3.01 Rebuilding of organisational trust after a period of difficulty

Academic team: Dr Alessandro Sancino, Dr Sandra Resohardijo, Dr Steven Chase, Colin Paine
Policing partners: Thames Valley Police
Status: Complete

Recently, the police service has come under significant criticism for the behaviour of a minority of officers and police leaders.

This research addressed the research question: ‘How can the police best deal with this negative attention in public and media when crises happen?’ More specifically, the research team investigated the concept of crisis, explained how crises can lead to blame and highlight why crisis leadership is a key component of policing.

The research used evidence to identify some key crisis leadership lessons to inform police dealing with blame during crises.

Outputs

Title	Output type	Lead academic	Year	To note
Police leadership and blame games	Presentation	Sancino, A	2015
Leading across multiple arenas: public managers and contemporary city leadership challenges	Presentation	Sancino, A	2015	Available on request
Responding to blame: understanding blame game processes following two festival disasters	Presentation	Resodihardjo, S	2014

News

Welcome Clifford as our new policing professor

Our new Professor of Policing and Research, whose role includes becoming Academic Director of our Centre for Policing Research and Learning (CPRL), is Clifford Stott MBE.

As the Centre’s lead, a significant part of his role will be working with academics across and beyond the Faculty, as well as CPRL’s police force partners, to generate research and learning relevant to theory, policy and practice.

2nd March 2026