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Date Trend snippet:
19 June 2021
Relevance date:
2020, 2021
Domain of application
Source of threat
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- Trend snippet: New working practices in police departments during the COVID-19 pandemic
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The HSD Trendmonitor is designed to provide access to relevant content on various subjects in the safety and security domain, to identify relevant developments and to connect knowledge and organisations. The safety and security domain encompasses a vast number of subjects. Four relevant taxonomies (type of threat or opportunity, victim, source of threat and domain of application) have been constructed in order to visualize all of these subjects. The taxonomies and related category descriptions have been carefully composed according to other taxonomies, European and international standards and our own expertise.
In order to identify safety and security related trends, relevant reports and HSD news articles are continuously scanned, analysed and classified by hand according to the four taxonomies. This results in a wide array of observations, which we call ‘Trend Snippets’. Multiple Trend Snippets combined can provide insights into safety and security trends. The size of the circles shows the relative weight of the topic, the filters can be used to further select the most relevant content for you. If you have an addition, question or remark, drop us a line at info@securitydelta.nl.
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New working practices in police departments during the COVID-19 pandemic
As well as working from home for those able to, several police forces adopted ''bubble'' arrangements. This means they separated teams and shifts in ways that would minimize cross-infection of COVID-19. The majority of the focus countries within this study were quick to adopt video and audio to facilitate police interviews. More dramatic is that focus forces changed their charging practices overnight, where new protocols were put in place to reduce the volumes of minor crimes in the systems.
More source info
Policing
Several police departments quickly adopted new working practices to minimise the spread of COVID-19 within the workforce.
As well as home working for those who were able to and intensive efforts to secure personal protective equipment (PPE), several police forces quickly adopted ‘bubble’ like arrangements – separating teams and shifts in ways that would minimise cross-infection.
The majority of our focus countries were quick to embrace video and audio to facilitate interviews. This included shifting from in person to video or phone conferences between defence lawyers and suspects. A UK legal firm reported in April that most of the cases the firm dealt with ran smoothly and “police officers were fantastic in facilitating remote access”.
More radically, many police forces in our focus geographies effectively changed their charging practices overnight. New protocols were put in place to reduce the volumes of minor crimes in the system. Alternative mechanisms such as warnings, reprimands and on-the-spot fines became preferred to pursuing cases through court if they would likely result in no significant penalty.
In addition, prisoners’ vulnerability to coronavirus was taken into account in police decisions regarding whether to release suspects prior to trial or remand them in custody.
One fascinating aspect of variation across our countries was in approaches taken to enforce restrictions. While there were large numbers of fines in UK, Italy, and many US states, for example, the Irish Gardai (police service) avoided issuing fines until early October 2020. The focus there was on the mantra
of “Enquire, Educate, Encourage and Enforce” with enforcement being a last resort until public sentiment shifted against those who seemed to be resisting restrictions.
