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CRIME PREVENTION

CRIME PREVENTION-POLICING-CRIME REDUCTION-POLITICS

Posts in Equity
The Brooklyn Center Police Department Workload Study

By The National Policing Institute

The Brooklyn Center Police Department (BCPD) partnered with the National Policing Institute (the Institute) to conduct a workload study and organizational assessment in 2022. Police and City leaders wanted an independent assessment of the number of officers necessary to respond to service demand from the community in conjunction with an examination of the overall operations of the department. As talks were progressing, the City of Brooklyn Center became the focus of national attention after BCPD Officer Kim Potter shot and killed an unarmed African-American man, Daunte Wright, during a traffic stop. In the following months, numerous officers and non-sworn employees resigned, and the ones that remained felt they were under increased scrutiny. The resignations and resulting increased workload made the study even more important for the department as they sought to renew themselves and provide safety for the community.

The report presents the key findings from the following groups: surveys of department employees: key findings from the interviews and the focus group with the community: key findings from the quantitative analyses:

The following are selected key recommendations based on the findings: • The department should authorize a total of 36 officers for patrol to ensure officers have adequate time for problem-solving, training, and vacation time. • The department should authorize two additional sergeants in the Patrol Division to ensure sergeants are able to attend training and proactively supervise officers. • The department should add an additional detective to lower the workload of detectives. • The department should immediately hire individuals to fill the authorized records technician positions and add an additional position to compensate for the recommended officer increase. • The department should champion and expand the department employee wellness program and seek grants to provide additional resources. • The department should create a comprehensive crime reduction strategy in collaboration with the community and communicate it internally and externally. • The department and City should initiate programs with the community to foster positive interactions between community members and department employees.

Arlington, VA: The National Policing Institute, 2023. 90p.

