The limitations of Neighbourhood Policing training
Policing suffered seismic cuts since 2010, eroding neighbourhood policing as it was then known, and forcing a reactive model. That push towards a reactive triage style correlates to a period when policing performance has plummeted, including, perhaps most important of all, in public trust and confidence.
Sudden investment in 2019 was not enough to fill the policing resource gap, and even if it were, the lost decade of neighbourhood policing means an entire generation have grown up without local policing visibility or relationships.
There is a tendency now to think policing ‘science’ can determine improved productivity via efficiencies and technology, but this is flawed. The fundamental crisis is that the public too often no longer see policing as relevant and have alarmingly low levels of trust in it. Investing in technology for internal police efficiencies whilst the public do not trust the agency is like fiddling while Rome burns.
Science and perception
Of course, efficiencies – over what is public money – should be pursued, but this should not be a distraction from pursuing the far more important matter of effectiveness and the need to build relationships of trust and confidence. Trust and confidence are qualitatively perception based, and for policing scientists, who prefer hard numerical data, there is a reluctance to engage with what really needs to be progressed because they refuse to leave their methodological comfort zone.
This ideological impasse is bad for policing, but the investment into neighbourhood policing should be a glimmer of hope to re-build where it matters. As policing has in effect visibly retreated from the streets (arguably as part of the Conservative Government’s ideology of shrinking the State) you might wonder if things are now too far gone to rebuild local relationships.
The eleventh hour
An entire generation has had policing redefined for it since 2010, with a growing lawlessness the result. If it is not already too late to rebuild local policing influence, it surely is the eleventh hour, so any efforts now must be our very best given policing confidence is dangling on a very thin thread.
The new Neighbourhood Policing Pathway (NPP), focusing on national standards and consistency in tackling anti-social behaviour, is now being piloted across 11 police forces. There are high hopes from some that rolling out such a training programme will deliver positive change.
The training will not work
The training needs to work, as policing is in a desperate mess, but, alas, it won’t. The reason it will not work is because the strategy being adopted is wrong. Here is why.
Policing underwent a cultural change from 2010 not via a change of vision but from being cut (some would argue this was a Conservative Government ideological choice). The cultural change shifted any relationships with the public into a withdrawn and sterile call centre that despatched units like an overwhelmed taxi service.
Policing pillaged of purpose
It wasn’t just policing falling down this dystopian decline, so did dentistry and the GP surgery, all left surviving by triaged rationing – first come first served. This wholesale demolition of public services reduced what Clement Atlee built after the war to rubble.
Policing was pillaged of its purpose and now stumbles desperately between gimmicks to try and find a way to reconnect with the public it serves. It knows deep down that without public support, no matter what technology it possesses, policing is lost and so are the streets.
Expensive sticking plasters
Trying to perform a one size fits all train-out a cultural situation is frankly absurd. Policing has tried this before but simply has not learned the lessons. Crucially, policing cannot afford (literally) now to get it wrong: what is being proposed is using an expensive sticking plaster on a critically ill patient.
Training in an expensive input that the ‘scientists’ can count and managers can pat themselves on their delusional backs, but it will not change cultural level outcomes. Donald Kirkpatrick explained why such approaches fail decades ago. Kirkpatrick was interested, like W. Edwards Deming, in quality outcomes (known as performance). Kirkpatrick often gets misunderstood as being a ‘training’ guru; he wasn’t – he was all about performance outcomes.
Spending desperately tight money on a training input to influence a cultural level situation is a bit like throwing a pebble in the sea and expecting something to happen. Throw as many pebbles as you like.
Ringing a bot and sending a drone is fool’s gold
Transference and culture
Uncomfortable truth or not, policing and its political masters must listen, and listen fast, that relying on a training programme to inject doctrine ‘standards’ will not work. There is no short cut to winning trust, so trying to dose input police workers to ‘engage’ with the public not only is naive but will squander what might be policing’s last chance to tiptoe on a tipping point in community perception.
Training input does not transfer to quality outcomes. Quality outcomes are dependent on a cultural level change, not going on a course. Any evaluation of the NPP may count how many have been trained and pretend that such numbers represent success but the reality is policing needs investment at the front line to enable police workers to spend time with the public they serve to build relationships.
Policing is about relationships
Policing is a people business and that means it has to build relationships: it has to be present and has to listen – ringing a bot and sending a drone is fool’s gold. Engaging the public as a gimmick rather than building authentic public relationships not only squanders any dwindling hopes of reaching the 2010 lost generation but even the next generation.
Previous Conversative Governments – who argued there is no such thing as society – had no interest in such things. The new Labour Government manifested as ‘change’ but is delivering ‘more of the same’ and we are on the precipice of repeating past failures now, which policing can ill afford.
A folly you can’t afford
The cultural shift forced upon policing that divorced it from the public needs a transformational approach now to rebuild a relationship on the streets. Waste your chance on chalk and talk in the classroom if you wish, but remember you were warned about follies you can’t afford.
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