Police Commissioner Angelo Gafà has vowed to increase police presence in the streets as part of a shift towards community policing. 

In a public consultation meeting following a one-year community policing trial in Mellieħa, Gafà said there was a need to change mindsets both within the corps and outside it. 

There was a need to show that policing was not a monopoly of the police, but rather a community effort. 

Community policing is a strategy that focuses on building ties with the community, by creating a partnership to reduce crime. 

a strategy of policing that focuses on building ties and working closely with members of the communities. The main idea is to allow police to feel like the public can trust them. A formal definition states:

The commissioner said having officers dealing with people inside the local police station meant a crime would have already taken place. 

His aim is to prevent crime in the first place through an increased presence at street level within communities. 

The community policing project is set to be extended to Marsaxlokk, Birżebbuġa, Pembroke, Swieqi, Fgura, Rabat, Dingli, Mtarfa, Mdina, Floriana, Valletta, following an internal call in the corps for officers interested in community policing. 

Gafà said the point of an internal call was to attract motivated individuals who did not mind being out on the beat. 

He said this went beyond merely increasing the number of street patrols, but rather, integrating policing within the community.

University professor Gordon Sammut, who carried out a survey on policing, said Mellieħa residents expressed trust and satisfaction in the police, and were also more likely to have witnessed patrols taking place. 

Sammut said the majority of Maltese wanted to see more police in the streets rather than inside police stations. 

He said the overall satisfaction with policing was more tangible in Mellieħa as a result of the community policing project.

Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri agreed that he wanted to see fewer police sitting down inside a station waiting for work to come to them, when they could be out doing foot patrols. 

Camilleri said the scope of community policing was to assure more security within communities.