By The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF)

When a police officer or sheriff’s deputy is killed in the line of duty, either in an act of violence by a criminal offender or in a motor vehicle crash or other accident, there is a time-honored response. Agencies conduct a thorough investigation to understand every detail of what happened, how it happened, and why. There is typically extensive news media coverage of the tragedy, and police executives and other leaders speak about the incident and the fallen officer. Officers are laid to rest with honors, and their survivors can receive emotional support and financial assistance through a combination of local, state, and federal programs. At the national level, the FBI, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, and other groups collect detailed data about line-of-duty deaths—how, when, and where they occurred—and these organizations issue periodic reports examining trends in officer fatalities. This information is used to develop policies, new training programs, and procurement of equipment that can help keep officers safe and prevent tragedies in the future.  

Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, 2019. 72p.

By The International Association of Chiefs of Police

This guide provides evidence-based policing practices (EBPP) for small, rural, and tribal agencies. The information comes from published research studies and working group conversations with command staff from various small, rural, and tribal agencies. In this guide, we use the terms small and rural or small, rural, and tribal broadly. The types of agencies that fall within these categories vary in terms of size, crime rates and types, and community characteristics. More than 12,000 local police agencies in the United States are “small” or serve small populations—75 percent employ fewer than 25 sworn officers, and 71 percent serve populations of fewer than 10,000 residents (Hyland and Davis 2019). However, not all small agencies serve rural communities. For example, some small agencies serve independent towns within densely populated metropolitan areas. On the other hand, some county police agencies with hundreds of sworn officers serve predominantly rural communities (e.g., Yang et al. 2018). Police agencies that serve tribal communities operate within a unique cultural, historical, and legal context. While we use the terms small, rural, and tribal somewhat interchangeably, the main guiding principle for police agencies trying to implement evidence-based policing is that strategies, interventions, and practices must be specific, tailored, and based on the best available information relevant to the department and jurisdiction. This is with the understanding that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.   

Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2021. 64p.

By Stephen Rushin

Before punishing an officer for professional misconduct, police departments often provide the officer with an opportunity to file an appeal. In many police departments, this appeals process culminates in a hearing before an arbitrator. While numerous media reports have suggested that arbitrators regularly overturn or reduce discipline, little legal research has comprehensively examined the outcomes of police disciplinary appeals across the United States. In order to better understand the use of arbitration in police disciplinary appeals and build on prior research, this Article draws on a dataset of 624 arbitration awards issued between 2006 and 2020 from a diverse range of law enforcement agencies. It finds that arbitrators on appeal reduced or overturned police officer discipline in 52% of these cases. In 46% of cases involving termination, arbitrators ordered police departments to rehire previously terminated officers. On average, arbitrators reduced the length of officer suspensions by approximately 49%. Arbitrators gave several common justifications for reductions in officer discipline. Frequently, arbitrators found the original discipline to be excessive relative to the offense committed or relative to punishments received by other officers. In a somewhat smaller number of cases, arbitrators cited insufficient evidence or procedural flaws in the investigation or adjudication of the original internal disciplinary process. This Article concludes by considering the implications of these findings for the literature on police accountability. It also considers emerging efforts in states like Minnesota and…..

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  Oregon to reform police arbitration procedures in order to better balance officers' interests in due process with the public's interest in accountability.   

Chicago: Loyola University Chicago, School of Law, 2021. 57p.

By Kirat Kaur Kalyan & Peter Keeling  

It is irrefutable that citizens should enjoy freedom of movement and an expectation of an uninterrupted private life; these protections underpin our democracy and uphold our fundamental human rights. These expectations are acutely relevant to the use of stop and search and it is essential that all powers exercised by the police are used lawfully, only when necessary and are proportionate, but more importantly, that they are seen to be so. The assessment and recommendations set out in this report provide a valuable commentary on the expectations communities have as to how the police should operate when tackling violent crime and upholding the law, as well as providing an important reminder that policing is underpinned by public consent. As well as providing a constructive interpretation on the value of stop and search powers and the importance of active monitoring arrangements, the report provides helpful examples of where police forces and communities have successfully come together to stimulate improvements in police operational activity as well as promote confidence that officers are acting in the public interest and with proper regard to the Codes of Conduct that govern their powers and the use of force.

London: Criminal Justice Alliance,  2019.  24p.

