By Williams Downs

An individual’s right to freedom of expression and assembly are protected by Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Together they safeguard the right to peaceful protest. However, these rights are not absolute, and the state can implement laws which restrict the right to protest to maintain public order or protect the rights and freedoms of others. In the UK several pieces of legislation provide a framework for the policing of protests. The Public Order Act 1986 provides the police with powers to restrict protests by placing conditions on them. These powers were strengthened by part 3 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. The Public Order Act 2023 established several criminal offences in relation to protest. These include offences of causing serious disruption by locking-on, being equipped to lock-on, causing serious disruption by tunnelling, obstructing major transport works, and interfering with key national infrastructure. There are also several criminal offences which are not specific to protest situations but could apply to conduct committed during a protest, such as wilful obstruction of a highway, public nuisance, and aggravated trespass. Other routes used to restrict peaceful protest There have been several examples of businesses and organisations applying for civil injunctions (court orders) against protesters to stop them from engaging in protest activity that affects their operations. The Public Order Act 2023 also provides for the Home Secretary to have the power to seek injunctions against protesters, though at the time of writing this provision has not been brought into force. Part 2 of the Public Order Act 2023 created Serious Disruption Prevention Orders (SDPOs), which are civil orders that enable courts to attach conditions or restrictions on an individual aged over 18 (such as restrictions on where they can go and when) with the view of preventing them from engaging in protest-related activity that could cause disruption. Breach of an SDPO is a criminal offence.

In some cases, local authorities have used their powers under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 to impose Public Space Protection Orders in areas outside of abortion clinics to prohibit protest activity. A provision in the Public Order Act 2023 to prohibit protest activity at all abortion clinics in England and Wales has not yet been brought into force. Legislative reform In recent years, the government initiated two major legislative reforms in response to concerns about peaceful but disruptive protests that have targeted major roads, transport networks, and other infrastructure. These were the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023. Both were aimed at increasing the powers of the police to intervene and stop disruptive protests and to strengthen the criminal justice response to those engaging in disruptive protest tactics. The legislation was controversial and attracted strong opposition from campaigners who questioned the compatibility of the reforms with human rights legislation. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said that the combined measures would likely “have a chilling effect on the right to protest in England and Wales” (PDF). The government stated that its legislation aimed to “protect the public and businesses from these unacceptable actions” of “a small minority of protestors”. It said that existing human rights legislation provides appropriate safeguards for the right to protest (PDF) and that the police and prosecutors will continue to be responsible for acting “compatibly with an individual’s Convention rights” when making any decisions about arrests and charges    

London: UK Parliament, House of Commons Library, 2024. 50p,]

By Rick Muir  

This report, produced in partnership with Virgin Media O2 Business, provides a strategic roadmap for police forces to make the most of digital systems, data and technology. It addresses the challenges with using technology, including upgrading outdated technology and unifying data management systems – both of  which will be critical to modernisation. We found that police forces are grappling with outdated legacy systems, complex procurement procedures, fragmented data-sharing, and a lack of digital knowledge and skills at all levels of policing. These challenges are stifling the full potential of data, digital and technology to transform modern policing. With expertise from an advisory panel of leaders across national policing, the report makes a number of recommendations to enable officers to work more efficiently and use data to empower them with real-time insights:

• Develop a national strategy for interoperability enabling all 43 police forces to integrate their technology and share data.

• Invest in modern, scalable technology to transition from outdated systems to cloud-based platforms, real-time data and AI insights.

• Change the leadership culture to promote technological literacy at senior and executive leadership levels, ensuring that decision-makers understand the benefits of innovation and act accordingly.

London: The Police Foundation, 2024. 28p.

By Alex Chohlas-Wood, Marissa Gerchick, Sharad Goel, Aziz Z. Huq, Amy Shoemaker, Ravi Shroff, and Keniel Yao

 We describe and apply three empirical approaches to identify superfluous police activity, unjustified racially disparate impacts, and limits to regulatory interventions. First, using cost-benefit analysis, we show that traffic and pedestrian stops in Nashville and New York City disproportionately impacted communities of color without achieving their stated public safety goals. Second, we address a longstanding problem in discrimination research by presenting an empirical approach for identifying “similarly situated” individuals and, in so doing, quantify potentially unjustified disparities in stop policies in New York City and Chicago. Finally, taking a holistic view of police contact in Chicago and Philadelphia, we show that settlement agreements curbed pedestrian stops but that a concomitant rise in traffic stops maintained aggregate racial disparities, illustrating the challenges facing regulatory efforts. These case studies highlight the promise and value of viewing legal principles and policy goals through the lens of modern data analysis—both in police reform and in reform efforts more broadly.

