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Insight in the role of the OECPO : An evaluation of the Operational Expert Community Police Officer in the police region ‘Oost-Nederland’.

Stam, F.O. (2019) Insight in the role of the OECPO : An evaluation of the Operational Expert Community Police Officer in the police region ‘Oost-Nederland’.

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Abstract:This thesis focused on the fairly new function of the Operational Expert Community Police Officer (OECPO) within the Dutch national police, with as goal to evaluate the role of the OECPO and hereby study the contribution of the OECPO to the community policing in ‘Oost-Nederland’. Within the police region ‘Oost-Nederland’ a quantitative study has been conducted mainly among the senior Community Police Officers (CPO’s) to explore their view towards this new role of the OECPO. In addition to the view of the CPO’s, the relation between participatory management and community policing is examined. Does a higher level of participatory management result in a higher level of community policing and could a correlation be established? The main research question formulated during this study is: “To what extent do Operational Expert community officers contribute to community policing in the police unit ‘Oost-Nederland’?”. This study used a survey to accumulate the necessary data, which got sent to 485 CPO’s and achieved a response rate of 63% (306 CPO’s). The work of Terpstra (2008) is central in determining and operationalizing the standards of community policing. Crucial within the operationalization of the level of participatory management is the scale of Flamholtz and Randle (2012). By measuring the level of community policing in the police region ‘Oost-Nederland’ it can be concluded that, according to themselves, the CPO’s succeed to a fair extent towards the standards of community policing. On the one hand, the CPO’s succeed in closing the ‘gap’ and improving the relationship between the police and the citizens. On the other hand, the levels for acting preventive and solve problems in the neighborhood are relatively lower. Additionally, the level of participatory management used by the OECPO’s is measured. The ‘mean’ role of the OECPO in the police region Oost-Nederland corresponds with the role of the ‘participative OECPO’. For both constructs differences appear on smaller levels, the district- and BT-level. However, the presence of a significant relationship between the constructs community policing and participatory management could not be proven. The results derived from the data of the survey towards the CPO’s showed a substantial amount of CPO’s who is satisfied with the current level of participatory management. Nevertheless, the overall view of the CPO’s towards the role of the OECPO is fairly negative. An extensive group is (to a certain extent) dissatisfied with the role of the OECPO in its current form and/or don’t think that the current role of OECPO adds value to the community policing in their neighborhoods. CPO’s are critical towards the extensive number of additional tasks the OECPO’s fulfill which leads to a reduced amount of time in or for the neighborhoods and ‘their’ CPO’s. Other concerns mentioned by the CPO’s are: the OECPO acts too much as 4 INSIGHT IN THE ROLE OF THE OECPO an additional layer of management and the OECPO isn’t communicating enough with the CPO’s. To answer the main question, the OECPO isn’t contributing enough to the community policing in ‘Oost-Nederland’. This implies that the current fulfillment of the role of the OECPO is sub-optimal for the community policing. Nonetheless, the function of OECPO has potential to benefit the community policing in ‘Oost-Nederland’. This led to the main recommendation: If the police want to improve the role of the OECPO to stimulate the community policing in ‘Oost-Nederland’, the OECPO should receive less secondary tasks to focus on (cooperation with) the CPO’s and the community policing in the neighborhoods.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Clients:
The Dutch National Police, Zwolle, Nederland
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:88 social and public administration
Programme:Public Administration MSc (60020)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/77345
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