Introduction

Since the turn of the century, policing in Western democracies has been faced with a new set of problems generated by global threats of terrorism. While terrorism was not a new problem for countries like the United Kingdom or Israel, especially in the United States, the idea that the police had to place terrorism as a central priority represented a radical change from what were the traditional policing duties. Prevention and control of crime and disorder, and fear of crime, had become the major concerns of police in the 1990s. And even within societies that had faced serious threats of terrorism in the past, it seemed that the idea of a service-based and community-oriented policing was overtaking concerns about terrorism and public security (Innes, 2005; Weisburd et al., 2002).