In this chapter, we examine the nexus of relationships at the strategic level, including the peer groups of strategic police leaders, the wider criminal justice system of which the police are the ‘gateway’, and roles or contacts at a local level with community leaders. The purpose of this exploration is to ascertain what kind of networks are used by the policing elite to sustain their positions, expand their influence and enhance their working relationships, and whether, because of this exclusivity, they constitute a kind of ‘closed shop’. We shall ask some questions of what seems to be a male-dominated workplace, to which members of minority ethnic groups and women are admitted only in small numbers. This helps us to analyse the nature of the closed shop and to ask whether strategic policing in Europe constitutes a self-fulfilling elite.

Most strategic police leaders in Europe have relationships with the wider criminal justice system through formal subordination to their public prosecutor, who normally oversees and often directs police investigations of crime; and through a parallel political subordination to the local or district mayor (the Bezirksbürgermeister in Germany, for example), who oversees police responses to public order and to community needs. In some European countries, this constitutes a ‘triangular’ balance of power, where the public prosecutor balances the influence of the mayor (whether appointed or elected) and the strategic police leader sometimes holds the ring between these powerful partners. In other countries, particularly in the Netherlands, the police chief occupies a position beneath the other two (Hoogewoning et al, 2015). The dynamics of this ‘triangle’ change over time, but the universality of top-down pressure for results means that the police leader understands clearly the status of his or her position in the balance of power.

The relationship between strategic police leader and mayor is consequently not always a comfortable one. Our respondents often reported clashes of personality and strong differences about priorities, even of strategic direction. By contrast, there is seldom any clash reported with public prosecutors, and police leaders often speak in warm terms about the lawyers and judges with whom they deal.