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The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the content, format and evaluation of printed public communication from police officers and governments regarding home burglary prevention in Belgium.

The content and format in this paper is analyzed through content analysis of 104 printed communication pieces in the Belgian province of Flemish‐Brabant in 2005. The evaluation is analyzed through five focus group interviews among professionals and common citizens.

The paper finds that police zones significantly differ in terms of communication efforts. The media mix is not diverse with poor collaboration between police officers and government information officers, while intermediaries (i.e. architects) are rarely used, culminating in poor targeted communication.

The paper shows that only printed communication is analyzed and more large‐scale empirical research is desired.

The paper shows that a richer media mix, more targeted communication, more national communication support and additional dialogue between and training of police officers and communication with professionals are advisable.

This paper combines two empirical studies and methods (content analysis and focus group interviews), resulting in a series of recommendations for further inquiry and future action.

Police services, police associations and police foundations now engage in philanthropy and these efforts are communicated using social media. This paper examines social media framing of the philanthropic and charitable work of police in Canada.

Drawing from discourse and semiotic analyses, the authors examined the ways that police communications frame contributions to charity and community’s well-being. Tweets were analyzed for themes, hashtags and images that conveyed the philanthropic work of police services, police associations as well as police foundations.

The authors discovered four main forms of framing in these social media communications, focusing on community, diversity, youth and crime prevention. The authors argue that police used these communications as mechanisms to flaunt social capital and to boost perceptions of legitimacy and benevolence.

More analyses are needed to examine such representations over time and in multiple jurisdictions.

Examining police communications about philanthropy not only reveals insights about the politics of giving but also the political use of social media by police.

Social media is used by organizations to position themselves in social networks. The increased use of social media by police, for promoting philanthropic work, is political in the sense that it aims to bolster a sense of legitimacy.

The purpose of this paper is to explicate chaos theory metaphorically from a social science perspective to expand upon a relatively new theoretical framework for crisis communication in the public sector. Using the 2002 Washington, DC, area sniper shootings as a case study, the author unravel chaos theory in terms of a public safety crisis that required crisis communication by government officials.

The author analysed front-page coverage in The Washington Post and The New York Times as well as CNN coverage during the three weeks of the sniper shootings, 2 October through 25 October. In total, 56 (69 per cent) of the newspaper stories were published in The Washington Post, and 78 news segments were used from CNN archives. Each story was reviewed for evidence of chaotic elements and crisis communication responses using a code sheet, and the resulting thematic analysis created a composite description of the case.

This case exhibited the main characteristics of a chaotic system, including fractals, error of scale, bifurcation points, self-organisation, feedback, and strange attractors. The results describe how each element of chaos influenced the crisis communication efforts.

To date, there is no known research on law enforcement's efforts in crisis communication during the DC sniper shootings. There is also limited research in chaos theory and crisis response. This research may aid in communication efforts during future public safety crises and disasters.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a theory-driven intervention called VOICES that was developed to improve police-community relations. The intervention was designed based on principles derived from social psychological theories of intergroup contact and communication.

The authors discuss the theoretical basis for the intervention, as well as its development and implementation in the Santa Barbara Police Department. Based on this pilot testing, the authors provide preliminary evidence about its effectiveness using survey responses and qualitative feedback provided by participants.

Although the case study method used here does not allow for causal inferences about the effectiveness of the intervention, the limited evidence the authors present does suggest that participants found VOICES useful and it may have improved their perceptions of police. The next step will be to test this intervention using experimental or quasi-experimental methods that allow for causal inferences about effectiveness.

The paper shows how police can develop theory-driven interventions in an effort to improve trust between police and the public, including communities in which relationships with police have been historically strained. It also underscores how insights from the study of intergroup contact and communication can benefit policing.

Police agency networks are likely to be important for the adoption of policing innovations and the visibility of demonstration projects. This study of police network data has four main goals: to use multivariate models for the influence of agency characteristics on the sort of agency it contacted; to investigate the extent of symmetry of ties in the police network; to examine models for the specific departments chosen as agencies' network contacts; and to identify, through network data, agencies as “relative experts” in several different policing domains.

The paper uses Weiss agency survey data to conduct a variety of analyses of agencies' choices of informal communication partners.

The analysis showed regularities in agencies' choices of contacts. Whether a contact was of the same type or from the same state as the respondent was influenced by the respondent's population and type. There was some evidence of size‐based asymmetry in contacts. The choice of a particular contact was influenced by agency type, population and geographic distance. There appeared to be “relative experts” in specific policing domains.

The results increase understanding of the structure of the agency network. By describing the nature of communication ties on planning issues, the results give essential background for any efforts to encourage the diffusion of policing innovations (or successful practices) by inducing ties between particular agencies. Results can also help predict the potential visibility of demonstration projects if placed in particular agencies.

