By Kevin Petersen, Christopher S. Koper, Bruce G. Taylor, Weiwei Liu, Jackie Sheridan-Johnson

Police use-of-force is a growing public health concern, with recent estimates suggesting that over 70,000 people are injured by police each year. To reduce the risk of injury to civilians, most police agencies authorize the use of various less-lethal weapons. However, to date, there is little consensus as to which types of less-lethal weapons are most effective at reducing injury risk. In this study, we test the differential effects of less-lethal weapons on civilian injury and injury severity using data on 2348 use-of-force incidents originating from 17 large urban and metropolitan law enforcement agencies from 2015 to 2019. Specifically, we assess the injury risks associated with conducted energy devices, chemical agents, impact weapons, and police canines, while controlling for a robust set of officer, civilian, and situational characteristics. Our results indicate that chemical agents reduce the risk of hospitalization or death significantly more than other weapon types, while police canines increase the risk of all injury outcomes significantly more than other weapon types. Adjusting for incident characteristics, chemical agents are predicted to cause hospitalization or death in 4% of cases, compared to 13% for conducted energy devices, 16% for impact weapons, and 37% for police canines. These findings suggest that civilian injury may be reduced through use-of-force policies that prioritize less severe modalities of force, though more research is needed on the contextual and long-term effects of these weapons.

Journal of Urban Health; November, 2024

By  Arron Lewis Cullen

Established news organizations have covered crime and law enforcement news for centuries. As a result, it should come as no surprise that the media is frequently the source from which the public learns the most about police activity in their communities. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate police social media activities and organizational structures to acquire a better understanding of how the police present themselves on digital platforms. Contributions to the field of police communications, specifically to the rapidly expanding field of police and social media studies, are made throughout this thesis. The conceptual framework of this research draws upon police image work, elements of community policing, and the digital society we live in. Through a pragmatic mixed methods approach, three empirical studies come together to contribute knowledge that does not currently exist regarding police forces in England and Wales. Data analyzed stems from the Twitter platform, interviews with communication experts, and a national survey of police forces. The research argues that police communications have gone through significant changes over the past decade, shifting from professionalization to the digitalization of police image work. The findings indicate that police communications have expanded and provide new opportunities to show the human side of policing through creative content. While police forces continue to be cautious, the study outcomes indicate that digital channels are vital for operational policing and enhancing customer service-related duties. However, opportunities for interactions within digital communities remain an area for development. Overall, this thesis provides an exploratory investigation into police social media activities, contributing to the existing knowledge base by demonstrating why digital society has changed how police forces carry out image work and community policing practices.   

Cardiff:  School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, 2022. 294p.

By Michael Heise and Jason P. Nance

Nationwide calls to “Defund the Police,” largely attributable to the resurgent Black Lives Matter demonstrations, have motivated derivative calls for public school districts to consider “defunding” (or modifying) school resource officer (“SRO/police”) programs. To be sure, a school’s SRO/police presence—and the size of that presence—may influence the school’s student discipline reporting policies and practices. How schools report student discipline and whether that reporting involves referrals to law enforcement agencies matters, particularly as reports may fuel a growing “school-to-prison pipeline.” The school-to-prison pipeline research literature features two general claims that frame debates about changes in how public schools approach student discipline and the growing number of calls for schools to defund SRO/police programs. One claim is that public schools’ increasingly “legalized” approach toward student discipline increases the likelihood that students will be thrust into the criminal justice system. A second distributional claim is that these adverse consequences disproportionately involve students of color, boys, students from low-income households, and other vulnerable student sub-groups. Both claims implicate important legal and policy dimensions, as students’ adverse interactions with law enforcement agencies typically impose negative consequences on students and their futures. We study both claims using the nation’s leading data set on public school crime and safety, supplemented by data on state-level mandatory reporting requirements and district-level per pupil spending, and explore three distinct analytic approaches in an effort to assess the independent influence of a school’s SRO/police presence on that school’s student discipline reporting behavior. Results from our analyses provide mixed support for the two claims. We find that a school’s SRO/police presence corresponds with an increased likelihood that the school will report student incidents to law enforcement agencies. However, we do not find support in the school-level data for the distributional claim.

111 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 717 (2021).

