This first installment of the Dynamic of Relationships series was filmed inside the Bear Cave in Bihor County, Romania, in that region known as Transylvania (so appropriate this close to Halloween). The lighting in the cave was poor, so please excuse the poor video quality.

Trust is the foundation for effective relationships and community trust is essential for effective policing. It is the fuel that drives a Coactive Policing effort forward and consists of three elements:

The Trust Fomula
Integrity + Openness + Accountability

Our simplified definition of integrity is “being who you represent yourself to be” — otherwise stated as your character and competence operating in tandem.

Openness has to do with honest and open communication — essential for building trust. Keep this in mind, your community does NOT understand you… but it THINKS it does! So you must take the initiative to break down the barriers to communication.

Accountability is a two-way street. The police must be willing to give the community permission to hold them accountable, but the community must also give the police permission to hold them accountable as well.

When we were in grade school we learned that there was a property of addition that allowed you to add a series of numbers in any order and still get the same result. It doesn’t work that way with the Trust Formula, for reasons that we will see later. The three factors necessarily must come in this order: Integrity, Openness, and Accountability or the process will fail.

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