Community Policing in Rural Parts of Slovenia in the time of COVID-19

Abstract

The focus of community policing is directly on the local community and encompasses various crime reduction and crime preventive initiatives developed and initiated through the interaction of police and local citizens. The history of the development of community policing in Slovenia has shown that, for a thriving community policing approach, police officers had to work actively and hard for many years and cooperate with local leaders and citizens from both rural and urban local communities in various ways to make positive progress. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed police activities and interfered with community policing throughout Slovenia, especially in its rural regions. This article reviews the organization of community policing in eight rural Slovene police directorates. Interviews were conducted with community policing authorities at regional and local levels in all eight police directorates. We found that community policing changed significantly during the pandemic (e.g. use of Facebook, Zoom) and decreased, because police officers were occupied with performing other tasks (e.g. security measures related to the epidemiological situation). The most disadvantaged communities were located in rural areas, where contacts with citizens were almost completely cut off. Unfortunately, the most significant obstacle to community policing practices is long-term staffing shortages of the Slovenian police.