By Patrick Naef

Although the use of resilience in international relations and urban planning has given rise to a growing body of critical research, this contested concept continues to feature prominently in the conversation on the development of cities. Taking the 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) network pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation as a case study, this article exposes some of the challenges inherent in the implementation of a global model of resilience. Exploring initiatives related to violence prevention in the member cities of Medellin, Cali (Colombia), Chicago (United States), and Belfast (Northern Ireland), this study will look at the practices of resilience officers, a position created by the 100RC network, and determine whether it can be considered as a new profession in the field of resilience planning. It will also use urban resilience to question the category of global cities, by suggesting that networks centered on resilience can serve as globalizing agents for “ordinary cities” (Robinson 2006). Finally, this article maintains that although the flexible and elusive definition promoted by 100RC facilitated a global circulation of the concept, its one-size-fits-all approach implied significant challenges and led in some cases to its depoliticization.

Annals of the American Association of Geographers 2022.

By Mike Males

California is not “defunding the police” nor implementing lenient criminal justice reforms – just the opposite. State spending on law enforcement has risen sharply, even after adjustments for inflation and population growth. The odds of being imprisoned per arrest have risen to near-record heights. However, despite record spending on California law enforcement agencies in recent years, one of the core measures of law enforcement effectiveness— crime clearance rates — has fallen to historically low levels. An agency’s clearance rate is the share of Part I violent and property crimes2 that are considered solved after law enforcement makes an arrest. Over the past three decades, these clearance rates fell by 41%, from a 22.3% clearance rate in 1990 to 13.2% in 2022, which equates to fewer than one in seven crimes solved (Figure 1, Table 1). California’s decline in overall clearance rates has been driven by falling property felony clearances (-59%), though the solve rate for violent felonies also fell during the 1990 – 2022 period (-14%).

San Francisco, Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. 2024, 8pg

By Mary Iliadis, Bridget Harris, Zarina Vakhitova, Delanie Woodlock, Asher Flynn and Danielle Tyson

Police body-worn camera (BWC) technologies—affixed to a vest, sunglasses or cap—are deployed by all Australian police agencies, including in frontline responses to domestic and family violence (DFV). This paper presents the findings from the first Australian study focused on how women DFV victim-survivors view and experience BWCs in police call-outs and legal proceedings. Informed by a national survey of 119 victim-survivors, it explores two key concerns relating to the potential consequences of BWC footage: (1) it may facilitate misidentification of the primary aggressor, and (2) perpetrators may use the BWC to present (false) evidence of themselves as blameless.

Australia, Australian Institute of Criminology. 2024, 15pg

By Roseanna Sommers, Vanessa K. Bohns

Most police searches today are authorized by citizens' consent, rather than probable cause or reasonable suspicion. The main constitutional limitation on so-called “consent searches” is the voluntariness test: whether a reasonable person would have felt free to refuse the officer's request to conduct the search. We investigate whether this legal inquiry is subject to a systematic bias whereby uninvolved decision-makers overstate the voluntariness of consent and underestimate the psychological pressure individuals feel to comply. We find evidence for a robust bias extending to requests, tasks, and populations that have not been examined previously. Across three pre-registered experiments, we approached participants (“Experiencers”) with intrusive search requests and measured their behavioral compliance and self-reported feelings of psychological freedom. Another group of participants (“Forecasters”) reported whether they would comply if hypothetically placed in the same situation. Study 1 investigated participants' willingness to allow experimenters access to their unlocked personal smartphones in order to read through the search histories on their web browsers—a private sphere where many individuals feel they have something to hide. Results revealed that whereas 27% of Forecasters reported they would permit such a search, 92% of Experiencers complied when asked. Study 2 replicated this underestimation-of-compliance effect when individuals were asked to permit a search of their purses, backpacks, and other bags—traditional searches not eligible for the heightened legal protection extended to digital devices. Study 3 replicated the gap between Forecasters' projections and Experiencers' behavior in a more representative sample, and found it persists even when participants' predictions are incentivized monetarily.

