Toward more insight into the tension between policy and practice regarding the police network function of community police officers in The Netherlands

Abstract

According to formal police policy in the Netherlands, the police should focus on their core business, i.e. criminal investigation and maintaining public order. According to the same policy community police officers should thus participate in local security networks with two tasks: first, gathering relevant information from the network for the core police tasks, and second, making sure that tasks deemed to be non-core policing tasks are left to other network actors. In this article we examine how community police officers implement this policy and the extent to which their network function actually contributes to the core police tasks. Based on five weeks of participative research conducted in the Netherlands, we observed that the network function did not contribute demonstrably to core police tasks, although it did contribute to quality of life and the local security in the neighbourhood. This can be partly explained by network theories that suggest that community police officers also have to ‘give’ in order to ‘get’ information and support. We conclude that neighbourhoods benefit from community police officers with a broad networking remit, at the same time moving away from the illusion that perceived non-primary policing tasks can thus be left to other parties.