Policy Advisory Report: Metro Nashville Police Department Use of Force

By the Nashville Community Oversight Board

National and local high-profile police killings have brought greater scrutiny to police use of force and have spurred conversations about police accountability across the country and in Nashville. As Metro Nashville Community Oversight (MNCO) itself was born from community outcry in response to multiple fatal police shootings, MNCO believes it is imperative to track and analyze trends in the Metro Nashville Police Department’s (MNPD’s) use of force and to propose policy that will reduce excessive force interactions. This report is thus the first annual use of force report that will assess the types of force used by MNPD and how frequently they are used. We will track policy implementation and make further recommendations each year. Using existing datasets provided to MNCO by MNPD weekly, MNCO researchers began investigating MNPD’s current use of force incidents and identifying patterns within these force interactions. Key findings include that Black and Hispanic subjects, both adults and youth, are more likely to be recipients of use of force (especially firearm displays and soft empty hand control techniques); white and male officers are more likely to use force; subject resistance level is a significant predictor of force used; Black people are more likely to have force used against them when they are not coded as resisting officer commands; force usage concentrates in non-white and high-poverty areas of Nashville; and youth who had force used against them by school resource officers were 96% Black and 58% female in 2023. These findings prompted the COB to make the following recommendations: MNPD should include all soft empty hand control usages (regardless of injury status), firearm displays, Taser displays, and accidental discharges in departmental use of force analyses when there is a subject present, including on MNPD’s Use of Force Dashboard. MNPD should revisit and modify its use of force training and reporting mechanisms to include more consistent tracking of resistance levels across all Form 108 types (108, 108F, 108T, and 108NC). To accomplish this, MNPD should update the MNPD Manual to define all terms in the “Subject’s NonCompliance” section in Form 108s. Further, the data provided to MNCO should be updated to reflect this change. MNPD should randomly audit instances from 2022 onward in which officers use force and resistance was not tracked, or was coded as no resistance. This is to include all Form 108, 108F, 108T, and 108NCs. If officers are determined to have used a disproportionate level of force, MNPD should take appropriate disciplinary action. MNPD should create a Peer Review Panel where supervisors or peers can anonymously report officers who they believe are involved in an above-average number of violent encounters. This panel should be supported by part-time staff who, in addition to serving on the panel, study policecommunity violence and create interventions that would combat such violence. MNPD should use a comparative method based on their force and resistance continuums to evaluate when officers are using force that is disproportionate to resistance, even when force levels are low. The establishment of such a method should be done in consultation with MNCO and with community input such that community perception of force is prioritized in MNPD’s assessment of force and resistance. This comparative method should be incorporated into MNPD’s Early Intervention System and should flag officers who repeatedly use a level of force disproportionate to resistance. Additionally, a review of each officer’s use of force from the prior year should be included in their annual performance evaluation to identify officers who are involved in a disproportionate number of force incidents or who are frequently using excessive force. MNPD should develop use of force policies and training specific to interactions with youth, modeled after best practice policies from organizations like Strategies for Youth. These policies and training should discuss de-escalation, officer presence, communication style, allowed/disallowed uses of force, disparate force across race and gender, and other topics as deemed necessary. Such policies must address that force of any kind must be consistent with the age, body size, disability status, relative strength, and risk posed by the youth. MNPD should electronically notify MNCO staff every time MNPD staff use force in Metro Nashville Public Schools. Such notification should be delivered in a monthly report that includes information including but not limited to officer name, incident number, school location, subject demographics, type of force used, and incident report narrative. MNPD should modify its implicit bias training to address the bias officers may have against entire neighborhoods based on the racial and socioeconomic makeup of those neighborhoods. These trainings should include paid representatives and trainers from the Nashville community who can serve as consultants and speak to the histories of their community and the issues they face, and should be precinct- and neighborhood-specific. MNPD should train recruits and officers in procedural justice principles, focusing on both internal and external standards. Such training should be standalone, repeated annually, and follow evidence-based standards demonstrated to be efficacious. MNPD should modify its use of force forms to include checkboxes for all de-escalation techniques (as outlined in section 11.10.030(M)) used by officers. These techniques should be tracked and analyzed as to how they relate to officer use of force. MNPD should modify its de-escalation policy and training to include specific stipulations on procedural justice. These should address active/empathetic listening, nonverbal communication, word choice, and de-escalation techniques that are grounded in procedural justice principles such as rapport-building. MNPD should continue to focus recruitment on non-white and female candidates until all ranks of the department are staffed with representation at levels significantly closer to Nashville’s demographic makeup. While this report provides a comprehensive overview of current use of force patterns within MNPD, MNCO researchers hope to continue investigations into topics such as use of force by school resource officers, the impact of precision policing tactics on use of force patterns, and community perceptions around police use of force.

Nashville, TN: Community Oversight Board, 2023. 43p

Can Community Policing Improve Police-Community Relations in an Electoral Authoritarian Regime? Experimental Evidence from Uganda

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

Policing and collective efficacy: A rapid evidence assessment

By Julia Anne Yesberg and Ben Bradford

Collective efficacy is a neighbourhood social process that has important benefits for crime prevention. Policing is thought to be one antecedent to collective efficacy, but the mechanisms by which police activity and officer behaviour are thought to foster collective efficacy are not well understood. This article presents findings from a rapid evidence assessment conducted to take stock of the empirical research on policing and collective efficacy. Thirty-nine studies were identified and examined. Overall, trust in police was the aspect of policing most consistently associated with collective efficacy. There was also some evidence that community policing activities, such as visibility and community engagement, predicted collective efficacy. Police legitimacy, on the other hand, was relatively unrelated to collective efficacy: a finding which suggests perceptions of police linked to the ‘action’ of individual officers may be more enabling of collective efficacy than perceptions of the policing institution as a whole. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

International Journal of Police Science & Management , 2021. vol.23(4):417-430

Risky Situations: Sources of Racial Disparity in Police Behavior

By Marie Pryor, Kim Shayo Buchanan, and Phillip Atiba Goff

Swencionis & Goff identified five situations that tend to increase the likelihood that an individual police officer may behave in a racially disparate way: discretion, inexperience, salience of crime, cognitive demand, and identity threat. This article applies their framework to the realities of police work, identifying situations and assignments in which these factors are likely to influence officers’ behavior. These insights may identify opportunities for further empirical research into racial disparities in such contexts and may highlight institutional reforms and policy changes that could reduce officers’ vulnerability to risks that can result in racially unjust actions.