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Volume21, Issue1, March 2024, Pages 4-34

By Rafael A. Mangual

After a long period of continuous violent-crime declines throughout the U.S.—spanning from the mid-1990s through the early 2010s—many American cities are now seeing significant increases in violence. Nationally, in 2015 and 2016, murders rose nearly 11% and 8%, respectively. The national homicide rate declined slightly in 2017 and 2018, before ticking upward in 2019. In 2020, the nation saw its largest single-year spike in homicides in at least 100 years—which was followed by another increase in murders in 2021, according to CDC data and FBI estimates. In the last few years, a number of cities have seen murders hit an all-time high. In addition to homicides, the risk of other types of violent victimizations rose significantly, as well. While various analyses estimated a slight decline in homicides for the country in 2022, many American cities still find themselves dealing with levels of violence far higher than they were a decade ago. While violent crime—particularly murder—is the most serious due in large part to its social costs, there have also been worrying increases in crimes such as retail theft, carjacking, and auto theft, as well as in other visible signs of disorder in public spaces (from open-air drug use and public urination to illegal street racing and large-scale looting and riots). Although several contributing factors are likely, this general deterioration in public safety and order was unquestionably preceded and accompanied by a virtually unidirectional shift toward leniency and away from accountability in the policing, prosecutorial, and criminal-justice policy spaces. That shift is evidenced by, among other things, three major trends in enforcement: • A 25% decline in the number of those imprisoned during 2011–2212 • A 15% decline in the number of those held in jail during 2010–2113 • A 26% decline in the number of arrests effected by law-enforcement officers during 2009–1914 Notable contributing factors to the decline in enforcement include: • A sharp uptick in public scrutiny and interventions—in the form of investigations and legal action taken by state attorneys general and the federal Department of Justice—against local law-enforcement agencies • The worsening of an ongoing police recruitment and retention crisis, particularly in large urban departments • The electoral success of the so-called progressive prosecutor movement, which, by 2022, had won seats in 75 jurisdictions, representing more than 72 million U.S. residents • Perhaps most important, the adoption of a slew of criminal-justice and policing reform measures at all levels of government Those who are skeptical of the criminal-justice reform movement have devoted most of their efforts to arguing against the movement’s excesses and explaining why it would be unwise to enact certain measures. Less effort has been devoted to the extremely important task of articulating a positive agenda for regaining what has been lost on the safety and order front. This paper seeks to add to that positive agenda for safety by proposing three model policies that, if adopted, would help, directly and indirectly, stem the tide of rising crime and violence, primarily by maximizing the benefits that attend the incapacitation of serious criminals (especially repeat offenders) and by encouraging the collection and public reporting of data that can inform the public about the downside risks that are glossed over by decarceration and depolicing activists.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2023. 19p.

By Justice Policy Institute

A nearly decade-long failure of the Bowser Administration to fund and implement evidence-based strategies to prevent violence and strengthen communities has contributed to the context for increased crime and violence. Missed Opportunities: Why Inaction on Preventative Measures Undermines Public Safety in Washington, DC uncovers recent trend of a lack of leadership on proactive public safety strategies, instability in key executive agencies, and little coordination of efforts by government officials that have left the District ill-prepared to respond to alarming increases in some crimes. The brief offers a series of recommendations for District leadership:

– Improve the coordination between agencies working to prevent and address violent crime;

– Focus comprehensive resources on the specific people at the center of violence;

– Implement a holistic public health approach to violence prevention and intervention and invest in supports and services in communities;

– Fund efforts to build community trust and efficacy in policing; and

– Evaluate and sustain effective programs and initiatives.

United States, Justice Policy. 2023, 16pg

By Justin Nix, Jessica Huff

Many U.S. cities witnessed both de-policing and increased crime in 2020, yet whether the former con-tributed to the latter remains unclear. Indeed, much of what is known about the effects of proactive policing on crime comes from studies that evaluated highly focused interventions atypical of day-to-day policing,used cities as the unit of analysis, or could not rule out endogeneity. This study addresses each of these issues,thereby advancing the evidence base concerning the effects of policing on crime. Leveraging two exogenous shocks presented by the onset of the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and social unrest after the mur-der of George Floyd, we evaluated the effects of sudden and sustained reductions in high-discretion policing on crime at the neighborhood level in Denver, Colorado.Multilevel models accounting for trends in prior police activity, neighborhood structure, seasonality, and popu-lation mobility revealed mixed results. On the one hand,large-scale reductions in stops and drug-related arrests were associated with significant increases in violentThis is an open access article under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivsLicense, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made and property crimes, respectively. On the other hand,fewer disorder arrests did not affect crime. These results were not universal across neighborhoods. We discuss the implications of these findings in light of debates concerning the appropriate role of policing in the 21st century.

