Samenvatting

In 2007, the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations initiated the program 'Veilige Publieke Taak'. It was designed to provide employers with guidelines and solutions for handling aggression and violence towards employees with a public task. One of the most important initiatives of this program are the eight measures every public task organisation should apply to aid their employees before and after incidents. Since the start of this program, the Dutch Police Force has not seen a decline in cases of aggression and violence against its employees. Reasons as to why the program has not yet shown a positive effect on aggression and violence towards Dutch police officers may be found in the unsatisfactory internal communication of the policy within the Dutch police organisations. Dutch police officers were interviewed to research their opinion on the communication of the measures provided by the 'Veilige Publieke Taak', and several indicated the communication of these measures to be insufficient.
This research has been performed for the executive management of all Dutch police organisations, the goal of the research is to find possible methods to improve the current communication of the eight measures provided by the 'Veilige Publieke Taak'. The reason why it is so important to improve the communication of these measures within the Dutch Police Force is firstly to decrease the amount of aggression and violence against police officers, and secondly to improve working conditions for Dutch police officers. Additionally, the credibility of the whole Dutch police organisation should improve, which would lead to more respect from citizens, therefore decreasing the chance of incidents of aggression or violence.
The significant approach to finding a solution to the problem is the internal communication within the Dutch police organisations. Particularly the line communication of the Dutch police organisations needs to be improved. This means that the middle management should communicate the policy and measures provided by the government more effectively to the executive employees. By doing so, involvement from executive employees should be enhanced, improving the effectiveness and awareness of the measures and allowing them to fully fulfil their original purposes. The recommendations are directed at the improvement of that part.
There are four important measures that are not being communicated efficiently by middle management to the executive employees. These measures are: the external communication of limits, stimulation of reporting, promoting denunciations, and training of employees. In the recommendations, short term and long-term recommendations are provided. The short-term recommendations are applicable to the four measures on which the communication needs to be improved. Firstly, limits have to be communicated by police officers to possible perpetrators by giving a warning when they start showing inacceptable behaviour. Secondly, reporting of incidents has to be stimulated by making the writing of reports more accessible, and implementing more control on the reporting of incidents by employees. Thirdly, promoting the denunciation of criminal offences is made easier by focussing internal communication on relevance, easy implementation, and safety of denunciation. Finally, increasing the frequency of training sessions and giving them a more interactive character should improve the training. Additionally, communication will also improve if information on the measures, training, briefings and work meetings is distributed through the intranet of every police force.
The long-term recommendation is an adjustment that is harder to achieve. The recommendation is to change the measures of the 'Veilige Publieke Taak' into obligated policy, instead of the directives they are now, to prevent different interpretations of the policy, improve the control of enforcement and ensure it reaches its primary targets.