Reports on the innovations process in American policing. Explores how information about innovation is communicated among police organizations and the factors which influence adoption. Reports the findings of a survey of police chiefs and executives. Develops a model with four elements: cosmopolitanism; risk mediation; peer emulation; and innovativeness. Finds that many police departments use informal networks of communication to support organizational decision making and are often influenced by executives’ participation in policy communities and by efforts to reduce the organization’s perceived risk of civil liability. Recommends that police organizations strengthen their networks of communication in a more formal manner.

This study, a content analysis, aims to analyze general communications from law enforcement via agency websites about the COVID-19 pandemic and how this affected police roles. The authors study the extent to which police departments used their websites to inform the public about COVID-19, changes to their policies and additional information they felt necessary to give members of the public. This is important for understanding how the police inform the public during a pandemic and how the pandemic affected their police role.

The data gathered for this project came from a content analysis of the official websites of the largest municipal police departments in the USA. The researchers collected quantitative data from the official websites of law enforcement agencies who serve the 200 largest cities in the USA in March 2020 and coded the information from the websites to determine what themes were most prevalent.

The messages most often provided on department websites included information about COVID-19 (52% of websites included this information), modifications to services (33%) and informing users that services such as fingerprinting would be altered (42%). Websites also reminded the public of restrictions on public gatherings (25%) and stay-at-home orders (38%). Further logistic regression analyses explored significant associations among these variables to understand how police/public communications influenced the role of law enforcement during the pandemic.

Little is known about how law enforcement communicates online with the public during a global pandemic like COVID-19 or how this might affect the police role. Police departments can use their websites to communicate important information to citizens and keep communities updated. Policy implications suggest that agencies continue to update websites with important information and be direct about expectations from the public regarding compliance while also being transparent about how police roles might change.

To describe the class content of a citizen police academy (CPA) and the preference for communicative problem solving over physical force.

This ethnographic case study followed 20 participants through a CPA run by a suburban police department. Participants were interviewed before the academy began. All classes were observed and transcribed, and group discussions were held after the academy's conclusion. Instructors were also interviewed.

The more “action‐packed” parts of policing attract participants to CPAs, which then can emphasize the less adventuresome aspects. While officers must be ready to respond to violence used against them, communication plays a greater role in investigating crime and solving day‐to‐day problems. Citizens are encouraged to work with police by reporting problems and becoming involved with community policing efforts. CPAs counter the violent portrayal of police work in the mass media.

Generalizability based upon a case study. How valid for others are the results from one CPA?

CPA instructors should be encouraged to facilitate more discussions between participants. Entertainment is an important factor in CPA classes but citizens will also value more serious conversation.

This paper would be most valuable for instructors of CPAs and researchers interested in them. Prior studies of CPAs have largely been based on survey research. According to Katz: “no social research is complete without an ethnographic treatment of its subject‐matter.” While CPAs tend to follow a similar curriculum, this paper shows what values should be infused to cultivate better relations with citizens.

A question is posed; have audit and control of information in a high security environment, such as law enforcement, improved or not in the transition from manual to electronic processes? This paper attempts to elucidate this question by a thorough examination of information collection, control of processing and audit in manual processes used by the Queensland Police Service, Australia, during the period 1940‐1980. It assesses those processes against current electronic systems essentially introduced to policing in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s. The results of this assessment show that electronic systems provide for faster communications with centrally controlled and updated information readily available for use by large number of users connected across significant geographical locations. It is clearly evident that the price paid for this is a lack of ability and/or reluctance to provide improved audit and control processes. Thus, the claim can be made that audit and control processes may be considered to have been downgraded in the electronic world where standard commercial systems are used.

The purpose of this paper is to assess empirically Chinese immigrants' perceptions of the police in Toronto, Canada.

Data were analyzed based on 293 surveys conducted with Chinese immigrants who participated in various community service organizations in Toronto, Canada, between March and May 2005. Ordinary least squares and ordered logit regressions are used for the analysis.

The paper shows that individuals who had previous contact with police rated police less favorably than those who had not had contact with police in the past. In general, people who rated police as helpful when they called them for assistance expressed a higher degree of respect for police. In addition, poor communication was a significant predictor of Chinese immigrants' perception of police prejudice. Finally, a majority of respondents expressed the concern that more bilingual police were needed in the city.

As with any study utilizing a non‐probability sample, care must be taken to avoid generalizing the findings to all Chinese immigrants in Toronto. Since the sample was taken from participants of various community service organizations in Toronto, the findings may not be appropriate to generalize to the other constituencies in the Chinese community, such as young people.

The paper highlights the need for improving the quality of police services, recruiting more bilingual officers (or officers from their communities), strengthening police training in racial and cultural diversity, and reducing communication barriers to improve Chinese immigrants' evaluations of the police.

This research is the first to specifically examine Chinese communities' perceptions of law enforcement in Canada. Law enforcement can utilize these findings to improve their services and address the Chinese community's concerns; not only can this promote the police‐citizens relationship, but it can also encourage the Chinese community's participation in a crime reduction partnership.