The Tilley Award PC

In 1998, Dorset Police undertook a six month pilot project in problem oriented policing (POP). The Charminster Beat Project was the result. Contingent on the results of the project the force would consider implementing problem solving across the force area. Comparatively, crime on the Charminster Beat, across all categories, was disproportionately high. The evidence of a survey in the area could just as easily represent the wider problems experienced at a force level. Importantly, an inverse relationship could be detected between the demands on police resources and the community's faith in the police to both deal with and resolve the area's problems. The Bournemouth Division suffered disproportionately from many of the problems common to policing: managerial changes were frequent, continuity in personnel and philosophy was absent which, when compounded, had led inexorably to the retreat into response policing. At a beat level this was exemplified by frequent changes of beat constable or indeed the complete absence of a police presence. No agenda was set for the project. The remit was eclectic: to gauge the impact of POP. The aims and objectives of the project were twofold. Firstly, to introduce a structured response to the areas problems and secondly to reinvigorate the notion of problem solving in accordance with the principles of POP. Anything else would be regarded as a bonus. The project was an immeasurable success: burglary, for instance, was reduced by 50%; before a survey could be commissioned the community had publicly petitioned for the team's retention. The success of the project however, lay elsewhere, in the reinvigoration of policing as a vocation: a testimony to policing by problem solving. The team had discovered that, by adopting a problem solving approach, they were engaging the community, and more especially the job they were doing, from an entirely different perspective. Its realisation was in the reconceptualising of the general police function. POP had moved the emphasis away from response while reinvigorating the search for solutions. The real discovery however, lay in the realisation that problems could be solved without recourse to the criminal justice system. The team found that they were able to reduce the gap between what they ought to be doing and what they did, and, in so doing, avert the disabling sense of dissonance that is so much a feature of policing at the end of the twentieth century. The Evolution of a Policing Ethic by Problem Soli .