Back in 2005, CPAC decided that communities in Ontario had enough experience with community policing projects and initiatives that it was time for someone to go find out what works, and what doesn’t.

So CPAC asked a group of people (police leaders, agency directors, community activists,government experts, and others), “Putting your life of experience together, what factors do you think are most critical for the success of a local, community-police partnership?”*

That started a project to research factors that are critical to the success of any community policing or community mobilization project, anywhere. CPAC’s interviews with experts

generated a list of approximately 50 potential “critical success factors” on which the balance of the work will concentrate. These critical success factors cluster under five headings:

Infrastructure:  The fundamental building blocks, partners,collective values or purposes, and resources that the program or project needs before it can even begin to achieve its goals.

Partnerships:  The qualities of the relationships that stimulate various “partners” to co-operate in the program or project.

Capacity building:  Decisions, activities and outcomes of the program or project that strengthen partners’ and beneficiaries’ capabilities to achieve their goals.

Outcomes:  The desired outcomes of the program or project are clearly specified and monitored.

Policing:  All activities undertaken by police services, individual officers or other police representatives (including police services board members and civilian employees) related to the initiative.

Currently CPAC is searching for new funding and partners who will help conduct scientifically credible tests to see which of the 50 factors actually make a difference in the success of new community problem-solving initiatives. That would lead CPAC to develop and publish a “Community Mobilization Assessment Tool (CMAT)” that could be applied to any community initiative by any community partner.

The CommunityMobilization Assessment Tool (CMAT) will:

Encourage community partnerships to provide sound theoretical and practical bases for their crime prevention initiatives.

Focus their attention on factors that are critical to the success of local partnerships.

Give funding and other resource providers a sound basis for assessing the probable success of proposed initiatives that seek resource support.

Identify opportunities for capacity-building with policing and other community groups and organizations.

Upon finding funding and technical partners, CPAC will sample real community problem-solving projects throughout Ontario and measure the presence or absence of these critical success factors. Those critical success factors that correlate most closely with successful community initiatives will contribute to the development of the Community Mobilization Assessment Tool (CMAT).

The 50 criticalassessment tools are listed below:

Infrastructure: 

Institutional support:  Partnering organizations(esp. police services) and all personnel in them, at all levels, have to support the organization’s role in the initiative and, especially, the actions of their key people who liaison with the initiative.

Respect for differences:  The initiative’s organization (group, committee,etc.) has to fully accommodate (hear, respect and accept) the cultural diversity and differences (opinions, ideas, ways of expressing themselves,etc.) that exist among its members.

Common needs:  The initiative has to be sharply focused upon the common “needs” of its partners and members; as opposed to the more narrowly focused “wants” of individual members.

Agreed purposes:  Purposes and objectives of the initiativemust be clear and acceptable to all participating organizations and individuals.

Realistic expectations:  The mission and scope of the initiative has to encompass practical and achievable objectives; without which it will be impossible to retain effective partnerships.

Memoranda of understanding:  Community partners –especially police and other public agencies (like school boards, social service providers, municipal offices, etc.) – need to develop memoranda of understanding with other partners, covering their respective roles, resources and responsibilities in the initiative.

Community supports:  The initiative must have effective linkages to the full range of basic community supports.

Rules of engagement: Police need to develop new rules of engagement with community partners.

Finances are not a first priority: Police and other organizations and groups should stop using financial constraints as a reason why participation with local community groups is not happening.

Partnerships: 

Inclusiveness:  Membership and participation in the initiative has to be fully inclusive of all people who are affected by the problems the initiative proposes to resolve.

Commitment:  While each and every member, partner, and organization involved in the initiative may have individual goals for participating that differ from those of other partners, each has to reflect and demonstrate full commitment to the common objectives of the initiative.

Transparency:  Each and every partner of the initiative (esp. organizations) has to be completely open about what moves them to participate in the initiative – even if their specific goals differ, in part, from the common purposes of the initiative.

Participation:  Every partner must fully commit to the four-Cs of participation:  collaboration, co-operation, co-ordination and communication.

Stakeholders:  The most effective partners will be those who are stakeholders in the issues or problems the initiative sets out to resolve.