United States, Criminology. 2023, 16pg

By Ralph Rector, David Muhlhausen and Dexter Ingram

One of President Bill Clinton's priorities when taking office was to put 100,000 additional police officers on America's streets to help fight crime. On September 13, 1994, the President signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (P.L. 103-322), authorizing the Attorney General to implement a six-year, $8.8 billion grant program to enable state and local law enforcement agencies to hire or redeploy 100,000 additional officers for community policing efforts.11 Attorney General Janet Reno announced the establishment of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) in October 1994 to administer these grants. Since then, the COPS program has developed into a set of different federal grants that had cost American taxpayers $7.5 billion by the end of fiscal year (FY) 2000.12 It is reasonable for policymakers, community leaders, and taxpayers to question how effective the COPS program has been in meeting its objective of placing 100,000 additional police officers on the street.13 As recently as August 14, 2000, President Clinton reaffirmed this objective and then took credit for having succeeded in placing "more than 100,000 new community police officers" on the streets14 (though in congressional testimony, the COPS Office sometimes redefines the objective of the program to be the funding of 100,000 officers).15 This objective has been closely tied to the overarching goal of reducing crime.16 To meet this objective, it is reasonable to expect COPS grants to be targeted to the communities most plagued by violent crime. At a fundamental level, the issue of whether or not the COPS program has indeed achieved its goals can be addressed by analyzing two assertions: 1. More Police. Many of the supporters of the COPS initiative assert that its grants are responsible for adding 100,000 police officers to community patrols. To test for the accuracy of this assertion, Heritage analysts estimated the number of new police. 2. Lower Crime. Supporters also assert that the COPS program awarded grants to the communities with the greatest need. Heritage analysts tested the accuracy of this assertion by examining awards in terms of per capita population and crime rates. Confounding the goal of putting 100,000 additional police officers on the street is the possibility that recipients will supplant the funds--substitute funds from one source for another. In the case of COPS grants, supplanting occurs when state and local governments use program funds to hire officers they would have hired using their own money if the COPS program did not exist.17 In the 1994 Crime Act, Congress specifically prohibited states and local governments from using federal funds to supplant local funds.18 Determining whether supplanting has in fact occurred is necessary for the effectiveness of the program to be evaluated accurately. How well the Justice Department has allocated the COPS funding can be discerned by analyzing crime rates and population sizes for communities that received the grants, as well as by observing the concentration of grants among law enforcement agencies. Thus, determining whether the COPS grants went primarily to communities that have high violent crime rates, rather than to safer communities, is important to the analysis. To answer these questions, Heritage analysts first combined U.S. Department of Justice data on the COPS grants that have been awarded to police agencies across the country with data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports on violent crime, officer employment, and population. This merged micro-database makes possible an analysis of crime rates and COPS grants on an agency-by-agency basis.

Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation, 2000, 28p.

By Alexander Landry, James Druckman, and Robb Willer

Recent, high-profile acts of partisan violence have stimulated interest among academics and the general public in the etiology of support for such violence. Here, Landry, Druckman, and Willer report results of an exploratory study that (1) measures support for partisan violence with both abstract items (e.g., general support for partisan violence) and support for more specific acts (e.g., support for a partisan motivated shooting), (2) follows recently established best practices by including attention checks to attenuate response bias, and (3) incorporates measures of a wide range of potential confounders as control variables. Across three data collections (total N = 2,003), including two with nationally representative samples, and tracking seven unique operationalizations of support for the use of violence against out-partisans, they find the most consistent and typically largest relationships with an individual’s reported “need for chaos” (e.g., agreement with statements like: “Sometimes I just feel like destroying beautiful things”) and the extent to which they dehumanize supporters of the opposing party. The researchers speculate this reflects a motivation to use extreme methods (need for chaos) toward one’s political rivals, liberated from the moral restraints that inhibit harming fellow human beings (dehumanization). System justification and social dominance orientation were also both positively related to support for partisan violence, which may reflect partisans’ desire to protect their preferred social order from out-partisans deemed to threaten it. Collectively, these results offer a framework for future research on support for partisan violence, highlighting the role of extreme orientations toward society and rival partisans.