By Thomas C. O’Brien, Tracey L. Meares, and Tom R. Tyler

When police officers harm civilians, police leadership almost invariably makes a public statement about the incident, and these communications usually address issues of public mistrust in the police. In addressing public mistrust, political pressures may motivate police leadership to avoid acknowledging the role of police in creating that distrust. The study reported in this article examines the consequences of avoiding versus acknowledging responsibility for the role of police in creating mistrust, along with issuing an apology or not issuing an apology, in public statements. How do these various kinds of gestures shape public cooperation with police? This study reports on an experiment designed to answer that question, with our analysis focusing on the impact of these various kinds of statements on the people who are least likely to trust police. The evidence suggests that police leaders should combine acknowledgement of responsibility for the mistrust with an apology if they want to enlist the cooperation of people who are least likely to trust the police.

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social ScienceVolume 687, Issue 1, January 2020, Pages 202-215

By  Anthony Morgan, Hayley Boxall, Christopher Dowling and Rick Brown

Focused deterrence approaches to domestic violence have been developed in the US to increase offender accountability and ensure appropriately targeted responses to victims. While innovative, the model has strong theoretical and empirical foundations. It is based on a set of fundamental principles and detailed analysis of domestic violence patterns and responses. This paper uses recent Australian research to explore the feasibility of adapting this model to an Australian context. Arguments in favour of the model, and possible barriers to implementation, are described. Based on an extensive body of Australian research on patterns of domestic violence offending and reoffending, and in light of recent developments in responses to domestic violence, this paper recommends trialling focused deterrence and ‘pulling levers’ to reduce domestic violence reoffending in an Australian pilot site. 

 Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 593. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.2020. 20p.

By The Criminal Justice Alliance and the National Black Police Association

This joint briefing by the Criminal Justice Alliance (CJA) and the National Black Police Association (NBPA) examines the treatment of Black and racially minoritised officers in the Metropolitan Police’s misconduct processes following the Baroness Casey Review of 2023. The briefing highlights that despite the Met’s pledges to reform, systemic racial discrimination persists. It details the personal experiences of several Black officers, revealing a culture of bullying, exclusion and a lack of meaningful support within the institution. The briefing calls for substantive changes, emphasising that without significant structural reform and genuine accountability, the Met will continue to fall short of its commitment to become an anti-racist police service.

London: Criminal Justice Alliance, 2024. 19p.

By Roberto Santos and Rachel Santos   

Domestic violence is an ongoing concern for both the police and the community, given its frequency, repeated nature, and seriousness. Research shows that the ability to intervene during early stages of emotional and verbal abuse or less physically injurious violence is critical to preventing future violence (Buzawa, Buzawa, and Starke 2017; Campbell et al. 2007; Campbell and Messing 2017). Domestic violence, which is also referred to as domestic abuse or family violence, is one or a pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening, degrading, or violent behavior. Intimate partner violence (IPV) occurs between current or former spouses or intimate partners or between individuals who have a child in common. Non-IPV occurs between individuals within a domestic circle—for example, immediate family members, other relatives, or caretakers. In any of these circumstances, the key is that there is a close relationship between the offender(s) and the victim(s). As the first responders, police are uniquely poised to play a key role in assisting social service and public health efforts to prevent and reduce domestic violence. Police may see problematic relationships and families before victim advocates, doctors, and other service providers are even aware there is a problem. Importantly, when serious domestic violence crimes do occur and the results are severe, often the community and the media ask how many times the police responded to the address and what actions the police took to prevent the crime. Consequently, identifying potentially violent situations as well as connecting victims and their families to resources and victim services, including emergency housing and legal services, as early as possible is critical to preventing escalation of the violence. Domestic-related calls for service are one of the most frequent categories law enforcement agencies respond to and are one of the most dangerous calls for officers. Yet many of these calls do not constitute a domestic violence crime or trigger an arrest. In law enforcement agencies around the United States, dispatchers use a “domestic disturbance” or “domestic violence” call type to alert responding officers to potential domestic violence issues based on the brief information provided by citizens who call 911. Once an officer arrives on scene and does an initial investigation, there may be no probable cause or even an allegation of violence, so no report is required to be taken. Because of this, the reality is that many domestic-related calls are cleared by officers without taking a report.1 Because most proactive domestic violence responses are initiated by a crime report, identifying repeat occurrences of noncriminal calls for service presents an opportunity for police to respond proactively with the potential to prevent future incidents of domestic violence. . Importantly, the most dangerous time can be when victims reach out for help or take the first step to leave an abusive relationship, which might explain why they do not make direct allegations—because they  This guide provides a process for proactive police response to short-term domestic-related problems that is encompassed within a larger proactive crime reduction approach called Stratified Policing. Stratified Policing is an organizational model that includes a framework and specific processes to accomplish the institutionalization of a multidimensional set of evidence-based proactive crime reduction strategies (Santos and Santos 2020). Stratified Policing has been developed to (1) provide police leaders a clear path for implementation and institutionalization of proactive crime reduction modeled after current police processes; (2) incorporate practical theory and evidence-based practices from place-based, problem-solving, person-focused, and community-based approaches; (3) use crime analysis to identify and prioritize crime problems to be addressed realistically by different levels within the organization; (4) lay out a specific and adaptable framework for incorporating small changes by rank and division into daily activities that all contribute to the larger practical approach; (5) use time from individuals throughout the organization as a resource and become more efficient without requiring additional or specialized resources; (6) ensure that individuals and divisions within the organization contribute based on what is realistic and neither is overburdened with responsibility or the work being done; (7) incorporate multifaceted formal and informal accountability that is fair and transparent; and (8) raise the expectations for everyone in the organization to contribute to crime reduction (Santos and Santos 2020, 6). The process described here is the application of one component of Stratified Policing for the shortterm problem of repeat calls for service at residences, called domestic-related repeat incidents or DRRI. Although this guide focuses on a particular type of activity, the process can also be used for other types of repeat calls for service, such as suspicious activity, drug activity, and alarms.     

Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. 2023. 44p.

By William Cai, Johann Gaebler, Justin Kaashoek, Lisa Pinals, Samuel Madden, Sharad Goel

Past studies have found that racial and ethnic minorities are more likely than White drivers to be pulled over by the police for alleged traffic infractions, including a combination of speeding and equipment violations. It has been difficult, though, to measure the extent to which these disparities stem from discriminatory enforcement rather than from differences in offense rates. Here, in the context of speeding enforcement, we address this challenge by leveraging a novel source of telematics data, which include second-by-second driving speed for hundreds of thousands of individuals in 10 major cities across the United States. We find that time spent speeding is approximately uncorrelated with neighborhood demographics, yet, in several cities, officers focused speeding enforcement in small, demographically nonrepresentative areas. In some cities, speeding enforcement was concentrated in predominantly non-White neighborhoods, while, in others, enforcement was concentrated in predominately White neighborhoods. Averaging across the 10 cities we examined, and adjusting for observed speeding behavior, we find that speeding enforcement was moderately more concentrated in non-White neighborhoods. Our results show that current enforcement practices can lead to inequities across race and ethnicity.

PNAS Nexus, Volume 1, Issue 4, September 2022, 

By Shima Baradaran Baughman  

In recent years, the national conversation in criminal justice has centered on police. Are police using excessive force? Should they be monitored more closely? Do technology and artificial intelligence improve policing? The implied core question across these national debates is whether police are effective at their jobs. Yet we have not explored how effective police are or determined how best to measure police effectiveness. This Article endeavors to measure how effectively police perform at their core function of crime. The metric most commonly used to measure police effectiveness at crime-solving is a "clearance rate:" the proportion of reported crimes for which police arrest a person and refer them for prosecution. But clearance rates are inadequate for many reasons, including the fact that thy are highly manipulable. This Article therefore provides a set of new metrics that have never been used systematically to study police effectiveness-referred to as "criminal accountability" metrics. Criminal accountability examines the full course of a crime to determine whether police detect and ultimately resolve the committed crime. Taking into account the prevalence and the number of crimes police solve, the proportion of crimes solved in America is dramatically lower than we realize. Only with a clearer conversation, rooted in accurate data about the effectiveness of the American police system, can we attempt a path toward increased criminal accountability and public safety. 

Alabama Law Review [Vol. 72:1:47  2020.