By Amal Ali and Nina Champion

  It is widely accepted that policing is most effective when it secures the co-operation, trust, and confidence of the public. The police themselves recognise that these features are critical to their relationship with the public and form an important part of their day-to-day working culture. This co-operation, trust and confidence is being undermined by unfair and disproportionate stop and search practices. Such practices cause alarm and distress to members of the public, damage trust and confidence in policing, and make the police’s job more difficult overall. We therefore believe that due to the harms outlined in this report, the government must urgently repeal the harmful s.60 police power and instead invest in working with communities to improve trust and confidence and tackle the root causes of violent crime. Furthermore, insufficient scrutiny of stop and search powers means that the police are not effectively being held to account where there is evidence of unfair and discriminatory use of these powers. Fair and effective community scrutiny for all police forces should be mandated, adequately resourced and supported by an independent national body. Section 60 (s.60) of the Criminal Justice and Public Order (CJPO) Act 1994 allows a constable in uniform to stop and search any pedestrian, or any vehicle for offensive weapons or dangerous instruments. This legislation was originally introduced to tackle football hooliganism and the threat of serious violence at football games. Today, s.60 permits officers to search a person or vehicle in anticipation of violence if an officer of or above…..

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  the rank of inspector ‘reasonably believes that incidents involving serious violence may take place in any locality’. These powers are only to be authorised in a designated area for a specific period of time.

London: Criminal Justice Alliance, 2021.  38p.

By The National Police Foundation

A National Police Foundation Report to the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners on the Los Angeles Police Department Response to First Amendment Assemblies and Protests Occurring May 27 – June 7, 2020

The past year, 2020, was by many measures an unprecedented year. The COVID-19 pandemic, political discourse and rising tensions amid ideological divisions, public frustration and anxiety, and a growing intensity and spotlight on racial justice took center stage in communities across the United States. Then, the May 25, 2020, death of George Floyd3 ignited protests and civil unrest. The protests spanned across communities large and small and engaged a broad spectrum of people across racial and ethnic divides4 . Similar protests in cities and communities – large and small, urban and suburban, East and West—across the United States voiced mistrust and frustration regarding police interactions within communities of color as well as the growing tension, not just within those communities, but in all communities. Protests were amplified and tensions heightened as the issues became a part of the national political debate.  

Arlington, VA: National Police Foundation, 2021. 114p.

By Helena Wood and Karen Baxter

In 2022, escalating levels of fraud and the spotlight placed on the UK’s role in Russia-related money laundering have given rise to a growing recognition of economic crime as a national security threat and the need to reform the UK’s economic crime policing response. This report seeks to contribute to that debate by proposing a national security-based model that draws on the key characteristics of three other national security policing responses – counterterrorism, serious and organised crime, and cybercrime – and adapts these to the specific challenges and context of economic crime policing. The proposed model establishes a new set of core functions. It builds a strong central intelligence function, backed by a single policing command structure, to deliver the operational response via new proactive and ring-fenced investigative units at the regional tier of policing, aligned to existing serious and organised crime policing structures. 

London: RUSI -  Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, 2022.  40p.

By Andrew Bacher-Hicks and Elijah de la Campa

Millions of Americans—particularly young men of color—are stopped on the street by police
each year. This form of proactive policing has been embraced by cities across the country as a
way to maintain order in high-crime neighborhoods and deter more serious crimes before they
occur. However, civilian stops rarely lead to an arrest and little is known about the social
impacts of frequent, unproductive interactions with police. In this paper, we leverage the quasi-
random movement of New York City police commanders across police precincts to estimate the
net impact of stop and frisk policing on students’ long-run educational attainment. We find that
a commander’s predicted effects on stops—based on data from one precinct—is highly predictive of changes in average stops after that commander enters a new precinct. We find that increased exposure to police stops has negative effects on high school graduation, college enrollment, and college persistence. These effects are substantially larger for black students, the racial group overwhelmingly stopped by police. However, we also find increases in overall school safety and evidence of positive spillovers for white and Asian students, who are less likely to interact with the police directly. These results highlight the social effects of criminal justice policy and have important implications for inequality.

Working paper, 2020. 60p.