Annual Review of Law and Social Science , 16: 341-360. 2020.

Examining the effects of the killing of George Floyd by police in the United States on attitudes of Black Londoners: a replication

By Amy Nivette,Christof Nägel &Emily Gilbert

High-profile incidents of police misconduct can have serious conse-quences for public trust in the police. A recent study in the British Journal of Political Science found that Eric Garner’s death in NYC led to more negative attitudes towards the police in London among Black residents compared to White and Asian residents. The current study aimed to replicate this transnational effect by assessing the impact of George Floyd’s death on Londoners’ perceptions of police. Using the same data and methodological approach, we did not replicate the immediate effect on Black Londoners’ attitudes. We did find that attitudes across ethnic groups became more negative when using a wider temporal bandwidth. However, we discovered violations to the excludability assumption, meaning we cannot be certain that the effect is solely due to the murder of George Floyd, or at least partly due to different dynamics, like the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying policies. This means that while it is possible that police killings in other contexts play a role in shaping attitudes towards local police, these effects are difficult to disentangle from other global and local factors. misconduct can reduce trust and confidence in the police among the wider public (Kochel, 2019; Nägel & Lutter, 2021; Reny & Newman, 2021).

Police Practice and Research, 2023.

Disorder policing to reduce crime: A systematic review

By Anthony A. Braga, Brandon C. Welsh, Cory Schnell

Disorderly conditions are seen as a precursor to more serious crime, fear of crime, and neighborhood decline. Policing disorder is associated with reductions in crime, but only when community and problem-solving tactics are used. Aggressive, order maintenance based approaches do not seem to be effective.

What is this review about?

Policing social and physical disorderly conditions is rooted in the broken windows approach: disorder is a precursor to more serious crime, fear of crime, and neighborhood decline. Addressing disorder has become a central fixture of policing, especially in the United States. Yet, evaluations of the effectiveness of disorder policing strategies in controlling crime yield conflicting results.

Policing disorderly conditions can be divided into two main strategies: (a) order maintenance or zero tolerance policing, where police attempt to impose order through strict enforcement and (b) community policing and problem-solving policing, where police attempt to produce order and reduce crime through cooperation with community members and by addressing specific recurring problems.

This review examined the effects of disorder policing strategies compared to traditional law enforcement actions (e.g., regular levels of patrol) on the rates of crime, including property crime, violent crime, and disorder/drug crime. This review also examined whether policing disorder actions at specific locations result in crime displacement (i.e., crime moving around the corner) or diffusion of crime control benefits (i.e., crime reduction in surrounding areas).

Campbell Systematic Reviews, Volume 15, Issue 3. September 2019

The recruitment of women and visible minorities into Canadian police forces: Should we expect further progress?

By Stephen B Perrott

The recruitment of women and minority group members was intended to move Canadian police forces towards societal representation and to enhance services provided to, and improve relations with, women and racially marginalized groups. This review contemplates progress towards these goals at a time of extraordinary public dissatisfaction with Western policing. A rationale is offered for reconsidering the 50% representation target for women and it is emphasized just how little we yet know about racial bias in policing. The review ends with a call for rigorous, apolitical, research to untangle the complex interactions underscoring the considered questions within.

The Police Journal Volume 96, Issue 1, March 2023, Pages 26-44

Police Relationships with Visible Minorities: A Review of the Impact of the 20-Year Effort by Police in British Columbia and Canada to Improve Visible Minorities’ Assessments of Police Services

By Yvon Dandurand, Paul Maxim and Darryl Plecas

Strained police relations with visible minorities are reflected in the fact that these minorities are much less likely than other citizens to view the police as legitimate, fair, or trustworthy, or to report crime to the police. Police in and outside of Canada have long understood the importance of improving their relationship with minorities, and in this regard, they have undertaken multiple initiatives intended to improve minority-police relations. Considerable resources and energy were devoted to trying to enhance police relationships with various visible minority groups. These efforts have included extensive outreach initiatives, force-wide sensitivity training for police officers, substantial recruitment and promotion of minorities, and policy changes relating to police practices. Have those efforts made any significant difference in how visible minorities view the police? This study was undertaken as a step toward understanding how the relationship between police services and their host communities has evolved over the years. It examined the extent to which police efforts aimed at improving police-minority relations over the past 20 years have improved perceptions of the police among visible minority groups in Canada (with special attention to British Columbia). More specifically, the study examined the degree to which attitudes of visible minorities over that 20-year period between 1999 and 2019 can be distinguished from those of the overall population in Canada and British Columbia – with special attention to the matter of crime victims’ contacts with police. The core analysis for this study involved a comparison of data from Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey (GSS) panels on Canadians' Safety (Victimization) conducted in 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014 and 2019. The findings of the analysis tell a simple story. The GSS national data collected over a period of twenty years do not show significant improvements in how visible minorities in British Columbia and in Canada perceive the police. Visible minorities hold more negative views of police behaviour than non-minorities. Minorities are less likely than non-minorities to agree that police treat people fairly or do a good job in approaching people. Since the turn of the century, minorities’ views of police behaviour and fairness have generally worsened. Notably, by 2019 those views had become more negative than at any time in the previous twenty years. By then, survey results indicated that less than half of visible minorities agreed that police treat people fairly and do a good job in the way they approach people.

Vancouver, BC: International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy, 2022.62p.

Law Enforcement Training and the Domestic Far Right

By Steven M. Chermak, Joshua D. Freilich and Zachary Shemtob

This article examines issues related to training as it pertains to domestic terrorism in general and responding to far-right extremists in particular. First, it hightlights current training practices and training focused on the far right. Second, it details knowledge about the nature and extent of the threat posed by far-right extremists. Third, a review of the empirical research indicates that training could be enhanced if three key issues are emphasized: Future training should promote a better understanding of the contours of the far right; discuss the unique geographic, crime-incident, and structural characteristics of the far right; and describe the need to examine all ideologically motivated crimes, regardless of whether they are also defined as terrorist. The conclusion discusses how training could be enhanced by strategically integrating the existing knowledge base.

Criminal Justice and Behavior 2009; 36; 1305 DOI: 10.1177/0093854809345630.

Microtargeting Unmasked: Safeguarding Law Enforcement, the Military, and the Nation in the Era of Personalized Threats

By Lindsay, Greg; Brown, Jason C.; Johnson, Brian David; Owens, Christopher; Hall, Andrew; Carrott, James H.

From the document: "Microtargeting is the practice of collecting and analyzing personal data to create highly specific messaging for advertising, marketing, and influence campaigns. With microtargeting, the adversary's goal is to destabilize the leadership and decisionmaking of federal institutions tasked with protecting the population. This report describes how, in the coming decade, state and non-state adversaries will use microtargeting tactics to attack high-value individuals (HVIs) in military, law enforcement, and civilian leadership to stigmatize, extort, and even assassinate figures crucial to the security and stability of the United States. Adversaries will also use microtargeting tactics to manipulate and exploit individuals in proximity to HVIs when the HVI is unreachable (e.g., physical proximity, familial ties, business associates, and/or friends)."

Army Cyber Institute, West Point; United States. Secret Service; Arizona State University. Threatcasting Lab. 2023. 88p.

