Keeping up appearances?: A community’s perspective on community policing and the local governance of crime

Summarises and discusses findings of roundtable discussions on the opinions of the citizens of two Belgian (Flemish) cities about the policing and security policy in their cities. Citizens question the organisational and cultural readiness of their local police forces for the full‐scale development of community policing. In practice, problem‐oriented policing tends to dominate, whereby it is the police who define the problems to be tackled. Despite decentralisation of policy and participation procedures, the public complains about the lack of citizen democracy in government. Problems of transparency and participation are related to the plethora of projects and initiatives which have been launched by different authorities at different policy levels. Finally, the consensual vision of community policing is discussed since geographically decentralised policing and the encouragement of community involvement will logically confront the police with ever diverging socio‐economic and cultural interests in the neighbourhood.