Evanston, IL: Institute for Policy Research,  Northwestern University, 2023. 56p

By Felipe Gonçalves, Elisa Jácome, and Emily Weisburst

How does immigration enforcement affect public safety? Heightened enforcement could reduce crime by deterring and incapacitating immigrant offenders or, alternatively, increase crime by discouraging victims from reporting offenses. The researchers study the U.S. Secure Communities program, which expanded interior enforcement against unauthorized immigrants. Using national survey data, they find that the program reduced the likelihood that Hispanic victims reported crimes to police and increased the victimization of Hispanics. Total reported crimes are unchanged, masking these opposing effects. The researchers provide evidence that reduced Hispanic reporting is the key driver of increased victimization. Their findings underscore the importance of trust in institutions as a central determinant of public safety.

Evanston, IL: Institute for Policy Research,  Northwestern University, 2024. 95p.

By Gabrielle T. Isaza,  Robin S. Engel,  Nicholas Corsaro,  M. Murat Ozer

  This report summarizes the details of a problem analysis conducted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police/University of Cincinnati (IACP/UC) Center for Police Research and Policy (the “Center”) on domestic violence patterns for the Tulsa Police Department (TPD). The TPD identified domestic violence as an area requiring further understanding given the seriousness of the crime, and frequency as measured by citizen-generated calls for service. For the TPD, domestic violence-related incidents represent their third most frequent call for service, consuming substantial police resources. Prior to recommending an appropriate intervention strategy to reduce domestic violence, it is critical to better understand details regarding the specific domestic violence problem in Tulsa. For police agencies, a problem analysis includes the systematic examination of the underlying conditions of local problems they are tasked with solving. Problem analyses generally rely on information gathered from various sources, and should include examinations of both qualitative and quantitative data. The problem analysis process is critical for developing solutions that fit the problem in each community, because what works in one jurisdiction may not fit a similar problem in another setting (Boba, 2003). The following study documents a problem analysis based on a series of statistical analyses conducted on five-years of domestic violence data reported to the TPD (2013-2017) and victimization data gathered by the Family Service Center in Tulsa. Domestic violence is defined as an incidence of assault and battery against individuals connected to the suspect by one of fifteen different categories of relationship (see Oklahoma Statute §21-644). These variations in relationships cover both common (e.g. husband-wife or child-parent) and seemingly more distant (e.g. spouse-former spouse of partner or former roommate) relationships between individuals. Unfortunately, the automated data used by the TPD does not include a field for the relationship between the victim and offender. TPD data included reports for incidents, arrests, victims, calls for service, and field interview reports. These analyses were supplemented with domestic victimization data provided from the Family Service Center. The main findings of this problem analysis are summarized below. . Domestic violence-related calls for service were the third most frequent call received by the TPD (n=109,623; preceded by traffic stops and alarms) between 2013 and 2017. These reports were relatively stable over the five-year period, with an average of 21,942 calls per year. . Citizen-generated indicators of domestic violence (i.e. calls for service and incident reports) remained relatively stable over the five-year period, while the TPD-generated responses (i.e. FIR and arrest) to these crimes decreased noticeably over the same period of time. Arrests for domestic violence declined by 40.9% from 2013 to 2017, and FIRS similarly declined by 46.8% from 2013 to 2017.. TPD-generated incident reports indicate that 84.5% (n=13,381) of identified suspects were suspected of only committing one domestic violence offense, whereas 15.5% (n=2,447) were suspected of committing two or more offenses. . TPD-generated victimization reports indicate 83.8% (n=15,564) individuals were victimized once, and 16.2% (n=3,008) were victimized two or more times. . These findings demonstrate that the “repeat phenomenon” of domestic violence victimization in Tulsa is similar between victims and suspects. That is, victims are just as likely to be victimized more than once (16.2%) compared to offenders involved in more than one offense (15.5%). . Victimization data provided by the Family Safety Center indicates large increases in the number of services provided (180.6% increase) and the number of individuals receiving services (118.1% increase), likely due to the expansion of victim-services provided in Tulsa during the five-year study time period. Note that the increase of use of victim services is inconsistent with the downward trend in TPD domestic violence arrests. . Data from the FSC also indicates that the percentage of Black victims receiving FSC services (19.3%) was lower than expected given the victimization data captured by the TPD (31.6% for single incidents and 40.6% for repeat incidents), suggesting that Black domestic violence victims may be less likely to request or to receive services. . Analyses also show that 15.5% (n= 2,447) of the individuals suspected of domestic violence offenses were repeat offenders, and they accounted for 23.2% of the domestic violence incidents reported during the study period. . When offenders did commit a subsequent domestic violence offense for which an arrest occurred, the time between arrests was extremely long (an average of over 500 days). However, as the number of repeat domestic violence offenses increase per an offender, the number of days between these arrests decreases. Nonetheless, the average time between offenses is substantially long, indicating that focused deterrence approaches to repeat domestic violence offenders may not be effective in Tulsa (Sechrist, Weil, and Shelton, 2016).  Police data demonstrate that while a person was a victim in one incident, the same person was also commonly reported as the suspect in another domestic violence incident. Approximately 3,205 unique victims (17.2% of all domestic victims) were also charged as a suspect in a different domestic violence case.  Approximately 15% (8 out of 53) of offenders in domestic violence homicide incidents had a previous arrest for domestic violence.  A review of the relationship between the victim and suspect identified in the field interview reports indicates that the most common relationship type is current spouse/cohabitant (43.3%), followed by former spouse/cohabitant (20.3%), and dating (18.0%). Very few cases involve other types of relationships.  Field interview reports (FIR) revealed a substantial number of cases (36.7%), which involve the suspect threatening a future action—these represent an avenue for follow-up by TPD officer   