By National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Scholars, policymakers, and the public view police legitimacy and community trust in the police alike as essential components of an effective police organization. An extensive network of international and regional organizations, bilateral donors, international financial institutions, and civil society organizations aims to work with governments to improve policing practices and enhance police legitimacy. As a part of that network, the U.S. Department of State, through its Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), provides foreign assistance to and supports capacity building for criminal justice systems and police organizations in approximately 90 countries. Like many donors, it strives to direct its resources to the most effective approaches to achieve its mission. At the request of INL, the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened an ad hoc committee to review, assess, and reach consensus on existing evidence on policing institutions, police practices and capacities, and police legitimacy in the international context. The committee produced five reports, addressing questions of interest to INL and the State Department. Developing Policing Practices that Build Legitimacy, the fourth in this series, responds to the question: What policing practices build community trust and legitimacy in countries with low-to-moderate criminal justice sector capacity? This report focuses on the concept of legitimacy and ways of building legitimacy to foster this kind of trust and expectations.

Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2022. 66p.

By National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

The movement for evidence-based policing in the 1990s came on the heels of the concept of evidence-based medicine in the same decade, but with far less clinical research to apply in policing practices. Since then, police research findings have been growing at a rapid rate and have been reviewed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on repeated occasions in the last two decades. However, scant research findings have been reported at the country level, examining differences in police systems and policies across nations. In an era when the U.S. Congress has mandated better evidence to support public expenditure, the application of that mandate to overseas police development requires two responses. One is to do the best translation possible from existing research comparing differences between and within countries. The other is to map out research and action agendas that will promote the growth of new evidence to provide better guidance to policing in the international context. This report is the first of five by a committee with diverse kinds of policing expertise assembled for the task by the National Academies. All five of these reports will be completed at the request of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) Bureau of the U.S. Department of State. The committee was charged by INL to identify good practices in police reform. INL’s goal is for our reports to help ensure that ongoing U.S. foreign assistance for organizational police capacity building is informed by research. At the same time, INL seeks guidance from lessons learned from practitioners. Linking the two kinds of knowledge is an ongoing challenge in policing. Addressing this challenge requires a consensus-building process that identifies and then weighs the strength of relevant evidence, debates the conclusions, and engages a wide group of users to ensure that its presentation is relevant and accessible to them. The project, beginning with this report, offers a unique opportunity to unite the research and practitioner perspectives for actionable recommendations that can strengthen the assistance provided for international policing.

Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2022. 120p.

By Susannah N. Tapp and Elizabeth J. Davis

In 2020, an estimated 21% of U.S. residents age 16 or older (about 53.8 million persons) reported experiencing contact with police during the past 12 months (figure 1), down from 24% in 2018. Approximately 10% of residents had experienced a police-initiated contact in 2020, while 11% experienced a resident-initiated contact and 3% were involved in a traffic accident that led to a police contact. Findings in this report are based on data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) 2020 Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS), with selected data from the 2018 and 2015 PPCS data collections. The PPCS is a supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which collects information from a nationally representative sample of persons age 12 or older in U.S. households. The PPCS collects information from persons age 16 or older on nonfatal contacts with police during the 12 months prior to the interview. Police contacts were classified by the year of the survey and not by the year of the contact.

Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2022. 25p.

By Andrew Bacher-Hicks and Elijah de la Campa

In an effort to thwart crimes in progress and deter future incidents, police in the US conduct
millions of civilian street stops each year. Though this practice is commonplace in most large
urban police departments, little is known about the net impact of this strategy on crime. This
paper exploits the naturally-occurring movement of New York Police Department commanders
during the height of New York City’s Stop and Frisk program to estimate commanders’ effects on
civilian stops and their subsequent impact on crime. We generate predictions of commanders’ effects on stops in a precinct, conditional on neighborhood demographics, crime rates, and policing strategies. Commanders’ effects—estimated using data only from tenures in prior precincts—are highly predictive of observed stops in new precincts, which highlights the transferability of commanders’ tactical preference for stops. We find that a high-stop strategy decreases misdemeanor crime within a precinct, but has no effect on more serious felony offenses. Moreover, we find suggestive evidence that the decrease in misdemeanor offenses is partially offset by crime displacement to adjacent neighborhoods. We conclude by demonstrating that commander stop effects are uncorrelated with their effects on other proactive policing strategies, and that commanders trade off their ability to build police legitimacy in the community with their preference for stops. Contrary to broken windows theory, our findings suggest that stop and frisk tactics do not deter more

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  serious criminal behavior, and thus, police should consider alternatives to strategies that emphasize the proactive enforcement of low-level offenses.

