Community Based Policing Development in the Kyrgyz Republic

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To combat crime, including terrorism, the government of the Kyrgyz Republic must improve the provision of services to, and relationships with, at risk-communities. Community policing is an important tool for addressing crime, as well as for preventing radicalization and violent extremism that leads to terrorism. It is a philosophy and organizational strategy that enables the police and the community to build trusting relationships. The three cornerstones of community policing - partnership, problem solving, and prevention – directly address the conditions that breed radical and violent sympathies. Through trusting, respectful, inclusive partnerships between the police, local government, and community (including empowered civil society, religious leaders, ethnic minorities, women, and youth) collaborative problem solving can be undertaken to identify and assess vulnerable communities and address the drivers of crime, radicalization, and violent extremism at the local level. Partnership and problem solving enable prevention, i.e., proactive measures that identify recurring problems and find solutions (intervention) before they become violent and destabilizing. INL Bishkek is working with the Kyrgyz Republic’s Ministry of the Interior (MOI), which has established more than 600 Local Crime Prevention Centers (LCPCs) in communities across the country through a 2010 decree. Since 2016, INL Bishkek, together with the MOI, established 21 LCPCs which promoted the community policing approach.

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