Public Trust
Trust is one of the essential tools between the public and social institutions. The nature of police work suggests that the police ought to build a strong bridge of trust with the public so that there will be free flow of information. In Nigeria, there seem to be lack of trust between the police and the public which leads to seeming uncontrollable crime and criminal activities in the country. A previous study in Ghana suggested police reform as predictor of trustworthiness. However, no study has investigated public trust as a tool for building democratic policing in Nigeria. Thus, this study investigated Public Trust as a tool for Building Democratic Policing in South-East. Mixed method research design was adopted for the study. The general population of the study was 23,926,683. The target population of the study was 40480 from where a sample size of 873 was selected. Multi stage sampling technique was adopted for the study. The fishbowl method was used in selecting three out of the five states in South-East Nigeria. The local government areas in each of the selected states were stratified into urban and rural and in each of the strata, one local government area was selected. The same procedure was used in selecting the communities. The instrument for data collection was questionnaire and In-depth Interview (IDI) guide. The questionnaire data were processed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages and graphic illustrations were used for data analysis. The qualitative data were processed using QDA Miner software application. The stated hypothesis was tested using ANOVA It was found that there is no public trust on the police because the police easily expose their informants and use brutal force in the discharge of their duties. The study recommended that the police should be more accountable to the public and eschew brutal force to attract public respect as deterrents to criminal behaviours in the society.