Unpublished paper 2020. 71p.

By Peter Manning

With the rise of surveillance technology in the last decade, police departments now have an array of sophisticated tools for tracking, monitoring, even predicting crime patterns. In particular crime mapping, a technique used by the police to monitor crime by the neighborhoods in their geographic regions, has become a regular and relied-upon feature of policing. Many claim that these technological developments played a role in the crime drop of the 1990s, and yet no study of these techniques and their relationship to everyday police work has been made available. Noted scholar Peter K. Manning spent six years observing three American police departments and two British constabularies in order to determine what effects these kinds of analytic tools have had on modern police management and practices. While modern technology allows the police to combat crime in sophisticated, detail-oriented ways, Manning discovers that police strategies and tactics have not been altogether transformed as perhaps would be expected. In The Technology of Policing, Manning untangles the varying kinds of complex crime-control rhetoric that underlie much of today's police department discussion and management, and provides valuable insight into which are the most effective—and which may be harmful--in successfully tracking criminal behavior.

New York: New York University Press, 2011. 338p.

By Julie Grieco and Teresina G. Robbins

Several high-profile officer-involved shootings (OIS) in 2014 and 2015 stimulated a national debate and exposed the absence of reliable national data on police use of deadly force. To begin exploring this issue, the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) first asked their members to provide the number of OIS for their agencies for the years 2005-2015. While helpful in understanding the trends and frequency of these incidents, this data alone provides no insight into the circumstances of the encounters between officers and members of the public. To help develop a better understanding of these interactions, MCCA and the National Policing Institute (NPI) entered into a partnership in 2015 to collect more detailed OIS data. The partnership had two primary objectives. The first was to provide a basis for a more accurate and reliable estimate of firearm use by police officers in major cities. The second, covered in this report, was to provide better insight into OIS situations and, through the analysis of the data, improve officer safety and accountability. After developing a tool and a process, OIS data collection was launched in late March 2015. The NPI and the MCCA have developed three executive summaries on this project to share the information with practitioners on 1006 cases involving 1605 officers in 47 MCCA US agencies for the years 2015 to 2017. The first focuses on OIS incident characteristics. The second presents the findings of an analysis of officer-involved shooting incidents in the major cities. It looks at factors involved such as location, officer and suspect characteristics,

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  injuries, agency response to OIS, and issues in OIS data collection. The third is a broader discussion of OIS incidents, how their data are captured within law enforcement, and the gaps in our understanding of these encounters.

Alexandria, VA: Policing Institute, New York: Arnold Ventures, 2019. 65p.

By Canice Prendergast

We study LAPD police reforms after the Rampart scandal, when formal oversight rose discretely in 1998, and then fell in late 2002. We offer a simple model to interpret how police behavior is affected by changed accountability to the public. We show how officers responded by a practice they labeled “drive and wave”. The arrest-to-crime rate fell 40% after accountability to the public rose, then rebounded to its original level when accountability fell. For the “victimless” crimes of narcotics and prostitution, arrests fall almost 50% and then rebound. No such effects arise for the Los Angeles Sheriff Department, even for those stations surrounded by areas policed by the LAPD. We also see no effects on arrests made by other agencies within the LAPD’s jurisdiction. This impact was greatest in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods, and felt least in White communities. Other behavioral responses - use of force and street stops - tell a similar story. We argue that much of the response may be attributable to an imbalance between oversight done by suspects compared to that done by the victims of crime. We also document an impact on homicides.

Chicago: University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, 2021. 63p.

By Taeho Kim

Body-worn cameras (BWCs) have received extensive attention as a key reform to restore police legitimacy. I study the causal effects of BWCs on law enforcement outcomes by conducting a nationwide study of BWCs across 947 agencies that adopted BWCs between 2014 and 2016 in the US. I find that BWCs led to decreases in the use of force but the increased oversight did not reduce crime control activities. By examining social media usage from Twitter, I also find suggestive evidence that BWC adoption has improved public opinion toward the police.

Unpublished paper, 2019. 84p.

