RAND CORP.

Facilitator, law law enforcement, and and community organizers introduce themselves and and summarize overall aim of the dialogue. For example, “Now we’d like to tell you why of the example, "Now we'd like to tell we we are are engaged in in this this work. In In recent years, we've seen many examples of tension of between police and the communities they serve. Importantly, events that happen and the that elsewhere can also affect and inform local community-police relations. We're doing also affect and inform this this exercise to help community members and police better communicate their to and police expectations." expectations.” It It also helps participants participants to to think about " “what what if if something happened here that is similar to what we’re seeing nationally?” “Would we be prepared?” here “Would that we is know similar how to what to respond? we're ” seeing “How nationally? should we " " respond? Would we ” be p

Santa Monica. CA. RAND CORP. 2023. 28p.

Rand Corp.

In recent years, a number of serious conflicts between police officers and members of the communities they serve have raised the importance of effective community-police relations in the United States. Building on its policing and community-based participatory research portfolio, RAND designed a community-based dialogue to address this problem. The dialogue is designed to start a conversation about these issues among community stakeholders, including police, government agencies, social service providers, resident representatives, and other concerned organizations. RAND has also designed a youth-focused dialogue to address specific scenarios most relevant to youth-police interactions.

may contain markup

By Dionne Barnes-Proby ,Samuel Peterson, Alex Andra Mendoza-Graf, Pierrce Holmes, Danielle Sobol, Nipher Malik A. Malika And Meagan Cahill

Despite widespread recognition that community engagement is important for improving community-police relations, there is little guidance for how to systematically promote and sustain long-term relationship building. This guide was developed to share best practices from the RAND Corporation's work in implementing six community-police dialogues across four sites. This guide provides background on the purpose for the development of the community-police dialogue, guidance for planning and implementing the dialogue, and materials to help carry out the dialogue effectively.

By Ralph Rector, David Muhlhausen and Dexter Ingram

One of President Bill Clinton's priorities when taking office was to put 100,000 additional police officers on America's streets to help fight crime. On September 13, 1994, the President signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (P.L. 103-322), authorizing the Attorney General to implement a six-year, $8.8 billion grant program to enable state and local law enforcement agencies to hire or redeploy 100,000 additional officers for community policing efforts.11 Attorney General Janet Reno announced the establishment of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) in October 1994 to administer these grants. Since then, the COPS program has developed into a set of different federal grants that had cost American taxpayers $7.5 billion by the end of fiscal year (FY) 2000.12 It is reasonable for policymakers, community leaders, and taxpayers to question how effective the COPS program has been in meeting its objective of placing 100,000 additional police officers on the street.13 As recently as August 14, 2000, President Clinton reaffirmed this objective and then took credit for having succeeded in placing "more than 100,000 new community police officers" on the streets14 (though in congressional testimony, the COPS Office sometimes redefines the objective of the program to be the funding of 100,000 officers).15 This objective has been closely tied to the overarching goal of reducing crime.16 To meet this objective, it is reasonable to expect COPS grants to be targeted to the communities most plagued by violent crime. At a fundamental level, the issue of whether or not the COPS program has indeed achieved its goals can be addressed by analyzing two assertions: 1. More Police. Many of the supporters of the COPS initiative assert that its grants are responsible for adding 100,000 police officers to community patrols. To test for the accuracy of this assertion, Heritage analysts estimated the number of new police. 2. Lower Crime. Supporters also assert that the COPS program awarded grants to the communities with the greatest need. Heritage analysts tested the accuracy of this assertion by examining awards in terms of per capita population and crime rates. Confounding the goal of putting 100,000 additional police officers on the street is the possibility that recipients will supplant the funds--substitute funds from one source for another. In the case of COPS grants, supplanting occurs when state and local governments use program funds to hire officers they would have hired using their own money if the COPS program did not exist.17 In the 1994 Crime Act, Congress specifically prohibited states and local governments from using federal funds to supplant local funds.18 Determining whether supplanting has in fact occurred is necessary for the effectiveness of the program to be evaluated accurately. How well the Justice Department has allocated the COPS funding can be discerned by analyzing crime rates and population sizes for communities that received the grants, as well as by observing the concentration of grants among law enforcement agencies. Thus, determining whether the COPS grants went primarily to communities that have high violent crime rates, rather than to safer communities, is important to the analysis. To answer these questions, Heritage analysts first combined U.S. Department of Justice data on the COPS grants that have been awarded to police agencies across the country with data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports on violent crime, officer employment, and population. This merged micro-database makes possible an analysis of crime rates and COPS grants on an agency-by-agency basis.

Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation, 2000, 28p.

By Andrew Wooff, Graeme Dickson, Jamie Buchan

This project aims to support Police Scotland’s ‘Policing 2026’ strategy by enhancing the understanding of the motivations, roles and expectations of Special Constables, a group of people largely absent from academic policing discourse in Scotland. This group of volunteers represents an important resource in contemporary policing, particularly against the backdrop of economic constraint (Bullock, 2014). In recent years, the numbers of Special Constables in Scotland – as with the rest of the UK – have been in a general decline (Home Office, 2018; Police Scotland, 2018). This project sought to examine the nature of the Special Constabulary as a volunteering resource in Scotland, considering the way(s) that the motivations, expectations and management of Special Constables could be understood and improved. As such, the report explores the following questions: ● What motivates Special Constables to volunteer for Police Scotland and does this vary depending on how long they have been a Special Constable? ● To what extent does the role of a Special Constable vary by geography and local policing area? ● What are the expectations of Police Scotland for their Special Constabulary and does this vary by geography? ● What could be done to improve the current pathways between Special Constables and regular officer recruitment? ● What, if anything, will help support the development and retention of Special Constables in Police Scotland?

Edinburgh : Scottish Institute of Policing, 2003? 37p.

By Robert A. Blair, Guy Grossman and Anna M. Wilke

Throughout the developing world, citizens often distrust the police and hesitate to bring crimes to their attention—a situation that makes it difficult for police to effectively combat crime and violence. Community policing has been touted as one solution to this problem, but evidence on whether it can be effective in developing country contexts is sparse. We present results from a large-scale field experiment that randomly assigned a home-grown community policing intervention to police stations throughout rural Uganda. Drawing on close to 4,000 interviews with citizens, police officers, and local authorities and on administrative crime data, we show that community policing had limited effects on core outcomes such as perceptions of police, crime, and insecurity. We attribute this finding to a combination of low levels of compliance and resource constraints. Our study draws attention to the limits of community policing’s potential to reduce crime and build trust in the developing world. EDI WORKING PAPER SERIES

Oxford Policy Management, 2021. 56p

By Bernadette C. Hohl, Michelle C. Kondo, Sandhya Kajeepeta, John M. MacDonald, Katherine P. Theall, Marc A. Zimmerman, and Charles C. Branas

Violence is a leading cause of death and disability in the United States and abroad, with far-reaching consequences for individuals and communities. Interventions that address environmental and social contexts have the potential for greater populationwide effects, yet research has been slow to identify and rigorously evaluate these types of interventions to reduce violence. Several urban communities across the US are conducting experimental and quasi-experimental community-based research to examine the effect of place-based interventions on violence. Using examples from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Flint, Michigan; Youngstown, Ohio; and New Orleans, Louisiana, we describe how place-based interventions that remediate vacant land and abandoned buildings work to reduce violence. These examples support the potential for place-based interventions to create far-reaching and sustainable improvements in the health and safety of communities that experience significant disadvantage. These interventions warrant the attention of community stakeholders, funders, and policy makers.

Health Affairs 38, NO. 10 (2019): 1687–1694

By Edmund F. McGarrell Stephen Oliphant Alaina De Biasi Julie M. Krupa

Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) is a national program that seeks to reduce levels of gun and gang crime, and violent crime generally. The Eastern District of Michigan has participated in PSN since its outset in 2001. Although the Eastern District has included attention to violent crime in multiple communities, Detroit has been a primary target area throughout the years of PSN. PSN is a grant supported program by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice. This report summarizes the implementation and impact of the grant supported program that was funded in fiscal year 2018. During this period, the PSN team focused on Detroit Police Department’s 9th precinct, with targeted enforcement in specific hotspot areas. PSN Detroit relied upon a multi-agency team and followed a comprehensive strategy of targeted enforcement, intervention with at-risk individuals, and youth-focused prevention. The PSN initiative, like law enforcement operations nationally, was significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This added to the complexity of the evaluation and makes some of our research findings tentative. With this qualification in mind, we find support for the positive impact of PSN. Specifically, following the implementation of PSN in the 9th precinct until the shutdowns associated with the impact of the pandemic in March 2020, the 9th precinct witnessed a decline from 13.6 shooting victimizations per month to 11.9 per month (-12.5%). During this same period, Detroit’s other precincts witnessed a total increase from 63.8 to 72.6 (+13.7%), or an average per precinct increase from 6.3 to 7.3 per month. When examining the specific hotspot areas, we observed a decline of 2.6 shooting victimizations per month in the hotspot zone when compared to a comparison area drawn from parts of the city that did not experience PSN.