By Human Impact Partners

The construction of police training facilities, or “Cop Cities,” is on the rise in the US, with 69 projects currently planned across 47 states. This report examines the public health impacts of these facilities, and reveals the broader and intersecting harms that militarization and policing pose to the health of all people and our planet. We highlight the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, a controversial 85-acre, $109.65 million police training construction project in Atlanta, Georgia, known to community organizers as “Cop City,” to illustrate four key pathways by which the construction of police training facilities harms health:

1. The expansion of policing

2. The destruction of the climate

3. Undermining Indigenous sovereignty

4. State repression of resistance

Each section describes the associated public health harms, followed by evidence-based public health solutions to promote health:

1. Invest in health instead of punishment

2. Advocate for green spaces and climate justice

3. Land back for Indigenous reparations

4. Protect community power and civil rights

We also recommend critical actions for each pathway that federal, state, Tribal, and local governments can take to prevent ongoing and future harms to public health, improve accountability, and support community safety for all.  While this brief focuses on Atlanta’s Cop City and the current social justice movement there, we hope this research will support continued resistance to the construction of police training facilities across the US. 

Berkeley cA: Human Impact Partners, 2024. 42p.

By Matthew A. Graham

This paper provides an overview of racial disparities in the multiple decisions police officers make when interacting with the public during vehicle stops. More specifically, the white paper maps how racial disparities during traffic stops increase the risks of harm for Black drivers at subsequent decision points throughout the encounter and that these traffic stops serve no public safety or crime reduction purpose.

West Hollywood, CA: Center for Police Equity, 2024. 22p.

By The Police Executive Research Forum

 The U.S. Department of Justice and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) released a first-of-its-kind set of best practices for police-press interactions at mass demonstrations. The report resulted from a convening of police leaders and journalists, spearheaded by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and PERF, and supported with a grant from the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. The report, “Police-Media Interactions During Mass Demonstrations: Practical, Actionable Recommendations,” proposes that police establish clear policies before, during, and after a protest event. A primary recommendation is that police agencies adopt express “arrest avoidance” procedures that direct officers to let detained journalists go quickly and that journalists be explicitly exempted from dispersal orders and curfew enforcement. The report also recommends that while credentials are an easy way to identify working members of the news media, police should also recognize those “acting as journalists in function and behavior.”  The Reporters Committee's Bruce Brown said that “With a fraught election next month, we have a unique opportunity with these best practices to both protect journalists at protests and help police serve their public safety mission. The challenge now is to get the recommendations in the hands of police departments and newsrooms around the country.”

Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. 40p.

By  Susannah N. Tapp,  and Elizabeth J. Davis,

This report is part of a series that began in 1996 and examines the nature and frequency of contact with police reported by U.S. residents, including demographic characteristics, types of contact, and perceptions of police misconduct, threats of force, or use of nonfatal force.

Highlights:

• About 19% (49.2 million) of U.S. residents age 16 or older had contact with police in 2022.

• A smaller percentage of persons had contact with police in 2022 (19%) than in 2020 (21%).

• In 2022, males (8%) were more likely than females (7%) to experience police-initiated contact, while females (12%) were more likely than males (11%) to initiate contact with police.

• Among U.S. residents who initiated their most recent contact with police, almost half (46%) did so to report a possible crime.

Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2024. 24p.