By Cynthia Lum, Christopher S. Koper, David B. Wilson, Megan Stoltz, Michael Goodier, Elizabeth Eggins, Angela Higginson, Lorraine Mazerolle

Body-worn cameras do not have clear or consistent effects on most officer or citizen behaviors, but different practices need further evaluation. Law enforcement agencies have rapidly adopted body-worn cameras (BWCs) in the last decade with the hope that they might improve police conduct, accountability, and transparency, especially regarding use of force. Overall, there remains substantial uncertainty about whether BWCs can reduce officer use of force, but the variation in results over studies suggests there may be conditions in which BWC could be effective. BWCs also do not seem to affect other police and citizen behaviors in a consistent manner, including officers’ self-initiated activities or arrest behaviors, dispatched calls for service, or assaults and resistance against police officers. BWCs can reduce the number of citizen complaints against police officers, but it is unclear whether this finding signals an improvement in the quality of police-citizen interactions or a change in reporting. Research has not directly addressed whether BWCs can strengthen police accountability systems or police-citizen relationships.

Campbell Systematic Review, 2020. 40p.

By The International Association of Chiefs of Policy (IACP)

As part of our long-standing commitment to advancing the profession of law enforcement and the practice of policing, eleven leading law enforcement leadership and labor organizations continued their work to provide guidance to the law enforcement profession on de-escalation techniques, less-lethal force, and deadly force. The extensive work of the participating organizations resulted in the development of a companion Discussion Paper to supplement the Consensus Policy on Use of Force that was originally published in 2017 and updated in 2020. The combined document represents our collaborative efforts to advance the law enforcement profession, while upholding our commitment and duty to serve the public and preserve all human life. The National Consensus Discussion Paper on Use of Force is designed to provide essential background material and supporting documentation to promote greater understanding of the developmental philosophy and implementation guidelines for the Consensus Policy. Law agencies are encouraged to utilize the Discussion Paper and the information contained therein to better inform their decisions on whether to implement the various elements found in the Consensus Policy in their own agencies.

Alexandria, VA: IACP, 2020. 16p.

By Li Sian Goh

Despite the widespread implementation of new policies intended at reducing police officers’ use of force in encounters with civilians, evidence about these policies remains patchy. Consisting of a series of three papers, my dissertation seeks to contribute to the body of knowledge on measures to reduce police use of force. The first paper considers the effect of consent decrees and other forms of federal intervention on fatalities resulting from citizen encounters with the police. Using a panel dataset of deaths caused by the police between the years 2000 and 2016, a difference-in-differences analysis found that court-appointed monitorships reduced fatalities by 29.1%. The second paper examines the effect of departmental oversight over body-worn cameras on officer-involved shootings. Using a panel dataset of police departments in 36 large departments across the United States, a difference-in-differences analysis finds that while the presence of body-worn cameras alone did not reduce shootings, restricting officer discretion on when cameras should be activated reduced shootings by 33.3%. The final paper evaluates the effect of a de-escalation training program. A difference-in-differences analysis of individual officers revealed no significant changes in serious force levels between officers who had been trained and officers who had not been trained. However, an analysis comparing the department which implemented the training with other law enforcement agencies in the same state suggested that serious force rates declined by approximately 40%. In totality, the dissertation

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  provides evidence about the effectiveness of contemporary measures to reduce use of force.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2020. 171p.

By Julie Ciccolini, Ida Sawyer and Madeline de Figueiredo

On June 4, 2020, New York City police carried out a planned assault and mass arrests of peaceful protesters in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx, a low-income Black and brown community that has long faced systemic racism and police brutality. The operation was among the most aggressive police responses to protests across the United States following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25. About 10 minutes before the 8 p.m. curfew, scores of police officers surrounded and trapped the roughly 300 protesters, not allowing them to disperse. Just after 8 p.m., the police, unprovoked and without warning, advanced on the protesters, whaling their batons, beating people from car tops, and firing pepper spray into people’s faces before rounding up about 250 of them for arrest. Clearly identifiable legal observers and street medics were also targeted. “Kettling” Protesters in the Bronx, based on interviews or written accounts from 81 protesters and observers and analysis of 155 videos recorded during the protest, reveals how the police action in Mott Haven was deliberate, planned and in violation of international human rights law. The operation illustrates a culture within the New York police force, modeled by top commanders, that encourages and condones violence and abuse. The report describes the government’s ineffective accountability mechanisms that protect police officers, shows the shortcomings of incremental reforms, and makes the case for structural change.

New York: Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, 2020. 114p.