Cincinnati: International Association of Chief of Police (IACP) / University of Cincinnati (UC) Center for Police Research and Policy. 2019. 41p.

By John R. "Rick" Brown, Robin S. Engel, et al.

The Colorado Springs Police Department (CSPD) commissioned this report in partnership with the City of Colorado Springs to provide a proactive, independent systematic review of the patterns and trends associated with use of force by the CSPD. In response to Request for Proposal, Consultant Services (R20-093 IP), Assessment of Colorado Springs Police Department’s Use of Force released on July 20, 2020, the Transparency Matters, LLC (hereafter TMLLC) team was selected to complete this work. This report documents the results from comprehensive analyses of use of force incidents reported by the CSPD, specifically focusing on understanding how, when, why, and against whom officers use force, as well as the context of police encounters with the public, from both the community and officer perspectives. The purpose of this study is to examine current practices and identify opportunities to reduce the frequency and severity of use of force incidents, racial/ethnic disparities in force, and injuries to both officers and citizens through improvements to policies, training, and supervision. This report includes nine sections: (1) Introduction, (2) Review of CSPD Policies and Practices, (3) Data and Research Methods, (4) Physical Force and Weapons Used, (5) Types of Force, Force Effectiveness, and Injuries, (6) Pointing of Firearms, (7) Community Perspectives, (8) CSPD Officer Perspectives, and (9) Recommendations. This executive summary provides an overview of the primary findings from each of these report sections. 

Lancaster, PA:Transparency Matters and University of Cincinnati, 2022. 280p

By National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Facial recognition technology is increasingly used for identity verification and identification, from aiding law enforcement investigations to identifying potential security threats at large venues. However, advances in this technology have outpaced laws and regulations, raising significant concerns related to equity, privacy, and civil liberties. This report explores the current capabilities, future possibilities, and necessary governance for facial recognition technology. Facial Recognition Technology discusses legal, societal, and ethical implications of the technology, and recommends ways that federal agencies and others developing and deploying the technology can mitigate potential harms and enact more comprehensive safeguards.

Washington, DC: Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 2024. 120p.