Regulating US Private Security Contractors

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Jovana Jezdimirovic Ranito

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “…September 16, 2007, Nisour Square in Baghdad, Iraq: Blackwater contractors, working under a State Department contract, kill 17 civilians and injure 20 during a firefight. Fast forward to September 11, 2009, Washington, DC: a Court of Appeals dismisses the charges against contractors and claims they were under US government contractor immunity. More recently, in 2014, after a number of appeals regarding the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court's decision about Abu Ghraib, which ended with a dismissal of charges, detainees filed a suit against contractors again, but still without a favorable outcome. Also, in 2015, in Washington, DC, four of the Blackwater contractors involved in the Nisour Square Massacre received a sentence from a federal judge after years of dismissals and new trials. These lengthy sentences were thrown out on August 4, 2017, by Federal Appeals Court and it ordered a new trial.

These examples are just the most reported ones, but they illustrate well the state of the US regulation regarding private security contractors operating in combat zones overseas…”

Switzerland. Palgrave Macmillan. 2019. 233p.

Into the Kill Zone: A Cop's Eye View of Deadly Force

By David Klinger

What's it like to have official sanction to shoot and kill? In this brilliantly written, controversial, and compelling book, author David Klinger - who himself shot and killed a suspect during his first year as an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department - answers this and many other questions about what it's like to live and work in the place where police officers have to make split-second decisions about life and death: The Kill Zone.

Klinger, now a university professor, writes eloquently about what happens when police officers find themselves face-to-face with dangerous criminals, the excruciating decisions they have to make to shoot or to hold their fire, and how they deal with the consequences of their choices.

San Francisco. Jossey-Bass. 2004. 304p.

How Climate Change Challenges the U.S. Nuclear Deterrent

By Kwong, Jamie

From the document: "Climate change could have mission-altering impacts on the U.S. nuclear deterrent. This paper examines the range of climate change challenges and threats that could detrimentally affect each leg of the U.S. nuclear triad in different and increasingly serious ways. In doing so, the paper helps to advance broader, ongoing efforts to account for climate change in U.S. national security policies. It also aims to inform and help initiate a larger conversation about the vulnerabilities of all nuclear weapons programs to climate change. Gaining greater clarity about these vulnerabilities now is essential to mitigating the worst effects of climate change on nuclear weapons in the future."

Washington. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 2023. 52p.

2023 National Intelligence Strategy

By United States. Office Of The Director Of National Intelligence; Intelligence Community (U.S.)

From the document: "Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and in the wake of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act passed by Congress in 2004, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte signed out the Intelligence Community's (IC) first National Intelligence Strategy. The strategy explained that the Intelligence Community's clear charge was to: [1] Integrate the domestic and foreign dimensions of U.S. intelligence so that there are no gaps in our understanding of threats to our national security; [2] Bring more depth and accuracy to intelligence analysis; and [3] Ensure that U.S. intelligence resources generate future capabilities as well as present results. Now, almost twenty years after our first strategy was issued, the Intelligence Community's charge remains just as clear, even as the strategic environment has changed dramatically. The United States faces an increasingly complex and interconnected threat environment characterized by strategic competition between the United States, the People's Republic of China (PRC), and the Russian Federation, felt perhaps most immediately in Russia's ongoing aggression in Ukraine. In addition to states, sub-national and non-state actors--from multinational corporations to transnational social movements--are increasingly able to create influence, compete for information, and secure or deny political and security outcomes, which provides opportunities for new partnerships as well as new challenges to U.S. interests. In addition, shared global challenges, including climate change, human and health security, as well as emerging and disruptive technological advances, are converging in ways that produce significant consequences that are often difficult to predict. [...] The six goals outlined in this National Intelligence Strategy have emerged as our understanding of the kinds of information, technology, and relationships needed to be effective in the future has expanded."

Washington. United States. Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Intelligence Community (U.S.). 2023.

Perceptions Are Not Reality: What Americans Get Wrong About Police Violence

By Goldberg, Zach

From the document: "Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in media and public attention to police brutality and racial bias. By some measures, the volume of media references to these topics has been greater over the past decade than ever before. Google search behavior shows that Americans are consuming this messaging ('Figure 1'), and their attitudes toward police--particularly Democrats' and liberals' attitudes--have responded accordingly. Confidence in police has never been lower, while antipolice sentiment, perceptions of police brutality and racism, and support for defunding the police have never been higher. So much have perceptions of racist policing grown that, as of 2021, more than half (52%) of Democrats felt that levels of racism were greater among police officers than other societal groups (up from 35% in 2014). Fears of the police among black Americans have increased to the point that, in 2020, roughly 74% of black respondents to a Quinnipiac University poll said that they 'personally worry' about being the victim of police brutality, compared with 64% and 57% who said so in 2018 and 2016, respectively. Yet these trends in media coverage and public perceptions seem divorced from empirical reality. A stark illustration of this was provided by a nationally representative survey conducted in 2019 by the Skeptic Research Center, which found that nearly 33% of people--including 44% of liberals--thought that 1,000 or more unarmed black men 'alone' were killed by police in 2019. In fact, according to the Mapping Police Violence (MPV) database, 29 unarmed black (vs. 44 white) men were killed by police that year."

NY. Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. 2023. 50p.

What Makes an Influence Operation Malign?

By Yadav, Kamya; Riedl, Martin J.; Wanless, Alicia; Woolley, Samuel C.

From the document: "Companies, politicians, and governments are constantly working to motivate audiences to think and act favorably toward them. Think of a billboard promoting a fast-food chain, a political campaign video on YouTube, or a government-led polio vaccination drive. But some influence operations go too far and undermine democracy, which depends on the integrity of information. Can influence operations be assessed to distinguish those that are acceptable from those that are not? This paper explores three potential criteria--transparency in origins, quality of content, and calls to action--to assess the acceptability of an influence operation in the context of democracies."

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 2023. 30p.

2023 Biodefense Posture Review

By United States. Department Of Defense

From the document: "The Department of Defense (DoD) is at a pivotal moment in biodefense as it faces an unprecedented number of complex biological threats (biothreats). This inaugural DoD Biodefense Posture Review (BPR) initiates key reforms--built on the foundations of the 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS), the October 2022 National Biodefense Strategy and Implementation Plan for Countering Biological Threats, Enhancing Pandemic Preparedness, and Achieving Global Health Security (NBS); and lessons learned from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic response--to posture DoD to counter biothreats through 2035. Developments in biological technology (biotechnology) are driving an increase in the scope and diversity of biothreats that DoD could face in the next decade. Additionally, as the planet's climate continues to change and its population grows, emerging infectious diseases are expected to develop and spread more frequently and potentially threaten DoD's readiness to achieve and maintain its national defense goals. The COVID-19 pandemic response presented opportunities for DoD to both improve its overall preparedness and posture, as well as to reinforce and reimagine its role in support of the broader U.S. Government and our allies and partners."

Washington D.C. United States. Department of Defense. 2023. 56p.

The Sociology of Privatized Security

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

Edited by Ori Swed and Thomas Crosbie

FROM THE PREFACE: “This book started as a known unknown. We knew and admired the rich body of work being produced by political scientists, international relations scholars, legal scholars and historians (as well as a handful of sociologists) on the emerging private military and security industry. We knew about and were concerned with the political consequences of this development, with its nasty barbs of undermining legitimacy, stability and professionalism in the conduct of war and security operations. And we knew that we didn't know what this meant from a sociological perspective. With time, this known unknown transformed before our eyes into an unknown known. In other words, we realized that many of our fellow sociologists were as concerned as we were with establishing and promoting a sociological perspective on the privatization of security. The problem changed from one of disciplinary neglect to one of disciplinary resistance. In The Sociology of Privatized Security, we present a collection of nine chapters written by more than a dozen sociologists on a topic that is widely discussed in the public sphere but almost absent from the discipline. The book came about for that very reason: we want to bring this important topic into disciplinary discussion, to push our collcagues to take seriously the global trend toward privatizing security and military affairs as something that really matters to contemporary societies and to social life…”

NY. Palgrave Macmillan. 2009. 292p.

Detroit Project Safe Neighborhoods: Final Evaluation Report

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.