Help! I need somebody. Help! Not just anybody: An event perspective of the community safety partnership making process in Canada

Community safety partnerships are becoming an important part of policing and crime prevention in Canada. These types of partnerships have long existed. However, with recent pressures on police services to respond to more complex social issues, alongside scrutiny of policing budgets, increasing attention is being paid to partnership creation. Much has been written about community safety partnerships. This literature, however, largely ignores the transactional phase of partnership-making. This phase is important for understanding how community safety partnerships emerge, develop and sustain themselves. Furthermore, little is written on the Canadian context, despite significant differences in Canadian police organizations and communities compared to the United Kingdom and the United States. The current study seeks to examine the community safety partnership making process through an event perspective. Findings from this study have implications for theories of partnerships, as well as practical implications for partnership making and the organizational structure of policing in Canada.