By Institute for Intergovernmental Research

 This publication presents abbreviated case studies of large and small law enforcement agencies that have undergone or are currently conducting change initiatives to address a wide range of pressing issues common to law enforcement, such as backlogged sexual assault cases, lack of community trust, inadequate information and intelligence sharing, and increases in violent or juvenile crime. These issues and others prompted change initiatives among the 13 agencies interviewed for this resource. In September 2022, executives from several of the case study agencies met in Washington, D.C., for a working session to provide additional insights learned through the change experience (see appendix A for a list of roundtable attendees). The experiences of these agencies are documented in this publication with the hope that law enforcement executives and managers will find the strategies, actions, and lessons learned helpful in adapting to changes in their internal and external environments.

Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. 2023. 60p.

By Grant Duwe

Key Points

• Programming dosage should be calibrated to risk, with higher-risk prisoners receiving longer, more intensive interventions.

• As program participation increases, recidivism generally decreases. Recidivism outcomes are significantly better when prisoners participate in multiple interventions or spend much of their imprisonment in programming.

• Back-loading programming closer to release from prison has been associated with better recidivism outcomes.

• Program sequencing may be effective for those who participate in multiple interventions.

Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 2019. 6p.

By Luca Maiotti and Rashad Abelson

This booklet provides practical answers to frequently asked questions relating to how companies can identify, prevent, mitigate and report on risks of contributing to bribery and corruption through their mineral sourcing. The OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas (“the Minerals Guidance”) provides due diligence recommendations on how all companies along mineral supply chains, from the miner to the final product manufacturer, should combat bribery and corruption linked to minerals production and trade (OECD, 2016a). The following FAQs do not represent new or additional guidance but aim to explain in simple terms the recommendations already set out in the Minerals Guidance and other OECD standards and best practice. Note, this booklet does not aspire to be an exhaustive stocktaking of all corruption issues and possible mitigation responses. This booklet provides practical answers to frequently asked questions relating to how companies can identify, prevent, mitigate and report on risks of contributing to bribery and corruption through their mineral sourcing. The OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas (“the Minerals Guidance”) provides due diligence recommendations on how all companies along mineral supply chains, from the miner to the final product manufacturer, should combat bribery and corruption linked to minerals production and trade (OECD, 2016a). The following FAQs do not represent new or additional guidance but aim to explain in simple terms the recommendations already set out in the Minerals Guidance and other OECD standards and best practice. Note, this booklet does not aspire to be an exhaustive stocktaking of all corruption issues and possible mitigation responses. 

Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development , OECD,  2021. 32p

By Jeffrey Fagan and Lila Nojima

Theories of rational behavior assume that actors make decisions where the benefits of their acts exceed their costs or losses. If those expected costs and benefits change over time, the behavior will change accordingly as actors learn and internalize the parameters of success and failure. In the context of proactive policing, police stops that achieve any of several goals—constitutional compliance, stops that lead to “good” arrests or summonses, stops that lead to seizures of weapons, drugs, or other contraband, or stops that produce good will and citizen cooperation—should signal to officers the features of a stop that increase its rewards or benefits. Having formed a subjective estimate of success (i.e., prior beliefs), officers should observe their outcomes in subsequent encounters and form updated probability estimates, with specific features of the event, with a positive weight on those features. Officers should also learn the features of unproductive stops and adjust accordingly. A rational actor would pursue “good” or “productive” stops and avoid “unproductive” stops by updating their knowledge of these features through experience. We analyze data on 4.9 million Terry stops in New York City from 2004–2016 to estimate the extent of updating by officers in the New York Police Department. We compare models using a frequentist analysis of officer behavior with a Bayesian analysis where subsequent events are weighted by the signals from prior events. By comparing productive and unproductive stops, the analysis estimates the weights or values—an experience effect—that officers assign to the signals of each type of stop outcome. We find evidence of updating using both analytic methods, although the “hit rates”—our measure of stop productivity including recovery of firearms or arrests for criminal behavior—remain low. Updating is independent of total officer stop activity each month, suggesting that learning may be selective and specific to certain stop features. However, hit rates decline as officer stop activity increases. Both updating and hit rates improved as stop rates declined following a series of internal memoranda and trial orders beginning in May 2012. There is also evidence of differential updating by officers conditional on a variety of features of prior and current stops, including suspect race and stop legality. Though our analysis is limited to NYPD stops, given the ubiquity of policing regimes of intensive stop and frisk encounters across the United States, the relevance of these findings reaches beyond New York City. These regimes reveal tensions between the Terry jurisprudence of reasonable suspicion and evidence on contemporary police practices across the country.

