Building Trust and Leadership to challenge glocal aporophobic crime in a police Community Of Practice (BTL-COP)

2026-07-22

BTL-COP will carry out European-UK societal and technological capacity building activities with police authorities, prosecutors, judicial actors, training and academic partners to build trust, in-depth tacit knowledge, face-to-face engagement and leadership. The project develops an innovative Trust in Neighbourhood Groups (TING) community-police engagement, deriving from the Viking word for an early form of a parliament. BTL-COP aims to identify, prevent and investigate major contemporary and emerging criminal activities linked to poverty-fuelled local criminal exploitation and aporophobia in UK/EU neighbourhood communities of practice. The project will demonstrate, test and validate social and technological research solutions, co-creating improved police-community engagement to reduce poverty-related crime, and establish community 'safe spaces'. Together, partners help develop Police Authorities’ cutting-edge capabilities to identify, prevent and investigate criminal activities, developing early warning knowledge, threat detection methods, tools, training curricula and manuals for police authorities, security, prosecutorial and judiciary agencies, improving effectiveness in crime reporting, evidence-building, and investigating criminal activities. As an R&I action, BTL-COP builds on best practice in coactive community-oriented policing, participatory research and communities of practice. BTL-COP draws on 90+ collective police authorities' years of effective community-police engagement, plus current and prior Horizon projects, to develop, promote, and disseminate highly successful COP models. The long term impact of BTL-COP is to recommend widescale future development of EU/UK trustworthy safe, sustainable local TING spaces to bring communities and police authorities together to build trust, enhance shared intelligence, leadership and resilience in the face of potential future catastrophes that may become highly vulnerable to g/local criminal exploitation

United Kingdom, Ireland, Croatia, Spain, Greece, Poland, Portugal

2026-01-01