By Andy Higgins

The Police Foundation’s Blueprints project explores the design choices made by English and Welsh police forces in the delivery of local policing – specifically in relation to the operating models they adopt to provide incident response, neighbourhood policing, local investigation and public protection. It takes as its starting point the considerable diversification and frequent change in local policing models that has occurred within and between police forces over the last one to two decades.

Project aims

Describe and (as far as possible) codify, the variety of local police operating models being practised across England and Wales, explain why they have developed and explore the rationales behind them.

Investigate what (if anything) can be concluded about the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, based on quantitative performance

analysis (where possible) and local experiences and learning.

Look, in-depth, at the way policing models enable and constrain police practitioners working in four functional areas: incident response, neighbourhood policing, local investigation and public protection.

Explore what can be learned from the way local policing is organised in other countries.

Assess the suitability of different design options against future policing challenges, drawing on the analysis presented in the Strategic Review of Policing in England and Wales, and focusing on strategic enablers such as preventative partnership and public cooperation.

The Police Foundation, 2024. 21p.

By Barry Friedman, Rachel Harmon & Farhang Heydari

For far too long, the federal government has failed to exercise its constitutional authority to mitigate the harms imposed by local policing. Absent federal intervention, though, some harmful aspects of policing will not be addressed effectively, or at all. States and localities often lack the necessary capacity and expertise to change policing, and many states and localities lack the will. This Article argues for federal intervention and describes what that intervention should look like. The Article begins by describing three paradigmatic areas of local policing that require federal intervention to create real change: excessive use of force, racial discrimination, and the unregulated use of surveillance technologies. Because state and local governments are either unable or unwilling to address these problems alone, the federal government should intervene to identify and enforce minimum standards, develop best practices, collect data, and distribute resources nationwide. Regrettably, Congress has failed to act adequately to improve local policing for the better, although it has tried to encourage reform through the use of its Spending Power. This Article argues that Congress should utilize its regulatory powers under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Commerce Clause to address these paradigmatic problem areas, and it explains how this can be done consistently with Supreme Court doctrine. Alongside—or in the absence of—congressional action, the executive branch has the power and responsibility to act to address policing’s harms. The Article explains that, though indirect, the President wields considerable power to influence policing by setting policy, implementing federal programs, enforcing civil rights, and supervising federal law enforcement. Although the executive branch should use this power to promote local policing that is effective, fair, and accountable, and that minimizes harm, administration after administration has failed to do so consistently and also has failed to hold federal law enforcement to these standards. Recent executive branch efforts have improved the situation, but there still exists a gaping chasm between how the federal government should be influencing local policing and how it is doing so today

109 Virginia Law Review 1527 (December, 2023), 101p.