By The Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty

  In this volume, we describe the various processes involved in leading and designing the Mass Casualty Commission. The mass casualty of April 18 and 19, 2020, created profound grief, disruption, and destabilization in Nova Scotia and beyond. Early in our mandate, the Commission adopted the image and metaphor of rippled water to signify the breadth and depth of the impact of what happened over approximately 13 hours on April 18 to April 19, 2020, and in the aftermath. The ripple acknowledges that the immediate impact experienced by those most affected – the individuals, families, first responders, service providers, and local communities – was appropriately the starting point of our mandate. it also captures the dynamic impact of the mass casualty, which expanded outward and affected communities, institutions, and society in Nova Scotia, across Canada, in the United States, and further afield. The Commission saw every day how the mass casualty was a source of grief, bereavement, and trauma for many individuals, families, and communities. Some members of the Commission staff and their families live in Colchester, Cumberland, or Hants counties as well as throughout Nova Scotia. While acknowledging the unique nature and depth of loss for those whose loved ones were taken, regardless of where we live, the mass casualty to varying degrees affected everyone’s sense of safety, trust, and well-being. That impact will continue long past the conclusion of our mandate. As Commissioners, we were motivated by a desire to ensure that our collective work would provide answers and make positive contributions to community safety and well-being in the future. From our first days on the job we made a series of decisions about how best to carry out our mandate with the public interest at the forefront. in line with and throughout our mandate, we invited and endeavoured to seek and respond to input from directly affected Participants in the Commission’s process, while maintaining our independence. The mandate also directed that we not express any conclusion or recommendation regarding the civil or criminal  liability of any person or organization. This direction was not unique to our inquiry; the Supreme Court of Canada has made clear that all public inquiries are prohibited by law from making any findings or conclusions regarding civil and criminal liability….

Halifax, NS: Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty, 2023. 294p.

By The Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty, 

  As Commissioners, we grounded our work every day in the memory of those whose lives were taken. Interacting with and learning from the individuals, families, and members of the communities most affected is an additional catalyst to the completion of our tasks. We have also been spurred on by the remarkable wisdom and generosity of everyone who contributed to our work: Participants and their counsel, witnesses (both through interviews and in public proceedings), experts, stakeholders, the media, community members, the wider public, and Commission staff. To all of you, we express our gratitude. This Report marks the end of our mandated responsibilities as a public inquiry and the shift to a shared responsibility to act. We do not absolve ourselves of obligations to contribute to the implementation of the Report’s recommendations in the days, weeks, and years to come. Yet acting on our recommendations is clearly in the hands and purview of others once the Commissioners have produced the Report. The leadership for this next phase includes those who participated in the Commission’s work; those external to the Commission, such as those who have reported on it and followed it; and others who have a formal, recognized duty to contribute to public safety and community well-being. We have said many times that this is a shared responsibility and opportunity. In Volume  6, Implementation, we expand on the importance of this collective responsibility, highlighting the significance of co-operation among politicians, policy-makers, institutions, organizations, community groups, and individuals right across society.   

Halifax, NS: Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty, 2023. 83p.

 By The Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty

  in this volume, we build on the findings and conclusions reached so far by turning to the institutional context of policing. This volume addresses the policing dimensions of the following issues set out in our mandate: … (iii) interactions with police, including any specific relationship between the perpetrator and the RCMP and between the perpetrator and social services, including mental health services, prior to the event and the outcomes of those interactions, (iv) police actions, including operational tactics, response, decision-making and supervision, (v) communications with the public during and after the event, including the appropriate use of the public alerting system established under the Alert Ready program, (vi) communications between and within the RCMP, municipal police forces, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Criminal intelligence Service Nova Scotia, the Canadian Firearms Program, and the Alert Ready program, (vii) police policies, procedures and training in respect of gender-based and intimate partner violence, (viii) police policies, procedures and training in respect of active shooter incidents, … (x) policies with respect to police responses to reports of the possession of prohibited firearms, including communications between law enforcement agencies, and (xi) information and support provided to the families of victims, affected citizens, police personnel and the community  

Halifax, NS: Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty, , 2023. 722p.

