OSCE Office promotes community policing with conference in Baku

BAKU, 9 June 2011 – A two-day community policing conference, organized by the OSCE Office in Baku, began today with senior Azerbaijani police management, government agencies, civil society and international experts.

Five years ago, the OSCE Office launched a project under which it works closely with the Interior Ministry to develop community policing and other forms of police-public partnerships in Azerbaijan.

"Thanks to this project, there has been a notable improvement in the communication between the police and the public, resulting in better co-operation and improved mutual trust," said Ambassador Bilge Cankorel, the Head of the OSCE Office in Baku.

“We also work together to develop strategies to increase the number of women in the police service, and to improve the police response to gender-related violence such as domestic violence and trafficking in human beings.”

The OSCE Secretariat's Strategic Police Matters Unit (SPMU) will present an assessment of  the community-policing project in Azerbaijan during the conference.

The report includes several recommendations on how to improve officers' community policing skills. It also looks at how the police services' structures can be improved to promote community policing, and it suggests the creation of new venues for police-community interaction.