These trends were interrupted by the onset of the pandemic, as well as the period of social unrest and protest following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The pandemic had a serious effect in Detroit with the Police Department experiencing significant personnel losses due to illness and quarantine, and the suspension of court operations. As was the case nationally, violent crime increased in Detroit and in the 9th precinct in 2020 and the first half of 2021. In the last quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022, the 9th precinct again witnessed welcome declines in shooting victimizations. These declines were also observed citywide and were particularly noteworthy in the specific PSN target areas within the 9th precinct. The PSN team’s strategy of supporting a focused multi-agency enforcement team, while leveraging comprehensive intervention and place-based strategies appears to have enhanced public safety in Detroit.

Lansing: Michigan Justice Statistics Center, School of Criminal Justice. Michigan State University 2022. 30p.

By Foster & Associates

  In January 2022 York Regional Police (YRP or ‘the Service’) contracted Foster & Associates to ‘review and report on the provision of recommendations and best practices to enable York Regional Police to build and improve relationships with Black, Indigenous and other racialized communities’. The York Regional Police Board (YRPB or ‘Board’) identified recommendations made at its meeting on September 23, 2022 with the Black community and developed a list of 51 recommendations in total, 43 of which fell within the responsibilities of the Service. A preliminary document was tabled by the Chief with the Board on April 14, 2021 that identified activities already undertaken and in progress, signaling the intent to continue consulting with the Black community to advance positive change that builds trust and confidence in policing  

  Foster & Associates, 2023. 98p.  

In the fall of 1983, the Los Angeles Police Department sent police officers into elementary schools to teach the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) Program. Within a decade DARE had become the nation’s preeminent anti-drug education program. Yet the DARE program accomplished much more than teaching kids to resist drugs. DARE shifted the responsibility of preventing drug use from social and public-health policy to local, police-led, educative projects that taught personal responsibility, the value of morally strengthened families, and respect for the authority of the police. By stressing the consequences of poor behavior and demanding respect for law and order, DARE attempted to cultivate popular consent for policies that divorced drug use from social and economic conditions. DARE’s approach helped justify reductions in social welfare spending and the expansion of policing and incarceration during the 1980s and 1990s.

Modern American History (2022), 5, 313–337

By Graeme Blair et al.

More than one-fourth of the world's population lives in conditions of in-security because of high levels of crime and violence, especially in the Global South. Although the police are central to reducing crime and violence, they are also often per-petrators of unjust harm against citizens.We investigated the effects of community policing, a set of practices designed to build trust between citizens and police, increase the co-production of public safety, and reduce crime. Community policing is meant to improve outcome by increasing engagement between citizens and police through increased foot patrols, community meetings, and the adoption of problem-oriented policing strat-egies that address concerns raised by citizens.When cooperation leads to effective police responses, this approach reinforces citizen trust and facilitates further cooperation, creating a virtuous cycle. Community policing has beenimplementedaroundtheworldoneverycon-tinent. However, although there is evidence for its positive effects in rich countries, there is no systematic evidence about whether com-munity policing effectively generates trust and reduces crime in the Global South.

Science. 2021 Nov 26;374(6571):eabd3446. doi: 10.1126/science.abd3446. Epub 2021 Nov 26. PMID: 34822276.

By Lawrence W. Sherman

Police are often criticized fordoing “too much” or “too little” policing in various sit-uations. These criticisms amount to testable hypothe-ses about whether “less” force, or intensity, or enforce-ment would have been enough, or whether “more” was needed. The rise of evidence-based policing provides a starting point for public dialogues about those hypotheses, in ways that could help to build police legitimacy.Such dialogues can be focused on the questions posed by the three “Ts”: (1) Is police actiontargetedin a way that is proportionate to the harm that it can prevent?(2) Has the action been tested and found effective with the kinds of targets, and their levels of harm, where it is being used? (3) Is police actiontrack to ensure it is delivered in the way that has been tested, and in compli-ance with relevant legal requirements? In this lecture, I frame the issue as follows:Can more widespread use of better research evidence on targeting, testing, and tracking police actions, shared more clearly among the public and police, help reduce the wide range of oscillation between over-policing and under-policing?PolicyImplications:Theuseofthesequestionsinpub-lic dialogue would be especially relevant to the three biggest threats to police legitimacy in the aftermath ofGeorge Floyd’s murder: (A) police killing people, (B)police stopping people, and (C) police under-patrolling 176SHERMANhigh-crime hot spots (while over-patrolling low-crime areas). One result of applying the three-Ts questions to these threats, for example, could be the end of the vast overuse of stop and search in low-violence areas. At The same time, this approach could also lead to reduc-tions in homicide by increasing stops in highest vio-lence hot spots. Such changes could demonstrate how the “Goldilocks principle” for the three Ts could get policing closer to “just right” for each place and person being policed.