By The  Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty 

Volume 2 sets out a narrative overview of what happened leading up to, during, and in the immediate aftermath of the Nova Scotia mass casualty on April 18 and 19, 2020. In addition, it contains our first set of main findings with respect to the perpetrator’s actions and the responses of individuals and the community, the RCMP, and other police and emergency response agencies. Volumes 3, 4, and 5 build on these main findings and examine them in light of the causes, circumstances, and context of these events. Our mandate directs us to include 11 specific issues as part of our examination of how and why the mass casualty occurred. We canvassed these specific issues in relation to three broad themes, and each of these themes is the subject of a volume in this Report: Violence (Volume 3), Community (Volume 4), and Policing (Volume 5). These volumes contain our additional findings and conclusions with respect to a range of topics within each theme, and they expand on them by identifying lessons to be learned and recommendations for action. The first three specific issues set out in our mandate relate to violence: (i) contributing and contextual factors, including the role of gender-based and intimate partner violence; (ii) access to firearms; (iii) interactions with police, including any specific relationship between the perpetrator and the RCMP and between the perpetrator and social services, including mental health services, prior to the event and the outcomes of those interactions.  

Halifax, NS: Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty, 2023. 517p.

By The Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty

Volume 2 sets out the Commission’s main findings in the narrative of what happened leading up to, during, and in the aftermath of the mass casualty of April 18 and 19, 2020. As distressing as it is to recall the violent attack that ended the lives of 22 people (one of whom was expecting a child) and injured others, our mandate requires us to provide a detailed account of these events. We have striven to include enough detail to give readers a clear, hour-by-hour account of the perpetrator’s actions as well as the response of community members and those who had a formal duty to respond. Formal responsibility rests with first and secondary police responders, emergency services personnel (including firefighters and paramedics), and other service providers (for example, tow truck operators and medical examiners). Whenever possible, we include first-voice perspectives from those who experienced the mass casualty as witnesses, community members, service providers, and as responders and overseers of the response. Witnesses and people around the perpetrator have only so much information, however, and analysis of evidence can only take us so far. Some of the perpetrator’s actions – in particular, the motivation for his violent rampage – are unknown at this time and likely will remain so forever. …

Halifax, NS: Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty, 2023. 379p.

By The Chicago’s Use of Force Community Working Group 

 This Report from community representatives of Chicago’s Use of Force Community Working Group offers our feedback on the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) training on de-escalation and the use of force. The Working Group was first convened in the summer of 2020 in response to the requirements of the federal civil rights Consent Decree designed to bring an end to the CPD’s pattern of police brutality and racial discrimination. Over the course of two years, the Working Group persuaded the CPD to make transformative changes to its policies governing police use of force. Last fall, we issued a Public Report on CPD’s new policies, including areas still in need of change. The new policies, if implemented and enforced on the ground, have the potential to dramatically reduce unnecessary CPD violence and improve public safety. The recent murder of Tyre Nichols by members of the Memphis Police Department serves as a stark reminder of all that is at stake in Chicago. CPD’s pattern of civil rights violations, which led to the Consent Decree, persist because of a culture of violence, racism, and denial similar to the police culture that enabled officers in Memphis to believe that they could beat and kill Mr. Nichols with impunity. … 

Chicago: The Working Group, 2023. 24p.

By Daniel Birks, Michael Townsley and Timothy Hart  

Studies in the United States and Europe have demonstrated that burglary and vehicle crime exhibit consistent patterns, supporting the application of crime prediction techniques to proactively deploy police resources to reduce incidents of crime. Research into whether these techniques are applicable in an Australian context is currently limited. Using crime data from the Queensland Police Service, this study assessed the presence of spatio-temporal patterns in burglary, theft of motor vehicle and theft from motor vehicle offences in three distinct local government areas. After establishing the presence of spatiotemporal clustering, the forecasting performance of two predictive algorithms and a retrospective crime mapping technique was evaluated. Forecasting performance varied across study regions; however, the prediction algorithms performed as well as or better than the retrospective method, while using less data. The next step in evaluating predictive policing within Australia is to consider and design effective tactical responses to prevent crime based on the forecast locations and identified patterns.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice, 666. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2023. 22p.

By Zach Goldberg

  After the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, a surprising number of Democrats embraced calls to “defund” the police. According to data from the 2020 Cooperative Election Survey, 35.4% of Democrats expressed support for reducing spending on law enforcement. Even as violent crime surged across the country, many Democrats remained supportive of defunding, which was supposedly necessary to achieve racial justice and equity. But support for defunding and depolicing is actually higher among white (and Asian) Democrats than among black and Hispanic Democrats. Relatively stronger support among the former, more affluent groups has led some to suggest that these attitudes are “luxury beliefs” that the privileged can afford to adopt to signal their virtue because they do not have to suffer the consequences. The luxury beliefs thesis thus suggests that socioeconomic status (SES) drives support for depolicing. But it is also possible that a genuine moral-political ideology, not affluence, plays an important role. This report is an attempt to empirically test the luxury beliefs hypothesis. It ultimately finds support for both the SES and ideology-centered accounts.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2022. 57p.

By David S. Abrams, Hanming Fang and Priyanka Goonetilleke

Police “stop-and-frisks” of pedestrians and motorists have become an increasingly controversial tactic, given low average rates of contraband discovery, incidents of abuse, and evidence of racial disparity. Study of the tactic by economists has been much influenced by Knowles, Persico, and Todd (2001; hereafter, KPT) who first suggested the use of a “hit rate” (contraband discovery rate per frisk) test to distinguish racial prejudice from statistical discrimination in highway searches by police officers. Models used by KPT and almost all subsequent literature (e.g., Anwar and Fang 2006) on the subject imply diminishing marginal returns to frisks. That is, if frisks decrease substantially, the rate of contraband discovery should rise, ceteris paribus. This is the first paper to test this assumption empirically using arguably exogenous variations in frisk rates (cf. Feigenberg and Miller 2022). 1 We study the period around the nationwide protests that followed the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, after which police frisks dropped tremendously and rapidly. Using extremely granular data from Chicago, we find that hit rates increased as police frisks plunged, in line with the predictions of KPT.

AEA Papers and Proceedings 2022, 112: 178–183 ,2022. 7p.

By Citizens for a Greater Downtown St. Louis

 Among the greatest concerns of people living, working, visiting, and investing in Downtown St. Louis is public safety. Over the last decade, the character of Downtown has come to be defined not by its great architecture, live sporting events, or conventions, but by a litany of headlines describing crime, violence, and disruptive behavior. To respond to those headlines, city and civic leaders have suggested several explanations: that the recent pandemic created a vacuum of empty streets and diminished law enforcement; that increases in criminal activity are not reflected in data and are only a “perception”; and, that this is a nationwide phenomenon with other cities across the country experiencing the same problems. Some have suggested that complaints about security are a product of racism. First, the facts are undeniable; six homicides downtown in the first five months of 2023 (10 in 2022), numerous violent events, hundreds of car break-ins etc. Second, downtown residents and businesses make a choice to live or locate in a racially and culturally diverse neighborhood. That’s part of what makes Downtown special and a great place to live and work. Concerns about security are shared by neighbors of all races. As this report shows, none of those explanations are credible or helpful. While some of our public safety problems were exacerbated by the pandemic, the trends of rising crime and disorder were present years before. …

St. Louis, MO: The Authors, 20233. 15p..

By David H. Bayley

From the Exec. Summary: This report sets forth the lessons that observers and participants have learned about the process of changing police organizations so as to support democracy. It is based on the study of three bodies of literature: studies of efforts to change police practices in the developed democracies, especially in the United States; accounts ofthe experience with foreign assistance to police abroad under both bilateral and multilateral auspices; and accounts of the actions of nongovernmental human rights organizations to rectify police abuses. More than 500 books, articles, reports, and documents were reviewed in this study. The bibliography attached to this report probably encompasses the largest number of materials on efforts to change police organizations ever collected.

Washington. National Institute of Justice. 2001. 127p

By Aaron Chalfin and Felipe Goncalves

  How do public sector workers balance their pro-social motivations with private interests? In this study of police officers, we exploit two institutional features that change the implicit cost of making an arrest: arrests made near the end of an officer’s shift are more likely to require overtime work, and arrests made on days when an officer “moonlights” at an off-duty job after their shift have a higher opportunity cost. We document two consequences for officer behavior. First, contrary to popular wisdom, officers reduce arrests near the end of their shift, and the quality of arrests increases. We argue that these patterns are driven by officer preferences rather than departmental policy, fatigue, or incapacitation from earlier arrests. Second, officers further reduce late-shift arrests on days in which they moonlight after work, suggesting that they are, in fact, modestly responsive to financial incentives. Using these results, we estimate a dynamic model that identifies an officer’s implied trade-off between private and pro-social motivations. We find that police officers exhibit high pro-social motivation towards their work. In contrast to prior research showing that law enforcement outcomes are sensitive to financial incentives at an institutional level, the behavior of individual officers — the “street-level bureaucrats” who enforce the law — is not meaningfully distorted by monetary considerations.

Unpublished paper, 2020. 74p.