The University of Chicago Law Review [89:2: Pages 441-475 March 2022  

By Xiaohong Wang, Daniel Jones, Jiangnan Zeng

We draw on statewide data from North Carolina to examine the impacts of racial and ethnic representation in city councils on policing. Specifically, we focus on out- comes of traffic stops; e.g., whether a driver receives a warning or a citation after being stopped. We first document large Black-white and Latino-white disparities in the like- lihood of consequence (arrest or citation) after a traffic stop. We then use a difference- in-differences design, focusing on changes following (narrow) elections of nonwhite (rather than white) councilmembers, and find that increased nonwhite council representation significantly reduces Black-white gaps in stops and actions taken after a stop. The magnitude of the reduction is similar with and without officer fixed effects, suggesting that results are largely driven by individual officer-level behavior change rather than a change in the composition of the police force.

Unpublished paper, 2024. 

By The Honorable Edwin Meese III and John G. Malcol

It is a time of change and transition for many in America’s law enforcement community. Across much of the nation, police and sheriffs find themselves on the front lines of the opioid crisis, struggling to deal with the scope of the epidemic and the new challenges and dangers to officers it presents. At the same time, communities are increasingly turning to law enforcement officials to address other issues, such as dealing with disruptive or downright violent individuals suffering from mental illness, placing still further demands on these departments. tackling these diverse and multitudinous missions without compromising community safety is often a difficult proposition, particularly in light of the budgetary and resource constraints many law enforcement agencies face. All the while, police and sheriffs are facing internal pressures as experienced officers retire and departments work to attract young, talented recruits and diversify their ranks. those tasks are made all the more difficult by persistent narratives in mainstream and social media that paint policing as “systemically racist”—and which have the effect of encouraging antipathy towards the profession. What is needed now are thoughtful, innovative approaches to tackling these challenges. In this effort, America’s midsize police departments and sheriff’s offices are helping to lead the way. these agencies are large enough to test solutions applicable to much larger departments, but small enough to remain agile and adaptable in the face of changing circumstances, making them well-suited to serving as laboratories of innovation. Recent history bears this out. Some midsize departments have discovered creative means of overcoming funding limitations to properly equip their officers. Law enforcement leaders have developed new programs for community outreach and engagement, which have built trust and eased tensions within their jurisdictions. Some have demonstrated the value of better educating their officers on history—including the undisputed fact that many agencies once enforced racist laws (or neutral laws in a discriminatory manner)—to build empathy and reduce tensions with members of the community. And departments are increasingly training officers in tactics and techniques to de-escalate confrontational situations, as well as employing new technologies—such as data-driven policing, body-worn cameras, and even drones—to improve their operations. With these issues in mind, in January 2018, the Heritage Foundation convened its second policing.  Strategy Summit. While the 2017 summit focused on the major cities’ police and the nation’s largest departments, this summit brought together a diverse group of leaders from midsize law enforcement agencies across the country, along with representatives from national law enforcement organizations, police unions, and professionals with extensive federal, state, and local experience. As was the case with the first Policing Strategy Summit, this meeting had three principal objectives: 1. Identify the most pressing problems that law enforcement agencies face today, including the breakdown in trust, adequacy of training, proper use of new technologies, media, and community relations, and the gathering and sharing of data; 2. Identify the best practices and most innovative approaches that law enforcement authorities are employing to address these problems and combat crime; 3. Identify the most effective means of communicating with public and political leaders, building trust improving police-community relations, and bringing the needs and concerns of police agencies to the attention of federal officials. the following represents the proceedings of the Policing Strategy Summit. It does not necessarily reflect the views of specific attendees or organizations but seeks to capture the wide-ranging discussion that took place at the summit.   

Washington DC: The Heritage Foundation, 2024. 31p.

By Barry Friedman and Freya Rigterink 

This report, from The Policing Project at New York University School of Law’s Reimagining Public Safety Initiative, explores the use of alternatives to traditional policing and police response. Funded by local Chicago philanthropy, the study not only analyzes the public safety challenges facing the city, but also identifies a series of solutions. This report is based on the Policing Project’s extensive engagement both with the City of Chicago and with alternative response programs around the country. The Policing Project has been involved for five years in implementing a community policing program for Chicago. In preparing this report it conducted extensive interviews with community members and municipal stakeholders connected with Chicago government and the Chicago Police Department (CPD). This report is the fourth in a series that also included reports on Denver, San Francisco, and Tucson. The report recommends action on two facets of alternatives to traditional policing that would benefit Chicago and Chicagoans: 911 Alternative Response: By adopting alternative approaches, including sending non police responders trained to meet the needs of 911 callers, many cities are taking a load off dangerously overburdened police forces, and better meeting the needs of communities. Chicago should do the same. Community Policing: This is an important, perhaps essential, alternative to traditional policing. Over the long run, fully implementing a comprehensive community policing program is the best, if not the only, way to build trust between the Chicago Police Department and the people it serves, allowing them to address violent crime together.

2024. 56p.  

