What drives citizens’ perceptions of community policing officers in Germany

• In Event: Neighbourhood policing in transition: perspectives from the police and the public

Abstract

The key ingredient of Community-oriented Policing (COP) is the interaction between policing organisations and communities to achieve a common co-production of social order. Therefore, police officers with daily citizen contacts plays a vital role in fostering trust. In the city of Hamburg, community policing officers are settled in every police station. In addition to the visible presence close to the citizens, as foot patrol officers they are also responsible for cooperation, direct contact and coordination with neighbouring departments, authorities and offices.
With the nation-wide victim survey ‘Safety and Crime in Germany (SKiD)’ 2024, we asked more than 7 000 respondents in Hamburg about their perceptions of the procedural justice of the police in general but also of those citizen-oriented officers. With our data, we examine how police contacts, neighbourhood contexts, and social media and messenger channels usage impact the perception of fairness in terms of citizens' trust in the citizen-oriented police and to what extent these influencing factors have different effects in other policing situations. This can have practical implications for the police when deploying community policing officers in different parts of the city.

Authors

• Judith Hauber, Hamburg Police Department

• Henriette Madita Thiele, Hamburg Police Department

• Amalia Vasquez Alvarez, Hamburg Police Department - criminological research unit