New York, NY: Columbia Public Law School, 2023, 61p.

By Srinivasan, Siddarth

From the document: "Over the last year, generative AI [artificial intelligence] tools have made the jump from research prototype to commercial product. Generative AI models like OpenAI's ChatGPT [Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer] [hyperlink] and Google's Gemini [hyperlink] can now generate realistic text and images that are often indistinguishable from human-authored content, with generative AI for audio [hyperlink] and video [hyperlink] not far behind. Given these advances, it's no longer surprising to see AI-generated images of public figures go viral [hyperlink] or AI-generated reviews and comments on digital platforms. As such, generative AI models are raising concerns about the credibility of digital content and the ease of producing harmful content going forward. [...] There are several ideas for how to tell whether a given piece of content--be it text, image, audio, or video--originates from a machine or a human. This report explores what makes for a good AI detection tool, how the oft-touted approach of 'watermarking' fares on various technical and policy-relevant criteria, governance of watermarking protocols, what policy objectives need to be met to promote watermark-based AI detection, and how watermarking stacks up against other suggested approaches like content provenance."

Washington. DC. Brookings Institution. 2024.

By City of Chicago, Office of Inspector General

The objectives of the inquiry were to determine the completeness rates of CPD response times recorded by CPD and the Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC), and to identify factors contributing to missing response time data for 911 calls for CPD service.

As a result of this inquiry, OIG found that CPD’s data collection of 911 response times is incomplete; the Department fails to record timestamps for various statuses throughout the dispatch and police response for a substantial number of 911 calls. Calls for high priority emergency events had a higher rate of recorded response times for all statuses that occur during a unit’s response (Acknowledge, Enroute, and On-scene) compared to calls for events with a lower priority classification. The timepoint in the police response process that is least often recorded is the On-scene time, or the time when the responding CPD unit arrives at the location of service; this remains true regardless of call priority level or geographic location. The On-scene status is the last time point in the sequence of events before responding members engage with an emergency event, which may contribute to the low On-scene time completeness rates. Additionally, the interface of the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system, which records a timestamp when CPD members enter their response status, displays the response status buttons sequentially, and is dependent on the previous status in the process being entered.

Chicago: City of Chicago, Office of Inspector General, 2023. 30p.

By Brandon L Garrett

In the past three years, there has been a surge of lawmaking concerning policing at the federal, state and local levels, including in response to the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 and subsequent racial justice movements across the country. Unwarranted uses of force, including deadly force, are all too common in America, particularly for Black men. Unfortunately, legal barriers often prevent meaningful accountability in response to a crisis of poor police practices and actions. Some recent legislation has at times taken a more comprehensive approach towards the challenge of addressing injustices and rethinking public safety, while other legislation takes a targeted approach, and still additional legislation has addressed a range of newer issues concerning policing, including deployment of technology, data collection, officer wellbeing, behavioral health diversion, and funding. To better understand lawmaking in response to calls for reform, at the Wilson Center for Science and Justice, we began tracking the introduction of policing-related legislation in Spring 2020.1 Our database, which has been updated continually, includes over 3,800 bills — federal, state, and local — across a wide range of topics related to law enforcement from 2018 through 2022. This is the largest such database assembled.2 It is available here: policing legislation.law.duke.edu. The sheer breadth of the topics and the activity is remarkable, although only about 10 percent of these laws have been enacted. Further, we develop how counting legislation does not fully capture trends where some single pieces of legislation include wide-ranging provisions. In addition, legislation regulating police can accomplish a range of objectives and goals, including laws designed to both limit and empower local police, sometimes in the same legislation. We plan to update the database over time to track this legislation and also examine additional prior years.

Durham, NC: Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law, 2023. 18p.