RAMALLAH, March 3, 2011 (WAFA) - Thirty-five officers of the Palestinian Civil Police (PCP) finished Wednesday a 2-day seminar on Community Oriented Police that was implemented in Ramallah by police advisers from Jordan and Sweden, and coordinated and funded by EUPOL COPPS, according to a press release.

This seminar was organized after EUPOL COPPS’ community policing expert recently met with the Community Police Department of the Middle Amman Police Directorate, where he had the opportunity to network with his Jordanian counterparts and gather information about the Jordanian Directorate of Public Security’s best practices.

The PCP’s Community Oriented Police project started in the Qalqilya area village of Azzun already in 2009 and its goal is to be gradually extended to the whole West Bank through the PCP’ Public Relations and Media Department, under the command of its director, Brig. Gen. Yousef Ozroel.

The seminar was opened by the PCP’s deputy chief, Brig. Gen. Jihad Al-Museimi, and by EUPOL COPPS’ deputy head of mission, Jesper Friedrichsen, who said that “the development of community policing in close dialogue with the citizens will lead to increased amounts of information regarding crimes and will lead to developing intelligence-lead policing capabilities in the future.”

Community policing is a relatively new approach in the relations between the police and the society, which looks for the proactive participation of citizens in helping the police to provide them with safety and security. It includes home-visits by the police officers to the families and business in a neighborhood, searching for indicators that can help to detect criminal patterns and prevent crime.

M.A.