By Security Insight

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology can completely transform policing; from advanced criminal analytics that reveal trends in vast amounts of data, to biometrics that allow the prompt and unique identification of criminals. With the AI and policing report, produced through the Observatory function of the Europol Innovation Lab, we aim to provide insight into the present and future capabilities that AI offers, projecting a course for a more efficient, responsive, and effective law enforcement model. This report offers an in-depth exploration of the applications and implications of AI in the field of law enforcement, underpinned by the European Union's regulatory framework. It also looks at concerns about data bias, fairness, and potential threats to privacy, accountability, human rights protection, and discrimination, which are particularly relevant in the background of the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act.

 The Hague: EUROPOL, 2024. 61p.

By Christopher M. Sun, James R. “Chip” Coldren, Jr., Keri Richardson, and Emma Wohl

Law enforcement agencies continue to develop new and innovative strategies to better support and police the communities they serve, from integrating gunshot detection technologies into dispatch systems to improve response times during shootings, to collaborating with local health and social service organizations to address issues such as homelessness or substance abuse in comprehensively ways. Over the past 10 years, the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), in partnership with the CNA Institute for Public Research (IPR), has supported law enforcement agencies across the country in implementing innovative policing approaches through the Strategies for Policing Innovation Initiative (SPI, formerly the Smart Policing Initiative). SPI supports not only the development and implementation of innovative policing strategies, but also the research partnerships that result in in-depth analyses and rigorous evaluations of these strategies to advance what is known about effective and efficient policing practices. This report examines SPI’s accomplishments since its inception in 2009 and explores some of the major themes across SPI initiatives in both policing and policing research, including the following:

• Reductions in violent crime

• Improved crime analysis capabilities in police agencies

• Evolution of research partnerships with SPI sites

• Collaborative partnerships with agencies, organizations, and community stakeholders

• Integration of technology into policing

Arlington VA: CNA, 2019. 20p

Edited by Nazmia E.A. Comrie and Shanetta Y. Cutlar   

The U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office), is excited to celebrate 30 years of advancing community policing. Reflecting on the work of the COPS Office over the last three decades calls to mind the changes in crime-fighting techniques, accountability measures, and technology and the evolving role of police in civil society in that time. Throughout all these changes, the COPS Office has continued to support reducing crime and building trust between law enforcement and the communities served. When the conversations began about how we could best document this COPS Office milestone, we wanted to push the boundaries by creating a resource that went beyond a retro spective—not just looking back at the last 30 years but also looking forward to the next 30. We recognize that this COPS Office achievement is a shared accomplishment and wanted to include the field in the celebration. With these goals in mind, we created American Policing 2054: Advancing Community Policing over the Next 30 Years. This publication is designed to be a companion to the COPS Office’s previous milestone publication, American Policing in 2022: Essays on the Future of a Profession, envisioned and edited by COPS Office staff members Debra R. Cohen McCullough and Deborah L. Spence. While that publication asked contributors to consider what policing would look like in 10 years, this one expands its scope to include a vision for the next 30 years. The concept - We used the framework created by our colleagues in 2012 to compile a list of leaders in law enforcement, public safety research, and civil rights, as well as community members, to contribute to this publication. Knowing that there are so many more thought leaders, perspectives, and voices than we could fit in this publication, we especially considered contributors to the 2022 publication as well as thought leaders from all ranks and agency types. We curated our list to ensure we had diversity in thought, experiences, and voices. The interest and excitement from the field in response to our invitation was remarkable. We asked contributors to think as boldly and as broadly as they liked. We encouraged innovation and assured contributors they were limited only by their informed imagination about the future of law enforcement in the United States. Most importantly, we told contributors that there were no wrong answers for their vision of the future of policing. The COPS Office received essays from current and former law enforcement leaders and officers, researchers, practitioners, and civic and civil rights leaders, and these contributors did not disappoint.   Essay themes Contributors covered topics such as technology, community engagement, crime-reduction strategies, training, accountability, and transparency. Some of the contributors envisioned drastic changes in the future, while others saw more subtle refinements to policing. The majority of the essays converged on the importance of technology and the need for technology policies and procedures that balance privacy and accountability. In the end, all of the articles touched on one or more principles of community policing—organizational change, problem solving, and partnerships. As such, we used those principles to create the themes for this publication.

 Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services., 2024. 124p.  

