A transparency statement improves trust in community-police interactions.

ABSTRACT: Over the past three decades, billions have been invested in community policing to foster positive interactions between officers and community members. Yet, public trust in police continues to decline. Our qualitative analysis of over 500 hours of naturalistic observations suggests a potential reason: the questioning styles of officers in community policing may make community members feel threatened. Observations also point to a solution: transparent communication of benevolent intent. Building on this, a pre-registered field experiment (N = 232) finds that community members feel less threatened and report greater trust when officers use a brief transparency statement (e.g., "I'm walking around trying to get to know the community"). These findings are supported by exploratory natural langua

SUBMITTER: Dobson KSH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11889189 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature