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 H. Goudriaan.

Victim reports are the main source of information for the police regarding where crimes are committed, and also the basis for most subsequent actions of the criminal justice system. Therefore, the victims' decision to report to the police is crucial. However, much criminal victimization is not reported and, consequently, many offenders are never prosecuted. Why are some crimes reported and others not? Substantial differences in reporting are found across crime locations, neighborhoods and countries. In this book, a socio-ecological model of victims' decision-making is introduced which endeavors to explain these contextual differences in reporting. To empirically test the main hypotheses derived from this model, several data sources are used and different research strategies are employed, with which the effects of crime, victim and contextual factors on victims' reporting behavior are simultaneously analyzed. Factors constituting the context in which crime incidents take place (e.g. whether the location is in the private or public domain), as well as factors composing the neighborhood context (e.g. the neighborhood social cohesion) and – to a lesser extent – the country context in which victims reside, were found to play a role in victims's decision (not) to report.

Leiden: University of Leiden, 2006. 213p.