By The Europol Innovation Lab ( © European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, 2024

This report aims to provide the law enforcement community with a comprehensive understanding of the various applications and uses of artificial intelligence (AI) in their daily operations. It seeks to serve as a textbook for internal security practitioners, offering guidance on how to responsibly and compliantly implement AI technologies. In addition to showcasing the potential benefits and innovative applications of AI, such as AI-driven data analytics, the report also aims to raise awareness about the potential pitfalls and ethical considerations of AI use in law enforcement. By addressing these challenges, the report endeavours to equip law enforcement professionals with the knowledge necessary to navigate the complexities of AI, ensuring its effective and ethical deployment in their work. The report focuses on large and complex data sets, open-source intelligence (OSINT) and natural language processing (NLP). It also delves into the realm of digital forensics, computer vision, biometrics, and touches on the potential of generative AI. The use of AI by law enforcement is increasingly scrutinised due to its ethical and societal dimensions. The report attempts to address concerns about data bias, fairness, and potential encroachments on privacy, accountability, human rights protection and discrimination. These concerns become particularly relevant in the context of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act), an overview of which is detailed in this report, as well as its broader context. The report emphasises the significance of the forthcoming regulation, detailing its objectives, scope, and principal provisions. The Act’s implications for law enforcement agencies are also discussed, emphasising the balance between fostering innovation and ensuring ethical use beyond compliance. Central to the report is the assessment of how law enforcement can maintain a delicate balance between leveraging AI’s benefits and addressing its inherent restrictions. Strategies for addressing bias, privacy concerns, and the pivotal role of accountability frameworks, are elaborated. The report highlights the importance of innovative regulatory environments. The concluding section forecasts the trajectory of AI in law enforcement, underscoring the potential technological advancements on the horizon. It also emphasises the need for public trust and acceptance, and the importance of collaboration and knowledge sharing. This comprehensive document serves as both a guide and a reflective tool for stakeholders vested in the confluence of AI and law enforcement within the European landscape.  

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2 : 2024. 61p.

By The Policing Project, NYU School of Law

This model statute gives guidance on how states should proceed to remove some of the barriers to law enforcement officer accountability and oversight commonly found in state or municipal laws (often enacted as provisions of Law of Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (“LEOBORs”)), and collective bargaining agreements (“CBAs”).1 The statute also clarifies common procedural protections for officers that states should provide because they further due process, do not impede accountability, and fall in line with the protections afforded to other public employees. Accordingly, in states with LEOBOR or other statutory provisions that this model statute prohibits, legislatures should repeal those provisions. Except where state peace officer standards and training boards (“POST boards”) are expressly invoked in this statute, the provisions of this statute are not intended to apply to state POST boards. The model statute also contains provisions setting forth (a) minimum requirements in law enforcement agency complaint policies and (b) clear rules for governing public access to complaints and related investigatory materials, agency disciplinary matrices, and CBAs

New York: Policing Project, NYU School of Law, 2024. 26p.

By Rachel Johnston, Daniel S. Lawrence, Benjamin Carleton, Harold Medlock, Thomas Christoff, Keri Richardson, and Scott E. Wolfe

The ability of a police department to act in a fair and just manner is vitally important to creating internal and external trust, which in turn increases the perception of legitimacy by those who work for the department and those the department serves. Law enforcement agencies across the US have faced increased scrutiny from the public in the last several years, with the events of 2020 exacerbating already simmering community relationships. The City of East Lansing, through a competitive bid process, selected CNA’s Center for Justice Research and Innovation to conduct an assessment of fair and impartial policing in the East Lansing Police Department (ELPD). This report details the findings and recommendations of this assessment of the ELPD. The assessment team used a variety of sources, including policies, training records, administrative data, employee surveys, and interviews with ELPD personnel to assess the department. Throughout this report we identify both strengths and weaknesses of the ELPD’s operations within the following areas:

1. Organizational Justice and Culture

2. Community Relations, Interactions, and Perspectives

3. Training and Technology

4. Traffic Enforcement

5. Use of Force and Complaints

6. Early Intervention System

In this executive summary, we present a summary of the findings of our assessment and a summary of the key recommendations offered to the ELPD and the city. We encourage interested individuals to read the details in the body of this report, where they will find detailed the supporting evidence associated with our 72 findings and 92 recommendations. See Appendix E for the full list of findings and recommendations. Through review of policy, procedures, and practices, as well as collected and analyzed data, the assessment team discovered the following key findings:

Summary of Key Findings

ELPD Data

• The manual entry of information into the ELPD use-of-force report creates data inconsistencies.

• The ELPD does not collect all necessary information important to use-of-force events.

• The method ELPD uses to record information pertaining to uses of force does not allow for each specific combination of event, involved officer, type of force, sustained injuries, and involved community member to be assessed.

• Demographic information collected during a traffic stop cannot easily be connected to traffic stop information in the calls-for-service database.

Organizational Justice and Culture

• Several ELPD policies appear to use boilerplate language that is not sufficiently tailored to ELPD.

• Several ELPD policies are poorly written.

• Some ELPD policies include language that serves as an accountability escape clause.

• Some ELPD processes rely on the discretion of the Chief of Police, which at times may be unnecessary or inappropriate.

• Morale among ELPD employees is reported to be low.

• About half of ELPD survey respondents feel that ELPD’s procedure for investigating complaints is not a fair process.