By P. Jeffrey Brantingham and Craig D. Uchida

Calls-for-service represent the most basic form of public cooperation with the police. How cooperation varies as a function of instances of police activity remains an open question. The great situational diversity of police activity in the field, matching the situational diversity of crime and disorder, makes it challenging to estimate causal effects. Here we use homicides as an indicator for the occurrence of a standardized set of highly visible, socially-intensive, acute police investigative activities and examine whether police calls-for-service change in response. We adopt a place-based difference-in-differences approach that controls for local fixed affects and common temporal trends. Estimates of the model using data from Los Angeles in 2019 shows that calls-for-service increase significantly in the week following a homicide. The effect pertains to both violent crime and quality of life calls for service. Partitioning the data by race-ethnicity shows that calls-for-service increase most when the homicide victim is Black. Partitioning the data by race-ethnicity and type of homicide shows that some types of calls are suppressed when the homicide is gang-related. The results point to opportunities for police to build trust in the immediate aftermath of homicides, when the public is reaching out for greater assistance.

Journal of Criminal Justice, 73:2021.

By Conor Casey

This report considers the constitutional role of the Law Officers and defends the institutional status quo. The current configuration of the Attorney General (and Solicitor General), as a law officer with legal and political dimensions, works well. Moving to an alternative (apolitical, technocratic) model of Attorney General would risk excessive legalisation of policy and would reduce political accountability.

London: Policy Exchange, 2023. 29p.

By Adrian Cherney, Emma Antrobus, Sarah Bennett, Bevan Murphy and Mike Newman

Evidence-based policing (EBP) advocates the use of scientific processes in police decision-making. This paper examines results from a survey of officers in the Queensland Police Service and the Western Australia Police on the uptake of and receptiveness towards EBP research. Using a combined dataset, the paper examines a variety of factors related to the perceived value and usefulness of academic and internal research, and individual and organisational barriers to the use of EBP research. It also explores whether leadership and EBP workshops influence the adoption of evidence-based practices.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2019. 18p.

By Deborah Witzburg and Tobara Ricihardson

  As mandated by the consent decree entered in Illinois v. Chicago, the Public Safety section of the City of Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) has conducted an inquiry into the enforcement of the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD or the Department) Rule 14, which prohibits CPD members from “[m]aking a false report, written or oral.”1 Alleged violations of CPD’s Rules and Regulations are usually investigated by CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs (BIA) and by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), with the most serious of police disciplinary cases being adjudicated by the Chicago Police Board.2 All of these entities come within the scope of OIG’s inquiry into the enforcement of CPD’s rule against false reports. The truthfulness and credibility of police officers is foundational to the fair administration of justice, and to CPD’s effectiveness as a law enforcement agency. CPD, COPA, and the Police Board have each publicly expressed the view that these qualities in CPD members are integral to their ability to perform their duties and that a member’s violation of Rule 14 poses important risks, including undermining their ability to offer testimony in criminal prosecutions arising from CPD’s arrests. Due to the severity of the impact that stems from a CPD member making a false statement or report, CPD and COPA have reported the position that separation (i.e., termination of employment) is the appropriate disciplinary penalty when a member is found to have violated Rule 14.   

Chicago: City of Chicago, Office of inspector General, 2023. 61p.

By Travis Carter, Jedidiah Knode and Scott Wolfe  

This report presents the results from a racial/ethnic disparity analysis of Michigan State Police (MSP) traffic stops conducted in 2021. The goal of the analysis is to identify the extent of racial/ethnic disparities in MSP traffic stop behavior across MSP worksites (i.e., posts). The analyses are based on a leading empirical approach to assessing racial/ethnic disparities in traffic stop behavior—the veil-of-darkness (VOD). The analyses account for important structural differences across posts and their jurisdictions, such as the rate of violent crime and troopers per capita, as well as temporal factors that may shape traffic patterns and stop behavior (e.g., time of day, day of week) to help ensure the results are as informative as possible. Below, we briefly outline the methodology employed and summarize the main findings. When discussing the results from this report, it is important to recognize the difference between “disparity” and “discrimination.” Disparity in these traffic stop analyses refers to differences in racial/ethnic group representation based on presumed visibility of the driver. Disparity cannot identify intent, whereas discrimination inherently involves intent. Therefore, discrimination in traffic stop behavior refers to police officers intentionally stopping individuals based on their status in a racial/ethnic minority group. Discrimination can generate disparities by way of differential treatment of racial/ethnic groups, but disparities may also be the result of nondiscriminatory (e.g., environmental, situational, etc.) factors such as crime prevalence and driving pattern differences. This report and its findings can speak only to the extent of racial/ethnic disparity in MSP traffic stops. The data cannot ascertain whether racially discriminatory practices are occurring within MSP. Although disentangling disparity from bias is critical towards improving police practices, accurately identifying the existence of such disparity and its magnitude is an important precursor to this process. More information on the data collection process is provided in the body of the report. Next, we highlight the main takeaways from the analyses.   

East Lansing:  Michigan Justice Statistics Center School of Criminal Justice Michigan State University, 2022. 33p.

By David Weisburd, David B. Wilson, Kevin Petersen, Cody W. Telep

The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment (KCPPE) was seen by its developers to have produced “consistent evidence of the lack of effects of any consequence on crime,” a conclusion that was to have a strong impact on assumptions about police patrol for almost half a century. We identified the original official crime data from the KCPPE, and reanalyzed outcomes focusing on a comparison of the “proactive” versus “control” beats (“reactive beats” were criticized because of violations of treatment integrity); examining broad categories of crime (to increase statistical power); and using count regression models. Our findings are not unequivocal, but point to modest impacts of police patrol on crime in police beats.

Policy Implications: Our findings suggest that lessons drawn for half a century from the KCPPE need to be revisited. The KCPPE does not show that police patrol in large areas has no influence on crime, and this finding is consistent with several more recent studies. At the same time, we note that the effects of patrol in the KCPPE using our analysis strategy, and those found in other studies of preventive patrol in larger areas, are about half that found in hot spots policing studies. This suggests that police agencies ideally should invest in focused hot spots policing initiatives. However, absent an ability to manage such initiatives, or the crime analysis capabilities to identify crime hot spots routinely, simpler preventive patrol schemes to utilize uncommitted patrol time can be seen as potentially effective in preventing crime.

Criminology and Public Policy,  2023: 1-18

By Gabrielle T. Isaza, Robin Engel and Jennifer Calnon Cherkauskas 

Sobering centers offer a unique opportunity to reduce arrests for vulnerable populations while removing a person from a potentially dangerous situation. Despite the long and complex history of their use, little is known systematically about the effectiveness of sobering centers as an alternative to arrest. Only a handful of studies have examined the impacts of sobering centers on the criminal justice system, and these studies typically focus on a single site. To build the evidence on sobering centers, Arnold Ventures funded our research study assessing the utility of sobering centers as an alternative to arrest. This report is the first in a series detailing our multi-method and multi-site research study, launched in January 2020. In this research study, examine four primary research questions: 1. What are the patterns of policies and practices for police use of sobering centers as an alternative to arrest? What guides this decision-making? 2. What are the situational factors police use in practice to determine whether or not to use sobering centers as an alternative to arrest? 3. How do police balance and overcome policy and legal inconsistencies guiding the transport to and use of sobering centers? 4. When individuals are sent to sobering centers in lieu of arrest, does it alter their relative risk of recidivism or future contact with police? This report focuses on the quantitative findings of Phase I, disclosing the results of two national surveys—one for law enforcement agencies and one for sobering center facilities. Survey findings shed light on how police use sobering centers and the perceived benefits and barriers to their use. In turn, the survey findings also provide important insights on how to build effective partnerships and enhance the utility of sobering centers as an alternative to arrest.  

Arlington VA: National Policing Institute, 2022. 78p.

By Robin S. Engel,  Jennifer Calnon Cherkauskas, Nicholas Corsaro, Murat Yildirim

In 2002, the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) was one of the first state police agencies to initiate traffic stop data collection voluntarily. The current data collection effort is based on foundational work conducted with the same research team for more than a decade, beginning with initial planning in 1999. After discontinuing the data collection program in 2011, the PSP renewed its traffic stop data collection effort in 2021, which now continues in partnership with the National Policing Institute (the Institute). Given the variety of factors involved in police stop and enforcement decisions, it is beneficial for agencies to identify and better understand trends and patterns to enhance their ability to interact with the public safely and fairly. The voluntary collection and analysis of traffic stop data is consistent with recommended best practice, demonstrates dedication to transparency and accountability to the public, and continues the PSP’s commitment to evidence-based policing practices. This report documents the findings from statistical analyses of data collected during all member-initiated traffic stops by the PSP from January 1, 2022 – December 31, 2022. These data are reported by individual troopers after each member-initiated traffic stop, gathered and compiled by the PSP, and transmitted weekly to the Institute’s research team. Throughout each section of this report, information is presented at multiple organizational levels, reflecting the PSP’s organizational structure consisting of four Areas, 16 Troops, and 88 Stations. Presenting information in this manner illustrates differences and similarities across organizational units. It permits the identification of organizational and geographic groups that may appear as outliers, providing opportunities for closer examination and focused attention by PSP officials.  

Arlington, VA: National Policing Institute, 2023. 169p.