Reduce intra-group conflicts:  Effective community partnerships are impossible to cement where some potential partners are separated by long-standing, intra-group conflicts.

Capacity Building: 

Partners’ capacities:  Partnering organizations, and individuals who liaison between partnering organizations and the initiative, need to be attracted and selected for participation based in part upon the capacities they bring to the initiative.

Direct democracy:  The initiative’s action-group needs to either possess, or be taught, the essential elements of effective democracy: 

1) inclusiveness (as opposed to representation);
2) voice;
3) respect;
4) effective deliberation; and
5) decisions by consensus.

Benchmarking:  Initiative’s controlling group needs to havethe capacity to identify realistic goals and objectives; and, monitor how well they are being achieved.

Relying on what’s there:  Many capacities to make a difference already exist in the community and need to be included before looking outside the community.

Leaders with passion: Leaders of community groups and officers who liaison with community groups must be picked for their passion and commitment to the purposes of the initiative.

Linkages: Skills, knowledge, resources or other inputs that aren’t inherent in the controlling organization must be provided by external organizations or individuals.

Community helping community: Sometimes, particularly in diverse communities, some community groups have experiences that can assist other community groups in dealing with intra-group conflicts.

Outcomes:  

Clarity: The initiative’s purposes and objectives have to be so clear as to ensure that all partners and peripheral participants fully understand them.

Agreement:  All partners and linked organizations that provide resources have to agree about the initiative’s purposes and objectives.

Standards:  The standards for achievement of the initiative’s objectives have to be clear, acceptable and observable by all partners and participants.

Flexibility:  The initiative’s partners need to observe and accept all positive outcomes of the initiative, even if they are different from those for which the initiative was designed at the outset.

Collective outcomes:  It’s important for the initiative to maintain focus, and apply resources, to the common objectives of the whole collective –and avoid distraction by the individual purposes or “private agendas” of specific partners. 

Document decisions, roles and tasks: Each and every meeting of initiative partners should conclude with a document that specifies decisions taken, responsibilities accepted, and tasks assigned to individual partners.

Process: Process is as important as outcomes for holding the group together and ensuring its effectiveness!

Policing: 

Stop using “community policing”: Adopt new language and teach skills and behaviour that achieve the purposes of community policing; put a new label on this activity.

Teach crime prevention: All officers in Ontario need to learn the principles and practices inherent in crime prevention.

Include community in crime management: Police detachments should include more members of the vulnerable community in at-risk neighbourhoods in police deliberations, plans and operations to deal with safety, security and crime risks.

Embrace mistakes: Police services need to develop an environment that acknowledges and rewards successes, encourages risk-taking, and embraces mistakes as opportunities for all officers to learn and improve.

Service treat members with respect: The community needs to see that the police service, as a culture, treats its own members with respect while maintaining the highest standards of moral and professional behaviour.

Stop being so secretive: Police have to learn how to manage sensitive information while including non-police partners in crime management; increase openness and information sharing with all citizens; and stop blanketing all its deliberations and operations in a cloak of secrecy.

Assign officers to community mobilization and crime prevention: Each service needs to allocate more officers to lead the service in the integration of community mobilization and crime prevention in its service model.

Relationship with partners:  The initiative will not work unless it’s built upon a foundation of trust and mutual respect between the police service and the community involved in the initiative.

Continuity of service:  Police services have to figure out how to ensure that the initiative will benefit from constant and continuous representation by the same officers and other liaison persons.

Discretion:  Front line officers who liaison with the initiative have to have “…dominion over their own time” in order to fully accommodate the processes and styles of operation characterized by the other initiative partners.

Infrastructure:  Police services need to develop and maintain customized infrastructures for communicating and relating to the initiative.

Transparency:  Police services need to fully disclose their purposes for participating in the initiative.

Public oversight:  Transparency with other partners is one thing; but, the initiative will benefit even more from police involvement if the service holds itself to high standards of public accountability.

Defer to community:  Police (front line officers, mid-level police managers, and services) need to learn how to seek community advice; hear community issues; identify and acknowledge community assets and perspectives;and trust and respect community members to resolve their own problems – given access to necessary resources.

Respect: Police need to be taught how to listen to, and respect, all other voices in the community.