Community Relations, Interactions, and Perspectives

• ELPD Policy 300-21 (Interacting with People Who Have Mental Illness/EIP) requires significant revision.

• ELPD Policy 400-11 (Juvenile Matters) predominantly focuses on processes and considerations for juvenile suspects and does not adequately explain processes and considerations for juvenile victims and witnesses.

• ELPD Policies 100-12 (Media Relations/Officer Involved Critical Incident Information Sharing) and 47-13 (Social Networking/Social Media) do not indicate whether ELPD operates any official social media accounts or what the protocols would be for the operation of such accounts.

• ELPD Policy 3-20 (Civil Disorders) requires significant revision. The current policy includes outdated practices and is not consistent with best practices.

• Several ELPD survey respondents noted that they often do not feel supported by community groups and local stakeholders.

• Trust between community and police could further be strengthened.

• The community perceives a disconnect between the ELPD and the City Council and Independent Police Oversight Commission.

• The ELPD staffing may not be adequate for the current requirements and future community initiatives.

Training and Technology

• Less Lethal and Defensive Tactics are high liability and should be addressed separately in policy.
  The firearms training and assessment policy language is unclear, and it does not specifically state what encompasses the firearms training and assessment program.

• ELPD Policy 100-21 (Annual In-Service Training) has numerous areas that could use improvement and strengthening.

• Overall, ELPD Policy 300-22 (Mobile Video Recorder) does provide a framework for the department’s operations but could be improved in areas such that would strengthen clarity for procedures related to transparency and accountability.

• Overall, many of the policies related to technology are vague and left room for ambiguity and alternative interpretation.

• Several ELPD survey respondents feel that training could be improved to help officers be prepared for some of the critical situations they face in the field.

• The East Lansing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion training provided at the City level by Truth & Titus was a missed opportunity for police staff.

Traffic Enforcement

• ELPD Policy 300-26 ([Traffic] Enforcement Options) is very comprehensive and provides good direction to officers.

• White drivers accounted for the majority of traffic stops from August 2021 to July 2022, although Black drivers were the second-most stopped individuals. The number of traffic stops declined from August 2021 to July 2022 by similar degrees across each racial group of the driver.

• The amount of stops by race relative to the population indicates that Black drivers are stopped to a greater extent than White drivers; however, the “veil of darkness” analysis finds that Black drivers are stopped by a statistically nonsignificant magnitude of 1.08 compared to non-Black drivers. Furthermore, the risk of being stopped as a Black driver during the daylight portion of the inter-twilight period is similar to stops for Black drivers made during the dark period, and this difference is not statistically different when compared to all other drivers.

Use of Force and Complaints

• ELPD Policy 100-3 (Complaint Intake and Management) requires significant revision, as the policy does not adequately and clearly describe the complaint intake and management process.

• ELPD Policy 12-20 (Response to Resistance) positively emphasizes the sanctity of life and the importance of de-escalation, but the policy can go a step further.

• ELPD Policy 12-20 (Response to Resistance) problematically allows for the use of head stabilization.

• Eighteen percent of ELPD officers were involved in three or more complaints during the period analyzed.

• Twenty-two percent of ELPD officers were involved in 7.5 or more use-of-force events per year during the period analyzed.

• One-quarter of the use-of-force events involved disorderly conduct or a mental health investigation, while arrests that involved offenses against family and children, burglary/home invasion, and obstruction-type events each resulted in a use of force more than 50 percent of the time.

• The ELPD predominately uses low levels of force in its use-of-force events; 62 percent of the types of uses of force involved either a handcuffing, a control hold or takedown, or other physical contact. However, the other largest type of use of force, which accounted for 24 percent, was a weapon display.

• Black community members are arrested more frequently than would be predicted based on their proportion of the East Lansing population compared with White community members. Among those arrested, use-of-force levels were slightly elevated for Black community members compared with White community members. However, when controlling for event characteristics and demographics in more rigorous statistical analyses, these differences are not observed.

Early Intervention System

• The ELPD’s aggregate-threshold approach to its early intervention system (EIS) is overall reasonable given agency characteristics.

• Despite being considered wellness oriented, the ELPD’s EIS approach has the potential to be considered disciplinary.

• The ELPD unnecessarily limits the input of officers’ direct supervisors in evaluating and acting upon an EIS alert.

• The ELPD’s EIS approach can be expanded to include a peer-comparison element.

• ELPD Policy 200-7 (Early Warning System) should be revised.

• The training on EIS focuses on the technical process of navigating the Guardian Tracking software.

Arlington, VA: CNA, 2022. 145p.

By Benjamin Carleton, Brittany Cunningham, Zoe Thorkildsen

Policing is an evolving field; law enforcement agencies are being asked to do more with limited resources, forcing agencies and their relevant stakeholders (e.g., policy makers, other justice system agencies, community organizations) to continuously look for new ways to reduce crime, keep communities safe, and effectively allocate resources. The use of predictive analytics has evolved in the last several decades as a promising response to reduce and prevent crime. Predictive analytics in policing “is a data-driven approach to characterizing crime patterns across time and space and leveraging this knowledge for the prevention of crime and disorder” (Fitzpatrick et al. 2019). Traditionally, law enforcement agencies have operated using primarily reactive measures, such as rapid responses to 911 calls, random patrols, and a greater focus on criminal investigations (Brayne 2017; Fitzpatrick et al. 2019). To operate more proactively, agencies have increasingly employed predictive analytics that informs crime prevention strategies. For example, agencies across the US have implemented a number of strategies (e.g., hot spot detection, targeted offender lists, and risk terrain modeling) and software programs that use a variety of predictive analytics to forecast where and when crimes are most likely to occur and to identify offenders and groups or individuals at risk of becoming victims of crimes. Predictive analytics builds on traditional crime analysis practices (e.g., identification of crime trends and patterns). In addition to identifying crime trends and patterns based on crimes that have already occurred, predictive analytics goes a step further, forecasting where and when crime is likely to occur or who is likely to be involved in criminal behavior. It equips agencies with knowledge (i.e., data) to help inform where they should target police operations and resources. Agencies can use this knowledge to operate more efficiently and effectively in their crime reduction efforts and resource allocations. It is important to understand that predictive analytics cannot tell the future very well. These predictions rely on past data and assume that future criminal activity will be similar to that reflected in extant data (sometimes factoring in anticipated future changes). This reliance on past data also means that predictive techniques can reinforce systemic bias, racial and otherwise, present in past justice system actions. The objective of this brief is to provide an accessible resource for law enforcement agencies and their stakeholders (e.g., crime analysts, policy makers, and researchers) interested in learning more about the role of predictive analytics in police operations. Specifically, this brief offers the following:

• Summarizes the use of predictive analytics to inform policing operations

• Distinguishes between approaches to predictive analytics (person-based and place-based)

• Highlights the emergence of machine learning algorithms as a preferred predictive analytics technique

• Delineates considerations and limitations brought forth in recent literature that law enforcement agencies must consider when using predictive analytics to reduce and prevent crime

• Summarizes several research studies and real-world policing initiatives as examples of how the use of predictive analytics can inform policing practice

Arlington, VA: CNA, 2000. 32p.

By Zoë Thorkildsen, Bridgette Bryson, and William “Bill” Taylor

Over the last decade, the Albany Police Department (APD) has pushed forward to engage the community in a positive manner, moving towards a mission that is focused on community policing practices. During this time, the Community Policing Review Board and the Common Council have recommended police reforms and legislation changes to further improve the police department, and they have called for change to address perceived disparate treatment of minority communities. Following recent high-profile events, including the First Street Incident and the shooting of Mr. Ellazar Williams, APD has striven to improve their transparency and implement initiatives to increase community trust. Both of these incidents, along with the eruptions of public protests across the country, led the City of Albany to initiate an evaluation of policy, procedures, and practices of the police department. In addition, this audit will provide baseline information to inform the City of Albany’s response to Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s Executive Order No. 203: New York State Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative. In August of 2020, the City of Albany, through a competitive bid, selected the CNA Center for Justice Research and Innovation to conduct a racial bias audit of the APD.
The objectives of CNA’s racial bias audit included:

• Assess and monitor APD’s internal operations, policies, procedures, and practices to detect the presence of implicit bias and systemic racial bias.

• Collect and analyze data related to traffic stops, use of force, and other police officer/civilian interactions and determine the effect on Black community members.

• Assess compliance with existing police reform policies initiated by APD and enacted by the Albany Common Council (e.g., body-worn cameras (BWCs), Right to Know Identification Legislation, and Citizen Police Review Board).

• Provide actionable recommendations for reforms that eliminate racial and implicit biases in policing deployments, strategies, policies, procedures, and practices. Such recommendations must:

  • Promote community engagement, transparency, professionalism, accountability, community inclusion, fairness, effectiveness, and public trust; and

  • Be guided by evidence-based best practices and community expectations. 

Based on CNA’s review of policy, procedures, and practices, as well as data provided by the APD, our key findings included:

• APD should improve data collection procedures for traffic stop data.

• Prior to the deployment of BWCs to detective personnel and future units, APD should update its BWC policy to reflect emerging best practices. 

• Statistical differences by outcome of police stops are evident when comparing white people to people of color, further fueling community concerns about resisting arrest charges.

• Black community members initiate the majority of external complaints and civil rights lawsuits filed.

• APD personnel do not fully understand the community complaints process and how or when possible disciplinary actions could take place.

• The community complaints process is convoluted and poorly understood by community members, leading to mistrust and a perceived lack of procedural justice.

