits and challenges more fully.

KEYWORDS:

• Community-oriented policing
• community police officers
• COVID-19
• extreme context

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethics clearance

This project was approved by the Office of Research Services and Ethics at Carleton University [Ethics clearance ID: Project number 112,146]

Notes

1. (CTV News Ottawa, 2021).

2. All information in this table was provided by CANCITY police.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council Partnership under Grant number 111933; Mitacs under grant number IT16354

Notes on contributors

Christina Smylie

Christina Smylie is a Ph.D. candidate at the Sprott School of Business specializing in change management. Since, 2019 she has been working with a team of researchers to evaluate a community-based policing pilot project.

Linda Duxbury

Linda Duxbury is a Chancellor’s Professor at the Sprott School of Business. She has conducted extensive research in partnership with Canadian and International police sectors much of which focuses on officer wellbeing.

Craig Bennell

Craig Bennell is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University. He is also Director of Carleton’s Police Research Lab where he conducts research on evidenced-based policing.