By James Yates

  Background In 2013, after a lengthy trial, United States District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin found that the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”), violated City residents’ Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights and that the City did so with deliberate indifference to NYPD officers’ “practice of making unconstitutional stops and conducting unconstitutional frisks.” In addition, the Court found that the City had a “policy of indirect racial profiling by targeting racially defined groups for stops based on local crime suspect data . . . [that] resulted in the disproportionate and discriminatory stopping of Blacks and Hispanics in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.” In a “Remedies Opinion,” a Monitor was appointed by the Court with authority to implement reforms related to training, documentation, supervision and discipline. Subsequently, the Court (Hon. Analisa Torres, D.J.) requested the preparation of an indepth, critical examination of the efficacy, fairness, and integrity of the City’s policies, practices and procedures with respect to police misconduct during stops. This Report is intended to meet the Court’s directive for a study of the NYPD disciplinary process as it relates to Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment compliance in investigative encounters. Summary Description of NYPD Discipline Any recount of NYPD’s disciplinary process will aim at a moving target. Modifications in the disciplinary process utilized by or imposed upon NYPD are in constant flux. In the last five years alone, there has been a blizzard of reforms, outlined in the Report, to New York City and State laws governing discipline, not to mention a variety of changes in rules and regulations within the Department and related agencies, many of which have been, and continue to be, the subject of active litigation and modification. While it is useful, in the Report, to cite data describing or summarizing disciplinary results at various moments in time and to highlight individual disciplinary cases of note, the main thrust of the Report is not transitory data or individual case studies, but rather, as directed by the Court, a look at policies, practices and procedures. At the outset, the Report reviews processes within the police department itself. While the Civilian Complaint Review Board (“CCRB”) may be the most recognized venue for reviewing claims of police misconduct, the Board handles a small minority of examinations of police conduct. CCRB investigates fewer than 5,000 complaints each year. As many as 50,000 misconduct reviews are performed by other divisions or personnel within the Department. They include the Internal Affairs Bureau (“IAB”), a Force Investigation Division (“FID”), the Office of the Chief of Department (“OCD”), Borough Adjutants, Borough Investigating Units (“BIU”) and local Command Officers (“CO”). [Please note: a dictionary of acronyms used throughout the Report is attached as Appendix 2.] Police activity is also scrutinized by a variety of audits conducted by or overseen by the Quality Assurance Division (“QAD”), a unit within the Department, including audits of radio dispatch communications, arrests, and police self-inspection examinations. Separate from the Department’s disciplinary process, an Early Intervention Committee (“EIC”) reviews officer history when certain signals of potential misconduct are  triggered. Other outside agencies regularly monitor potential misconduct, including the Commission to Combat Police Corruption (“CCPC”), the Office of the Inspector General for the NYPD (“OIG-NYPD”), the NYC Commission on Human Rights (“CCHR”) and a state agency, the Attorney General’s Law Enforcement Misconduct Investigative Office (“LEMIO”). Finally, thousands of complaints undergo scrutiny by way of claims lodged with the New York City Comptroller’s office and lawsuits filed in state and federal court. There is no cognizable attempt to coordinate the various reviews of police misconduct. Without full coordination, cooperation and sharing of information, the mere fact of split or concurrent investigations of any given encounter can lead to confusion or delay. Civilian Complaint Review Board The CCRB is comprised of fifteen members. Five members are appointed by the City Council; five members are appointed by the Mayor; one member is appointed by the Public Advocate; a Chair is appointed jointly by the Mayor and the City Council Speaker; and three members, with law enforcement experience, are designated by the Police Commissioner. Within CCRB, panels of three of the fifteen members are assembled to review closing reports and recommendations prepared by the investigative staff. Members are assigned to panels on a rotational basis. The Board has adopted a rule, not required by law, that each decisional panel shall have one of the police designees as a member. This leads to police designees hearing a greater volume of cases than other appointees. As an adjustment, more recently, CCRB sends some cases to panels without a police designee, but, if the panel substantiates misconduct, the matter is then sent for a second review attended by a police designee. In essence, misconduct may not be substantiated unless approved by a panel with a police designee. The Report discusses the impact of that decision. Disciplinary Recommendations to the Police Commissioner Findings of officer misconduct arrive at the Police Commissioner’s desk by dint of two highways: a substantiated finding referred from a CCRB panel to the Police Commissioner or one sent after an internal police department investigation. For minor or technical infractions within the Department, local commands/precinct commanders are authorized to impose discipline directly. All other recommendations for discipline are referred to, and left to, the discretion of the Police Commissioner, who may accept or reject a finding and who will then decide whether to impose a penalty, guidance, or neither. Disciplinary proceedings are either formal or informal. Formal discipline is administered through a trial process where Charges and Specifications are served detailing the allegations of misconduct. A deputy within the Department, sitting as a trial commissioner, receives evidence and makes a recommendation of guilty or not guilty along with a recommendation for a penalty or guidance or neither. The hearing is open to the public and the officer is entitled to representation. There may be several hundred such hearings in a given year. New York State Law requires that the trial commissioner be a deputy of the Police Commissioner if the subject officer faces possible termination. An Appellate Division ruling, barring hearings before an independent administrative hearing officer, has extended that provision of law to require that all trials come before a departmental deputy as the hearing officer, even in the more usual case where termination is not sought by the prosecuting authority. Informal discipline, which is much more common, occurs at the precinct or in the Department outside the trial process, when an officer “accepts” a “command discipline” along with the recommended or negotiated outcome. Absent extraordinary circumstances, stop and frisk misconduct is addressed by informal discipline. At the conclusion of an investigation or trial, CCRB or a trial commissioner (a departmental deputy), as the case may be, will determine if an allegation is substantiated by a preponderance of the evidence. Investigations and trials are not bound by strict rules of evidence. Hearsay is admissible and may form the basis for a finding. In formal proceedings at Departmental trials a verdict of Guilty or Not Guilty is rendered by the Trial Commissioner along with a recommendation for discipline or guidance if Guilty. Whether an allegation of misconduct is substantiated by CCRB or found by a Trial Commissioner, the Police Commissioner is not constrained to follow the recommendations and may vary the finding, alter a penalty, or decide upon no disciplinary action (NDA). The variance may be based upon the Commissioner’s: (i) disagreement with the factual findings; (ii) a different understanding of the applicable law or rules; (iii) a desire to exercise lenity—imposing a lesser penalty or no penalty; or (iv) any combination thereof. While various provisions of law require an explanation by the Police Commissioner in certain cases of disagreement with the findings of CCRB or a trial commissioner, the explanatory letters are often unclear as to whether the modification is based upon disagreements with factual findings, legal conclusions, or a simple desire to modify a penalty. The unfettered reach of the Commissioner’s authority is a point of frequent public debate.   

