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Mayors' perception survey

Description

The Police Development Department (PDD) of the OSCE Mission to Skopje conducted this survey to evaluate their perception on policing within their municipalities.

Summary

After the 2011 Parliamentary Elections, the PDD conducted a survey with all Mayors in the country to evaluate their perception on policing within their municipalities. The survey was conducted in cooperation with the Association of the Units of Local Self Government (ZELS) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MoIA).

ZELS has been a partner in the setting up of LPCs and has supported this survey, indicating their interest in cooperating with the Police on addressing security issues at the local level, for the overall good of their citizens.

The questionnaire presented to the Mayors consisted of ten “closed” and one “open-ended” question. It was delivered to the Mayors of all 85 local self-government units in the country (84 municipalities and the City of Skopje), with the aim of evaluating their perceptions of policing and to use the results to complement those obtained through the 2010 Community Policing Survey.

The delivery of the questionnaire and collection of data in the field was conducted by the co-located police advisors and their assistants in the period from 06 June to 31 July 2011. Once the data was obtained, a report about the findings of the survey was prepared. The Mission has been actively involved in promoting, establishing and consolidating the police public partnership concept in the country since 2001. It is therefore in the Mission’s interest to evaluate the effectiveness of the police public partnership mechanisms which it has helped to establish, in order to identify possible gaps and recommendations for future activities.

Generally, the outcome of the survey indicated that the Mayors felt that there was a need for police public partnership activities and programs. The Mayors had good knowledge of community policing activities at local level, and the LPC model of police public partnership  was almost unanimously endorsed by the Mayors surveyed.1 Some Mayors suggested to increase the cooperation between the municipalities and Police further, and to increase educative programs for the citizens. The vast majority of respondents also felt there was the need for a specific budget allocation of the municipality for community policing activities.

However, the survey helped identify a noteworthy discrepancy between the opinions of the citizens and those of the Mayors with regard to police treatment of citizens, as gauged by the 2010 Policing Survey. While the majority of the police, as well as the Mayors, feel that the police treat citizens with respect, a large percentage of citizens (40%), surveyed in 2010 felt the opposite. This shows that citizen’s trust in the Police must still be built up further – an issue that can be addressed through cooperation between municipalities and Police.

1 — In 2007, the Mission, in coordination with ZELS, developed the concept of the Local Prevention Council (LPC) - a working body established at local level - aimed at gathering local stakeholders (Mayors, Police and citizens)) to work together in order to co-ordinate their actions in preventing and resolving local security concerns.