• APD should update its use of force policy so that officers better understand when they can or cannot use various forms of force.

• APD should make annual reports detailing use of force incidents publicly available to community members in the city.

• APD’s philosophy and culture have a strong focus on community policing practices; APD should reinforce this message to all personnel.

• APD should review the structure of the Neighborhood Engagement Unit and School Resource Officers for efficiency and effectiveness.

• APD’s website could benefit from a modern reconstruction so that each embedded page is easily accessible and allows community members to easily find current information on the organization and projects they are working on.

• The diversity of APD personnel does not reflect the racial makeup of the City of Albany.

• APD should review its recruitment and hiring practices and begin releasing annual reports on this data.

• The promotional process is of concern to personnel; APD should track this process in a database and standardize the performance evaluation process.

• APD should complete and house its annual reports of data designated in various General Orders on its website for easy access by all community members.

• APD participates in a long list of programs and should seek evaluations of these programs to determine their effectiveness and help allocate resources among them.

• There are community concerns that past proposed reforms have not been implemented, along with concerns that officers do not live in the City of Albany.

• The annual in-service training curriculum should be updated to include various topics, including but not limited to racial bias and cultural sensitivity training.

• Training is not consistent across the department, and personnel feel they need more training to sufficiently do their jobs.

Over the next year, APD will work with the City of Albany and community leaders to understand, prioritize, and implement the recommendations proposed in this report, reflecting their dedication to improving community trust. We recommend that APD and the City of Albany seek an independent firm to help implement these recommendations and track APD’s progress.

Arlington, VA: CNA, 2020. 116p.

By Anthony Petrosino, Trevor Fronius and Trent Baskerville

School-based policing programs started as far back in the USA as the 1950s and became more popular in part as concerns about school safety increased. After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the scrutiny of municipal police extended to school policing, and the concerns that policing exacerbates the school-to-prison pipeline, particularly for Black and Brown children, led several districts to remove officers from their schools. However, some of these same districts have reinstated police following widespread reports of fighting and behavioural issues among students after nearly 2 years of sporadic education due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper discusses some of the recent trends and high lights evidence from several systematic reviews of evidence on the efforts of school policing, including a large-scale effort for the Campbell Collaboration. A more recent evaluation published since the reviews were done is also discussed. Finally, the article highlights a report to Congress by the National Institute of Justice and concludes with policy implications and a future agenda for research.

Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, Volume 18, 2024, 

By Bethan Loftus, Martina Feilzer, Benjamin Goold

The ongoing Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) is largely a response to a stream of national media scandals that exposed the illegal and unethical behaviour of undercover police officers in two secretive units. The testimony of those who were the targets of undercover operations has further exposed the human costs stemming from the personalised and highly invasive surveillance undertaken by anonymous state agents. In this article, we reflect upon the existing research on covert policing and identify new areas for conceptual and methodological engagement, with a view to better understanding the harms that these secretive operations can generate. Attending to the inherent and inescapable intimacy of covert policing offers a much-needed opportunity to explore the effects of a unique state practice that can radically alter the lives of individual surveillance subjects, and which tests our conventional understandings of the legitimacy and limits of force, coercion, and police power.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice Early View April 2024

By The Policing Project at the New York University School of Law

The Policing Project at the New York University School of Law, in partnership with Microsoft and with funding from the Joyce Foundation and Microsoft’s Justice Reform Initiative, has developed the SAJETM Policing Assessment – a comprehensive tool to define and measure the characteristics of a Sound, Accountable, Just, and Effective policing agency. This assessment of approximately 100 metrics was developed in partnership with police leaders, researchers, and community advocates, and reflects the latest developments in social science, constitutional law, and industry best practice. Agencies respond to each metric with a simple yes/no and provide evidence (e.g., policies, training manuals) to support their responses. SAJETM is not designed to find a “perfect” police department. Rather, the goal is to provide an assessment of a department’s current standing across the four pillars, identifying both areas of strength and areas in need of improvement. In addition, because SAJETM relies on documentation rather than personal observation, it leans toward policy review over actual practice. While some of the metrics do seek to capture specific practices, they do not assess how comprehensively or effectively these practices are being carried out. Future audits may wish to delve deeper into these issues. Insights provided through this tool will help municipal leaders, police departments, and the communities they serve understand agency performance and collaboratively identify challenges and opportunities. At the request of the Office of the District of Columbia Auditor, the Policing Project conducted a SAJETM Assessment of the District’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). Dr. Aili Malm, an independent social science researcher, and policing subject-matter expert, assisted the agency in completing the tool as a neutral third-party evaluator. The process took approximately five months to complete. This report outlines MPD’s SAJETM Assessment results. Overall Score MPD’s overall SAJETM score is 81.66%. As MPD is the only agency to complete the tool at the request of an auditor’s office, insufficient benchmarks are available. However, the Policing Project team anticipates that agencies scoring over 70% should be considered well-performing police departments and MPD is over this level. There are some areas in which MPD is performing exceptionally well, and other areas in which improvement may be needed, particularly in the Just Policing pillar. The following sections describe MPD’s results across the four pillars. 