 Criminology & Public Policy.2022;21:175–196

By Paul Pazen, Steven L. Byers, Cole Anderson, and Andy Archuleta

Public safety plays a critical role in the economic vitality of a community. Increasing population, attracting new businesses, generating a workforce, and bolstering the ability to attract tourism are all directly related to real and perceived safety challenges. If people are not safe, they cannot learn, work, or enjoy their communities. Ultimately, high crime rates result in a failure to thrive. It’s no secret that Colorado has been hit with a crime wave. Skyrocketing crime rates, fentanyl deaths, and the number one rank in the country when it comes to auto thefts, are all factors that have put Colorado’s economic future at risk and made Coloradans less safe. The question this report poses is: why has Colorado become less safe? A comparison of policing and crime rates in the two largest cities in Colorado, Denver and Colorado Springs, uncovers distinctly different trends in policing and police resources that have produced differing outcomes. For example, in Denver, the crime rate increased by 32% from 2010 to 2022 while the number of uniformed police officers decreased by 15.1%. A crime case is cleared when it has been solved and the clearance rates for violent crime in Denver have dropped 18.6% at a time when the crime rate is increasing. In Colorado Springs, the crime rate decreased by 15.9% and the number of uniformed police officers rose 5.7% from 2010 to 2022. Clearance rates for violent crime increased by 9.7% while the crime rate decreased. The criminal justice system includes police who investigate crime, district attorneys who prosecute offenders, and the Department of Corrections, which keeps offenders off of the streets and facilitates the reformation and re-entry of offenders. Each of these parts plays an important and unique role in keeping Coloradans safe and is represented by one side of the “crime triangle.” Much like a triangle, when one side collapses, the system collapses.

Greenwood Village, CO: Common Sense Institute (CSI) , 2023. 38p.

By Michael Gennaco, Stephen Connolly and Julie Ruhlin

In the summer of 2019, Vallejo officials were responding to a time of transition for the City’s Police Department. The chief was newly retired, and the search for a new leader was underway against a backdrop of recent incidents – including fatal officer-involved shootings – that had prompted public concern and even demonstrations. It seemed as if a number of individual encounters were fitting all too well into larger, troubling narratives about American law enforcement: deadly force under disputed circumstances that affected minority subjects to a disproportionate extent, and strained relationships with residents that arose from and contributed to that reality while raising issues of trust and public confidence. Leadership within Vallejo’s city government decided that the time was right to take a step back and to assess the Department’s strengths, challenges, and opportunities in a new way. The City engaged an outside consultant to conduct this assessment.

This report is the product of that review. It was prepared by OIR Group, a team of private consultants that specializes in police practices and the civilian oversight of law enforcement. Since 2001, OIR Group has worked exclusively with government entities in a variety of contexts related to independent outside review of law enforcement, from investigation to monitoring to systems evaluation. Our members have provided oversight in jurisdictions throughout California, as well as in several other states.

Playa del Rey, CA:  OIR Group, 2020. 74p.

By The Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research and Science

 In 2019, the Chicago Police Department, in partnership with the Policing Project at New York University (NYU), implemented the Chicago Neighborhood Policing Initiative (CNPI). This initiative is composed of two interrelated goals: To measure CNPI’s impact, CORNERS built a multi-method research design capturing perspectives of residents and police in CNPI districts through in-depth interviews, systematic observations at police and community meetings and events, quasi-experimental statistical analyses, and analysis of key documents detailing CNPI activities.

Chicago: The Center, Northwestern University, 2023. 66p.

Edited by Sanja Kutnjak Ivković and M. R. Haberfeld

This work provides an innovative new look at police ethics, including results from an updated version of the classic Police Integrity Questionnaire, including new social and technological advances. It aims to push the study of police research further, expanding on and testing police integrity theory and methodology, the relationship between community and integrity, and the influence of multiculturalism and globalization on policing and community attitudes.

This work brings together experienced scholars who have used the police integrity theory and the accompanying methodology to measure police integrity in eleven countries, and provide advance and sophisticated explorations of the topic. Organized into three thematic sections, it explores the testing methodology for international comparisons, insights into police-community relations, and explores police subcultures.

Cham: Springer, 2019. 388p.

