CCI-Prävinar #3: Cutting Crime Impact – Making the Case for a Community Policing Approach: Lessons from Lisbon Model

Abstract

One of the main challenges in community policing (CP) relates to the need to build safer neighbourhoods through the establishment of effective and trustful relationships between police and citizens. The model of community policing in Lisbon, applied by the Lisbon Municipal Police (LMP) since 2009, has been built from the involvement of local partners and citizens in safety partnerships and their active participation in the planning process of putting in place CP projects in Lisbon neighbourhoods. This policing model is challenging both to the partnership as well as to police organization since it requires a long term engagement by community as well as the internal support from the police organisation to a model of policing often seen as social work rather than “real” police work.

The webinar will first provide an overview of typical challenges for community policing, framing the model used in Lisbon, in contrast to policing models throughout the Anglophone world, for its specificities in facing those challenges. Then, the webinar will focus on the results of the research carried out by the LMP under the EU-funded Project Cutting Crime Impact (CCI). The findings revealed the need for senior level police engagement in the planning process of CP, and the tool "Lisbon Community Policing - Safer Communities" was developed. This tool contains a set of specific communication and planning instruments designed to support and engage key decisionmakers in CP delivery. ​