Community Security all citizens. The primary goals were to increase citizens’ access to police and public services, to improve communication, and to introduce community policing principles at the local level. Once the OSCE’s support was phased out, the local police took an active role in organizing and running a significant number of community policing forums that allowed for daily issues to be discussed in an open and transparent manner. In this way trust was built on both sides: the villagers and the law enforcement agencies. However, the fact that the group’s members and other citizens participated in the meetings on a voluntary basis without any financial compensation contributed to an inconsistent level of commitment. On the side of the police, this was exacerbated by the need for supervisor permission to attend the meetings. At a later stage, the OSCE introduced prevention councils, including in ethnically-mixed municipalities. Their task was to address, from a multi-disciplinary point of view, the security problems faced by citizens. The OSCE engaged concretely by co-ordinating with local stakeholders, diagnosing security concerns, and defining a strategy to solve problems that affected the entire community. The councils were part of the national decentralization process, and saw the participation of a broad range of local stakeholders, including representatives of state institutions, religious leaders, NGOs, citizens, community policing representatives, private business, and other persons with social influence. This broader composition allowed for information related to security issues to be easily shared across ethnic lines and between various stakeholders. 41