In a joint opinion piece on a recent Indonesian regulation on community policing to prevent violent extremism, Cameron Sumpter, Research Fellow at the RSIS Singapore and Indah Amaritasari, Lecturer at Bhayangkara Jakarta Raya University, said that the crucial detail about gleaning strategic information from neighborhood residents is that it must be the result of police officers building relationships within communities, rather than the motivation for collaboration. Frequent engagement over cups of tea is not enough – citizens have to view their local police as legitimate and fair, they said.

…Cameron Sumpter is a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.