Washington, DC: Office of the DC Auditor, 2024. 45p.

Blowe, Kevin and du Boulay, Estelle

In the months before the start of the 2012 Olympics in Stratford in east London, there was a growing anxiety amongst Londoners about the prospect of snipers in helicopters and RAF fighters in the skies, missile launchers on tower blocks and repeated predictions that Newham would experience lockdown during peak periods. Newham Monitoring Project had also been receiving enquiries from across east London for months from local residents, particularly those working with young people, who were concerned about the massive proposed policing operation and its impact at street level. London 2012 seemed to deserve its reputation as the first 'Security Games'. The Olympics presented the largest peacetime military and security operation since 1945, with a policing and security budget of around L553m. From 2010, the number of security personnel required by Olympic organisers rose sharply to an estimated 23,700 on the busiest days, more than double the original predictions, with up to 12,000 police from forces across the country and the Ministry of Defence providing more troops deployed (in uniform) to work during the Games than were then stationed in Afghanistan. Even more CCTV was installed in a city that already had the highest level of surveillance of its citizens than anywhere in the world, whilst around $80 million was spent on the construction of an 11-mile long 5000-volt electric fence around the Olympic zone. The reason for this extraordinary level of security, the Home Office argued in its March 2011 publication 'Olympic and Paralympic Safety and Security Strategy,' was primarily the threat from terrorism: it promised 'maximum use of existing national security and intelligence structures' with the threat-level raised from 'substantial' to 'severe' (which assumes 'an attack is highly likely'). A secondary threat was public disorder, heightened by the perception of a weak police response to rioting the previous summer that followed the death of Mark Duggan in August 2011. The International Olympic Committee had made it clear after the riots that it expected the British government, the Metropolitan police and other domestic agencies to ensure that the Olympics passed off without incident. Arrangements were made to fast-track the trials of people accused of offences linked to the Olympics in the same highly controversial way that had followed the disorder of the previous year, with Alison Saunders, the chief CPS prosecutor for London, explicitly linking these measures to 'the lessons of the summer riots.' With a climate of fear slowly building through state institutions and the media, we were also aware of the significant pattern of racialised social "sanitisation" and exploitation that have been a hallmark of sport mega events globally, particularly where they have been held in poorer and developing areas. Activists and academics from countries including South Africa and India, which have both hosted major sport events in recent years, travelled to the UK to share their experiences of human rights abuses and 'sweep up operations' in their localities. These had had a massively detrimental and often devastating impact on the lives of local people, leaving them homeless, unemployed or vulnerable to excessive policing or criminalisation, with a legacy of property developers and real estate owners benefiting most. These were real life stories behind the promises of employment and regeneration that had been made in each host city. We recognised that an atmosphere of intensive security, focused on the borough where Newham Monitoring Project has worked for over thirty years, had the potential to negatively impact on local people. Most military and all private security personnel would work inside the 'ticketed areas' of the event venues, but in the streets surrounding the Olympic Park in Stratford and the ExCel Centre in Canning Town, it was the prospect of a massive policing operation that was our greatest concern. Newham is one of London's poorest and most ethnically diverse boroughs with the second highest Muslim population in the UK, one that had experienced long-term state surveillance, suspicion and incidents like the bungled anti-terrorism raids in 2006 on two families living in Forest Gate, who endured a terrifying ordeal based on faulty intelligence. The borough also has one of the youngest populations in London, with 23.6% of residents in 2011 aged between 10 and 24,6 coupled with a long history of difficult relationships between young people and the police. This is particularly the case over the use of stop and search powers.

London: Newham Monitoring Project, 2013. 29p.

By Kees Kuiken

“Soldiers, Cops, Bannermen: The Rise and Fall of the First Communist Chinese PoliceState1931-1969”by Kees Kuiken, discusses the history of the Chinese police state from1931 to 1969. The book explores topics such as the role of police in maintaining control, the transition from soldiers to cops, and the challenges faced by the police state. The book also examines the historical context of China’s quest for order and the evolution of the police system in the Chinese Empire.

Wolters-Noordhoff, 1993 - 143 pages

By Beatrice Jauregui

“Provisional Authority: Police, Order, and Security in India” by Beatrice Jauregui. was published by The University of Chicago Press in 2016. The book explores the role of the police in India, focusing on the Uttar Pradesh Police Department and its challenges with corruption and maintaining order. The author conducted interviews with police officers to gain insight into their experiences. The book also discusses the bureaucratic politics and states of insecurity within the police department. The document includes acknowledgments, a table of contents, and references.

University of Chicago Press, 2016. 205 pages