September 19, 2024. 503p.

By Brittany C. Cunningham, Bryce E. Peterson, Daniel S. Lawrence, Michael D. White, James R. Coldren, Jr., Jennifer Lafferty, Keri Richardson

Over the past decade, thousands of law enforcement agencies in the United States have adopted body‑worn cameras (BWCs) (Hyland, 2018). The rapid diffusion of these devices has been driven by several factors, most notably numerous controversial uses of force by police against community members of color and evidence suggesting that BWCs can produce a range of positive outcomes like reductions in complaints and uses of force (Braga et al., 2018; Peterson & Lawrence, 2021; Sutherland et al., 2017), added evidentiary value in investigations and downstream court proceedings (Huff et al., 2023; Todak et al., 2023), and enhanced perceptions of procedural justice and police legitimacy (Demir et al., 2020; McCluskey et al., 2019). The demand for police BWCs has continued unabated into the 2020s (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2022; White & Malm, 2020), and interest has now expanded to corrections. By 2023, at least ten state prison systems have begun the process of deploying BWCs, with many local jails following suit (Bogel-Burroughs, 2022; Brodie et al., 2020; Welsh-Huggins, 2021; Winton, 2021). Despite this expansion, there is limited research on the impact of these devices in prisons or jails. There are also fundamental differences between correctional and law enforcement settings that researchers must consider. For example, correctional officers interact with incarcerated residents on a more consistent and long-term basis than police interact with civilians. Prisons and jails also include a high concentration of vulnerable populations, including people under serious psychological distress and experiencing mental and behavioral health challenges (Maruschak et al., 2021). Another potential concern is that BWCs are redundant in prisons and jails because these environments are already saturated with stationary surveillance cameras (Allard et al., 2006). Although the stationary camera networks in many correctional facilitates are outdated and suffer from blind spots (Lawrence et al., 2022), it is not yet clear whether BWCs offer any added benefits beyond what is captured through these extant systems. For example, can BWCs provide additional evidentiary value in the investigation of misconduct incidents or staff uses of force? The current brief seeks to address this knowledge gap by examining the footage of response-to-resistance (RTR) events produced by BWCs compared to stationary closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in a correctional setting. The following sections describe the background of the current study, our approach to reviewing BWC and  stationary CCTV camera footage, and our key findings.

Arlington, VA: CNA, 2023. 16p.

By The New South Wales Police Force

The NSW Police Force (NSWPF) responds to more than 60,000 mental health incidents in the community every year and this figure has increased by around 10 per cent annually since 2018. In most cases a criminal offence has not been committed, there is no threat of violence and a weapon is not involved. This report looks at the NSWPF response to mental health incidents in the community.

Purpose

• Examine the demand on the NSWPF in responding to mental health incidents in the community.

