Building the capacity of police change agents: The nexus policing project

This paper argues that police members from all ranks possess potential to challenge the beliefs and meanings that inform their daily practices, and are able to alter their routines when innovative practice and new ideas assist them in responding to new dilemmas. The paper suggests that both scholars and practitioners pay insufficient attention to nurturing rank-and-file police as change agents and to building their capacity as knowledge workers and ideas generators in forging change. In response to this gap, the paper discusses the Nexus Policing Project in Victoria, Australia, which is based on a police-university partnership aimed at realising new ways of seeing and doing in the field of policing. The participatory action research method is utilised as a way of overcoming the traditional gap between research and practice. The paper discusses some of the challenges associated with this kind of collaborative endeavour.