Mr. Alan Todd:

I am very much in the same place. I do not think we can ever achieve the "Every officer is a community officer" place. In many ways, it would be folly to try, although it has been used as a bit of a panacea in the past. I agree with Assistant Commissioner Leahy that it is about the mindset, ethos and skills. That is the way our policing in the community project has approached this, namely, through cross-cutting values and skills and approaches across the business area. If one needs to get the community focus at the front end of operations, the specialists work through the local neighbourhood sergeant and local neighbourhood team. The community impact assessment and the advice from the local sergeant tailors what that operation ends up looking like because everyone understands they are there to solve problems on behalf of the community, and they do not want to create problems by not being thoughtful or not being consultative and collaborative around it. Those are the working practices that come out of this.

I would say our detectives and specialist units that support the local police in those operations have a community policing mindset and an understanding of this area. They have almost a second nature and they understand why they are there, working through local cops as opposed to just being a specialist unit that arrives in town for the day and disappears tomorrow. That is the shift that is required in order that everyone will have that mindset and ethos. When we talk about the national decision-making model in the UK, people will take us round the various steps of it but what they often forget is that sitting in the middle of the model and the touchstone for each element of it are values and community policing behaviours. That is the piece we rely on so we get that piece across the organisation. That delivers more than the strapline, "Every cop is a community cop", because it just does not work that way.