• Review the training officers receive.

• Defining the role of police in responding to mental health incidents in the community.

• Reviewing the current operational model.

• Develop potential options for alternate response models.

Findings

The report noted that while police are best equipped to respond to incidents involving criminality and public order, other health professionals are able to provide more appropriate care for people experiencing mental health crises.

It also acknowledged that police, as the primary responder, can potentially escalate a situation and that the high volume of police deployment to mental health related matters can also have flow on impacts to other community safety issues, limiting resources of police to respond to other matters.

Actions

• The NSWPF and NSW Ministry of Health have set up a working group of senior officials to consider the findings of the report and to develop options for an alternative response.

• Additionally, the NSWPF has newly established the Mental Health Command to strengthen engagement and enhance police interventions when responding to mental health incidents.

• The Command will provide oversight, strategic guidance and advice as well as engage with external stakeholders.

Publisher Government of New South Wales

By Frankie Wunschel and Daniel Bodah

The 911 emergency call line was first implemented in 1968, in Halleyville, Alabama, as a fire emergency number.1 The scope of 911 expanded over the years to include police and emergency medical responses. As the world and the 911 system have changed throughout the past 52 years, the goal of 911—to enhance public safety—has not. Although extensive changes have been made in the technological infrastructure of the 911 system (such as adding GPS, Computer Aided Dispatch [CAD], and the Enhanced and Next Generation 911 applications), there have been few advances in the call-taking and dispatching aspects of the system. Modernization is needed if 911 is to provide fully effective service. In recent years, a few alternative approaches to call taking and information processing have surfaced. One of these alternative approaches is known as Criteria Based Dispatch (CBD). CBD was developed in King Country, Washington, in 1989 and was initially developed for emergency medical services.2 Whereas the traditional 911 approach involves the call taker collecting as much information as possible—what is happening, as well as why—CBD focuses on “here and now” questions.3 CBD was constructed as a central triage guideline system focusing on two key areas to understand this here-and now framework: 1. The necessary level of care 2. The urgency of the need for care.4 CBD systems categorize multiple call types together and supply a list of corresponding questions for use during the call-taking process.5 These questions and prompts are guidance suggestions for the call taker, ultimately trusting that the call taker will exercise discretion to use them appropriately.6 The system was initially developed for medical emergency-based calls and utilizing symptom criteria similar to those utilized in medical offices and hospitals.7 CBD has since expanded and been used in multiple departments for fire-related calls as well. Although readily used for medical and fire emergencies, CBD has been introduced in only a handful of jurisdictions for police calls.8 As a movement across the country has begun demanding changes to policing and public safety, the need to revisit 911 call-taking and dispatching methods has become urgent. As discussed below, CBD has revolutionized the  call-taking process for medical and fire calls to 911. This review of the literature on CBD frames how this approach could also lead to improvements in the policing space. Research on CBD is limited. The bulk of research has focused on understanding the structural components of the system and how they affect traditional 911 success metrics such as diagnosis accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and over- or under-triage.9 CBD research is practically nonexistent in the context of its use in the United States, so international research must be used to fill this gap. CBD processes in the United States and Europe are largely the same, although European CBD has adopted a three-level urgency approach that is less robust than the U.S. version.10 In exploring the landscape of CBD literature, researchers at the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) searched numerous academic databases, as well as the Internet, to identify academic, professional, and nonprofit reports and studies of CBD. The identified publications consisted of field explorations, scientific evaluation studies, training guides, news publications, and promotional materials. A wide range of literature types was used in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the field and supplement the limited amount of formal research available. This literature review explores the literature on CBD with a focus on reviewing the potential benefits of CBD seen by those working in the public safety response sector. The literature review also highlights strengths and weaknesses of CBD, maps the comparative research on CBD with that on competing dispatch system Medical Priority Dispatch (MPD), and finishes with a discussion of the potential for using CBD to improve responses in the policing space and support appropriate diversion of 911 calls to nonenforcement responses.  

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2020. 12p.

