Managing the evolving facets of community policing (community relations, diversity, community tensions, and crime hotspots) to improve service quality and crime mitigation performance: a study of Sharjah Police

<p dir="ltr">This study investigates the degree to which evolving facets of community policing (community relations, diversity, community tensions, and crime hotspots) may be managed to improve the police service quality and crime mitigation performance of police personnel. Effective and efficient re-orientation of community policing is often challenged and has been argued as highly unoptimized. Acknowledging that communities are ever evolving, managing vital evolving facets remains central to effectively transitioning and operationalising community policing. To achieve this aim, the study applies the marketing orientation theory.</p><p dir="ltr">A quantitative methodological orientation is adopted, considering the case of the UAE Sharjah Police Department, from a positivist philosophical position, deductive research approach, and survey research strategy. The population of the study consists of 4,500 front-line personnel, including 2000 civilian and 2,500 military police personnel. An actual sample size of 533 is considered generalisable using the Krejcie and Morgan formula, following the stratified proportional sampling technique to ensure representativeness. Data analysis follows the Partial Least Squares - Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique.</p><p dir="ltr">Findings indicate that community relations and diversity management have a positive and moderately strong influence on service quality and crime mitigation performance of police personnel. Resolving community tensions has a positive impact on service quality but a negative impact on police personnel performance. Finally, managing crime hotspots has a positive impact on service quality. It is concluded that service quality partially mediates the impact of managing community relations, diversity management, and resolving community tensions on the crime mitigation performance of the police personnel, whilst completely mediating the impact of managing crime hotspots on this performance outcome.</p><p dir="ltr">Novel insight reveals that managing the evolving facets of community policing holds the potential to improve police personnel performance through service quality. It is recommended that community policing re-orientation and operationalisation will be more effective if the evolving components of community relations, evolving diversity, community tensions, and crime hotspots are routinely managed. Future research may investigate the rationale behind the negative impact of community tension management on the crime mitigation performance of police personnel, despite its positive overall contribution to service quality.</p>