Built for Trust: Building Community Trust in Policing

What makes someone trust a police officer?The answer isn't better tactics, more training hours, or tougher accountability measures. It's shared values. And communities have been telling us that for decades.Built for Trust provides a practical blueprint for increasing the trust that makes policing work. Matthew Bostrom brings a PhD from Oxford University's Centre for Criminology and decades of real-world experience as a police officer, training director, assistant chief, and Ramsey County Sheriff. He shows how departments can identify the qualities that their communities actually want in a police officer, hire people who embody those qualities, and build an organization where the principles guiding every decision help to increase trust. It's not a poster on the wall. It's the organization's culture.Drawing on authentic engagement with community and staff members in Los Angeles, Plano, and cities across Minnesota, Built for Trust documents what happens when an organization aligns itself with community values from the ground up. The results are measurable. Community and employee surveys, recruitment and retention data, and progress toward a values-driven mission all show significant improvement within 18 months. And it doesn’t require more money. In fact, it costs less.As Chief of Police Booker Hodges of Bloomington, Minnesota puts it: "I believe this will be the model for policing in the country within the next five to ten years, and we can say we're one of the first organizations that did this from start to finish."Scholars agree. Dr. Ben Bradford, Professor of Global City Policing at University College London, calls it required reading: "The plan is based on what community members say they want from policing, not what police think they want." Dr. Carolyn Hoyle, Professor of Criminology at Oxford University, says the book "draws on extensive empirical and theoretical work as well as decades of experience in police leadership to reveal practical ways in which police departments can build the trust and legitimacy that communities across Western democracies deserve."And for leaders focused on organizational performance, Art Johnson, bestselling author of The Art of Alignment, puts it simply: "Alignment eradicates unpredictability which instills trust. Dr. Bostrom's book is transformative and central to this premise."This book is for public safety leaders, city and county administrators, and policymakers who believe that real trust between community and police is not a program. It is a product of shared values, built deliberately, one decision at a time.Not someday. Now. Read more