By Janet B. L. Chan

Police culture is often considered as both a cause of police deviance and an obstacle for police reform. In this study of police racism and police reform in Australia, Janet Chan provides a critical assessment of police initiative in response to the problem of policeSHminorities relations. The book examines the dynamics of change and resistance within an organization and captures the complexity and unpredictability of the change process. It questions the utility of the traditional conception of police culture and proposes a new framework for understanding the interrelationships among the structural conditions of police work, police cultural knowledge, and police practice. A highly original and valuable contribution to policing studies and studies of organizational reform, the book is both empirically rich and theoretically informed.

Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 267p.

By Molly M. Simmons, Daniel Tapia, Richard H. Donohue, Denis Agniel, Matthew L. Mizel, Lisa Wagner, Amanda Charbonneau, Danielle Sobol

Under contract with Charlotte, North Carolina, the authors evaluated three of the six policing and public-safety recommendations in the city's SAFE Charlotte: Safety and Accountability for Everyone report. Recommendation 2 is about developing ways to implement a civilian response for low-risk duties. Recommendation 3 requested independent analysis of police–community member contact to determine the extent to which racial/ethnic bias is evident in policing in Charlotte. Recommendation 4 states that Charlotte's Community Policing Crisis Response Team should be expanded, and a specialized civilian responder model should be explored for those experiencing mental health crisis and homelessness.

• More.....

  The authors recommend two pilot programs: (1) a new team of clinicians who would deploy in pairs to provide services that could help address substance abuse, mental health, and homelessness and (2) a program that would delegate low-risk, low-priority calls to nonspecialized civilian responders. The estimated costs for the clinician team pilot would be approximately $850,000 for the first year. The estimated costs for the pilot of civilian responders for low-risk, low-priority calls would be approximately $1.4 million to $1.85 million for the first year. Local stakeholders should be involved in every aspect of development and implementation of all potential programs — from hiring to uniforms. The authors analyzed stop data, arrest data, and complaint data and found that Black residents in Charlotte were more likely to be stopped both as a driver and as a pedestrian and, when stopped, were more likely to be arrested.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2022. 203p.

By Sean E. Goodison, Jeremy D. Barnum, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Dulani Woods, Siara I. Sitar, Brian A. Jackson

Police often are the first (and sometimes the only) point of government contact for persons experiencing homelessness (PEH). Although it has been common for police to rely on traditional law enforcement powers in dealing with homelessness, many agencies have moved away from arrest-focused methods in favor of approaches that are designed to foster positive relationships with PEH, assess individual needs of each person or area, and guide homeless or unsheltered individuals to the services they require.

To better understand the potential challenges of the law enforcement response to homelessness, the RAND Corporation and the Police Executive Research Forum, on behalf of the National Institute of Justice, convened a workshop of practitioners and researchers to discuss current law enforcement responses to homelessness and identify the highest-priority needs to support and improve existing efforts. During this meeting, four major themes were identified. First, there is a common set of factors underlying homelessness that law enforcement can address. Second, homelessness and overall health and wellness are deeply intertwined issues that should be treated together. Third, effective responses require the collaboration of stakeholders across governments, the private sector, and the community. Finally, acquiring and sharing data is necessary to understand the nature and scope of homelessness in each jurisdiction and to measure the effect of any implemented strategies. All four of these themes are vital to understanding the current challenges confronting the implementation of innovative police responses to homelessness.

Santa Monica, CA: 2020. 32p.

By Michael J. D. Vermeer, Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson

Recent nationwide protests against police use of force and perceptions of systemic racism in law enforcement in the United States have sparked renewed conversation about problems in the U.S. criminal justice system. Much of this conversation has been focused on the idea of "defunding the police." In this Perspective, the authors describe police leaders' and practitioners' views on defunding the police — that is, budgeting less money for police and more for other public safety strategies — and explain why revisiting the role of law enforcement in society could have broader appeal than some think. To do this, the authors draw on experience in workshops held over the past seven years by the Priority Criminal Justice Needs Initiative. In these workshops, police leaders and practitioners have voiced frustration with being the default party that is expected to respond to many complex social problems, such as homelessness, substance use, and mental health crises. Practitioners argue that nonenforcement strategies are often more effective than policing in solving many of these problems. Therefore, the authors suggest that there might be significant law enforcement support for some "defunding" strategies — as long as these efforts relieve some of the unrealistic expectations on police. The authors also describe current police functions that could be reassigned to other community partners, discuss factors that communities must consider if they choose to reallocate police functions, and note evidence of broader support for such reforms in the general population.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2020. 20p.