The idea that community trust stands as the keystone of effective policing and ensuring public safety is not new, though how it is approached and communicated about has evolved over time. The relationship between police agencies and the communities they serve is multifaceted, intricate, and unique. every community may have its own history, beliefs, and relationships with police, so the strategies the police use to foster and strengthen those relationships must also be tailored to best fit the needs of their communities.
One of the most important pillars of the IACP’s Community Trust Initiative (CTI) is the principle that community trust should be approached in a holistic manner. Put simply, community trust is not a singular program or position to fill. Rather, it is an organizational culture that should permeate the agency and be contributed to by every sworn and professional staff member of an agency. Rather than community trust being a goal to reach and then be checked off a list, building community trust is an intentional and ongoing engagement process, specifically reflected in an agency’s vision, mission, values, and culture. This operational philosophy drives how the agency conducts itself at every level, where building trust is a key component of how it operates.
Choosing Demonstration Sites
In August 2023, the IACP selected five police agencies from around the United States to be CTI Demonstration Sites. One goal of CTI was to provide no-cost customized training and technical assistance to the Demonstration Sites by addressing community trust needs, improving public safety, and creating a more inclusive and effective policing environment in these communities and the policing profession. By prioritizing community input, trust building, transparency, and accountability, the IACP strives to create stronger, more resilient communities and a more responsive and responsible police profession. To be selected as a Demonstration Site, each of the five agencies demonstrated a commitment to community-police collaborative initiatives through their previous grantee work in the Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation program, which supports communities around the United States in the development and implementation of data-driven, place-based, and community-oriented collaborative strategies to reduce crime, build interdisciplinary partnerships, and enhance trust.
The selected CTI Demonstration Sites are made up of agencies of different sizes and in diverse geographic locations around the United States:
- Austin, Texas, Police Department
- Boston, Massachusetts, Police Department
- Escondido, California, Police Department
- Portland, Oregon, Police Bureau
- Rapid City, South Dakota, Police Department
As part of the technical assistance strategy, the IACP offered learning opportunities for each of the Demonstration Sites to select multiple early- and mid-career officers for leadership development specific to community trust. These 25 individuals across the five CTI Demonstration Sites were provided with a curated program of training opportunities at the IACP Annual Conference, the IACP’s Officer Safety and Wellness Conference, the IACP’s Technology Conference, the Professionalizing Law Enforcement – Community Engagement Training conference, and the Out to Protect LGBT Liaison Training event. The 25 participating individuals were all identified by their leadership as “up-and-coming leaders” within their respective agencies. The goal of this opportunity was to provide training specific to community trust, foster peer learning between CTI Demonstration Sites, and enable participants to bring back innovative ideas on community trust-building strategies to their agencies that reinforce CTI’s holistic approach.
Meeting the Community’s Needs
While all CTI Demonstration Sites have certainly felt the impact of national events within their own communities, they all identified unique priorities for how to best meet those needs.
The Austin Police Department (APD) hired a dedicated equity and inclusion coordinator in 2022 and is committed to promoting the development of goals and initiatives related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and sense of belonging within the department. The IACP provided customized training and technical assistance to APD in the creation of training for APD’s training academy on implicit bias, cultural awareness, and inclusive leadership through identifying supplemental materials for the training and review of the completed curricula and associated presentation material. APD then delivered this training over a series of lunch and learn events.
“Social media has consistently found ways to highlight the positive work their department does, such as partnerships with local community organizations and positive interactions with youth.”
In recent years, the Boston Police Department (BPD) has strengthened their goal to increase public trust in BPD through community policing efforts, engagement, and dialogue between BPD and the community. This goal included helping the community better understand the work done by the BPD’s Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) and their local police district officers in preventing and reducing violence and crime in their neighborhood. To help meet this community need, the IACP provided technical assistance to BPD in the formalization of their Community CompStat meetings. The goal of these recurrent meetings is to bring the CompStat format to the district level within Boston, to share relevant data from the BRIC and district personnel with the affected communities, and to initiate dialogue and joint problem-solving regarding trends in crime. The IACP created peer connections with other departments utilizing the Community CompStat format, observed one of BPD’s Community CompStat meetings, and provided recommendations.
The Escondido Police Department identified a need to focus on strengthening their communication methods to their diverse and multilingual community, with an emphasis on highlighting positive interactions between the department and the community in both traditional and social media. In collaboration with the IACP, subject matter expert Josh Devine conducted a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis and developed a formalized communication plan that included quantitative and qualitative data collected from a survey pushed out to the community.
All police officers in Oregon are trained at the statewide academy run by the State of Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training. Recognizing the value in furthering that training, the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) also requires their officers to complete additional training through PPB’s Advanced Academy. The IACP provided technical assistance to PPB for their community engagement class at the Advanced Academy, which included a site visit to observe the class in its entirety and provide a follow-up report of recommendations. This class allows officers to engage in small group discussions with members of local ethnic, religious, and cultural group councils, furthering their goal of creating stronger community-police relationships and fostering a culture of trust.
The Rapid City Police Department (RCPD) recognized that an area for improvement within their agency’s trust-building efforts was their communication plan. Like many police agencies, RCPD excels in crisis communication, but to build stronger and trusting relationships with their community, RCPD wanted to go beyond crisis communication and create a communication plan that allowed for open dialogue and communication from the department on the positive work of their officers. In collaboration with the IACP, RCPD worked with subject matter experts to conduct an agencywide communication assessment over a period of four months, which culminated in an in-person media training for 15 RCPD sworn staff. In the months following the assessment, site visit, and training, RCPD’s social media has consistently found ways to highlight the positive work their department does, such as partnerships with local community organizations and positive interactions with youth, while also maintaining real-time updates for emerging situations in which the public may have interest. d
Please cite as
Hope Miller, “Community Trust Is the Keystone of Policing,” IACP@Work, Police Chief 92, no. 4 (April 2025): 100-101.