By Emily Owens and Bocar Ba

The efficiency of any police action depends on the relative magnitude of its crime-reducing benefits and legitimacy costs. Policing strategies that are socially efficient at the city level may be harmful at the local level, because the distribution of direct costs and benefits of police actions that reduce victimization is not the same as the distribution of indirect benefits of feeling safe. In the United States, the local misallocation of police resources is disproportionately borne by Black and Hispanic individuals. Despite the complexity of this particular problem, the incentives facing both police departments and police officers tend to be structured as if the goals of policing were simple—to reduce crime by as much as possible. Formal data collection on the crime-reducing benefits of policing, and not the legitimacy costs, produces further incentives to provide more engagement than may be efficient in any specific encounter, at both the officer and departmental level. There is currently little evidence as to what screening, training, or monitoring strategies are most effective at encouraging individual officers to balance the crime reducing benefits and legitimacy costs of their actions.

JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES VOL. 35, NO. 4, FALL 2021 (pp. 3–28)

By Hunter M. Boehme, Scott M. Mourtgos

On March 1, 2022, correspondence from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) headquarters stated that officers can no longer use minor infractions (e.g., equipment violations) as a pretextual reason to further investigate drivers for criminal behavior. If LAPD officers are to execute a discretionary stop, they must activate their body-worn cameras and reasonably articulate to the civilian why they are being investigated. The intent is to reduce racial/ethnic disparities in stops and build trust of the police within the community. Critics of the policy argue that elevated crime rates will result due to the crime suppression effect of such stops. This study examines racial differences in stops before and after the policy change, as well as whether Part 1 violent and property crimes increased. Descriptive findings show that while the counts of stops, arrests, and contraband seizures during stops decreased, the percentage of non-White civilians stopped decreased only minimally following the intervention. Results from using Bayesian synthetic control methods indicate an increase in both violent and property crimes post-intervention compared with the synthetic counterfactual. The increase in violent crimes has a low probability of being different from the counterfactual, whereas the increase in property crimes has a high probability, suggesting that the intervention led to a real change in property crimes compared with what would have been expected under the counterfactual.

Policy Implications: This study provides preliminary evidence that emerging policies intended to restrict discretionary stops may not have the intended effect on racial disparities in police traffic stops. Instead, agencies passing similar policies may expect to see the potential unintended consequence of a spike in jurisdictional property crimes. We argue that such types of stops across a jurisdiction may have a general deterrent effect on more common and calculative crimes such as property crimes. To combat violent crimes, agencies should consider focusing discretionary stops in known hot spots. Further, our findings offer implications for research on the effects of de-policing on crime. Police agencies should monitor potential unintended impacts of these policies if enacted and be prepared to deal with such consequences.

Criminology & Public Policy Volume 23, Issue 3: Special Issue: Policing Practice and Policy Aug 2024 Pages 515-799

By Greg Midgette,  Peter Reuter

Research Summary: Two perceptions drive interesting finding ways of diverting more 911 calls from police to civilian first responders: (1) police responses can result in inadvertent harm to citizens and (2) many calls to which police respond require services that police often cannot provide. Thus, using other personnel may improve police–citizen relations and strengthen crime fighting by reducing extraneous police burden. Using a case study design, we conducted formative evaluations of programs that have developed beyond pilots in three large U.S. cities: Albuquerque, Atlanta, and Houston. In Each city, we interviewed officials, program operators,and other stakeholders and reviewed program docu-ments and statistics. We detail the events and forces that led to the establishment of each program, the way in which the programs have been institutionalized, and the way they interact with the police department. We then discuss key lessons learned for these jurisdictions.Policy Implications: Many U.S. cities are consider-ing diverting some emergency calls for service from police to civilian first responders. This analysis provides evidence to aid policy makers, researchers, and other stakeholders in the development and evaluation of com-munity responder programs. In all respects, we believe that cities’ unique experiences inform program design.For example, in Albuquerque, a City Hall-driven initia-tive established a new city agency parallel to the police department. In Atlanta, decarceration activists drove the initiative; the program is a city/county-funded non-profit, more fragile in its funding. Risk aversion among call takers and dispatchers has led to low call diversion rates across all sites, but training and collaboration haves hown promise to resolve this problem. Public safety officials external to the diversion programs commonly expressed concerns about first responder safety and per-ceptions that police are expected when 911 is called. Thisrisk aversion has led to slower-than-expected expansion of the program within each city.

Criminology & Public Policy: Volume 23, Issue 3, 2024.