By Jesse Jannetta, Sino Esthappan, Jocelyn Fontaine, Mathew Lynch , and Nancy G. LaVigne

Many communities throughout the United States that face high levels of crime and concentrated disadvantage—particularly communities of color—also struggle with high levels of mistrust in the police and strained police-community relations. Recognizing that a lack of legitimacy and community trust in policing was a serious and persistent problem with deep historical roots, and that addressing that problem required a wellresourced, multidimensional approach combining proven practices with new tools and approaches, the US Department of Justice launched the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice. Led by John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s National Network for Safe Communities (NNSC), and in partnership with the Center for Policing Equity (CPE), Yale Law School (YLS), and the Urban Institute, the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice (National Initiative) brought together practitioners and researchers to deliver a suite of interventions focused on law enforcement and community members in six cities: Birmingham, Alabama; Fort Worth, Texas; Gary, Indiana; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Stockton, California. Core National Initiative interventions included (1) training and technical assistance for police officers on engaging with residents in a procedurally just manner, (2) trainings that encouraged officers to understand and mitigate implicit biases, (3) developing model police department policies and identifying key changes to extant policies, and (4) reconciliation discussions, during which police officers and community members had authentic conversations to acknowledge historic tensions, harms, and misconceptions and to repair relationships. The Urban Institute evaluated the National Initiative’s implementation and impact to inform potential replications and/or modifications of the initiative’s components, and to guide future research on police efforts to build community trust. The evaluation focuses on National Initiative activities occurring from January 2015 through December 2018. Researchers collected the following qualitative and quantitative data to support the evaluation: ◼ monthly teleconferences among members of the National Initiative implementation team that included partners from CPE, NNSC, and YLS ◼ publicly available information and media coverage of the National Initiative and issues pertaining to police-community relations in the pilot sites ◼ fieldwork that included observations of National Initiative activities and interactions between National Initiative partners and site stakeholders ◼ routine teleconferences with site coordinators, police chiefs, and other stakeholders ◼ documents provided by the sites and National Initiative partners ◼ semistructured interviews with police and community stakeholders in each site ◼ learning assessment surveys of officers receiving National Initiative trainings in each site ◼ surveys of residents in areas with high levels of concentrated crime and poverty/disadvantage in each site The implementation evaluation focused specifically on the successes and challenges of the collaboration among the National Initiative partners, participating police departments, and communities.

Washington, Urban Institute, 2019. 112p.

By Laura Connelly, Roxy Legane, and Remi Joseph

The number of school-based police officers (SBPOs) across Greater Manchester is significantly increasing with at least 20 more officers being introduced for the 2020/2021 academic year. This is happening without due consultation with parents, teachers, young people, or wider communities. In response, this report explores the views and experiences of people who live and work in Greater Manchester in relation to police in schools. Drawing upon the survey responses of 554 people – including young people, teachers, parents, and community members – this report is by far the most comprehensive of its kind in the UK. Key Statistics 95% of respondents reported that they have not been consulted on the plans for more police in Greater Manchester schools. Almost 9 out of 10 respondents reported feeling negative about a regular police presence, with 7 out of 10 of these respondents very negative. Almost 2 in 5 young people who responded to the survey attend or have attended a school with a ‘regular police presence’. Almost 3 in 4 parents or guardians stated that they would have concerns about sending their children to a school with a regular police presence. Exacerbating Existing Inequalities SBPOs are disproportionately placed in schools with a high proportion of working class students and young people of colour. This was a major concern for survey respondents who believe that this will exacerbate existing inequalities. Responses from young people who attend schools in Greater Manchester with a regular police presence suggest that officers act in ways that discriminate against students of colour, and particularly Black students. As well as Black and Asian and/or working class students, concerns were also raised about the negative impact that police in schools can have on disabled students; LGBTQ+ students; Muslim students; Gypsy, Roma and Traveller students; and women/girls. Stigmatising Schools A broad cross-section of respondents – including teachers, young people, parents/guardians, and community members – felt that a regular police presence would lead to the stigmatisation of a school. Seventy percent of young people said that schools with a regular police presence would be viewed more negatively by society than those without. Only 8% said that they wouldn’t. etc.

Manchester, UK: Kids of Colour and Northern Police Monitoring Project, 2020. 55p.

By Kanna Hayashi , Tyson Singh Kelsall, Caitlin Shane , Zishan Cui., et al

Background

Several jurisdictions in Canada have recently considered decriminalizing possession of illicit drugs for personal use (henceforth, simple possession) as part of their responses to the ongoing drug toxicity/overdose crisis. In this context, we sought to examine an early implementation case of a de facto depenalization policy of sim‑ ple possession ofences in Vancouver, Canada, that was enacted in 2006. Specifcally, we characterized experiences of people who use drugs (PWUD) whose drugs were discretionally seized by police without arrest.

Methods

Data were derived from three prospective cohorts of community-recruited PWUD in Vancouver over 16 months in 2019–2021. We conducted multivariable generalized estimating equations analyses to determine the prevalence of and factors associated with drug seizure. Sub-analyses used data collected in 2009–2012 and examined the trends over time.

Results

Among 995 participants who were interviewed in 2019–2021, 63 (6.3%) had their drugs seized by police at least once in the past 6 months. In multivariable analyses, factors significantly associated with drug seizure included: homelessness (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 1.98; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.09–3.61), working in the unregulated drug market (AOR: 4.93; 95% CI 2.87–8.49), and naloxone administration (AOR: 2.15; 95% CI 1.23– 3.76). In 2009–2012, 67.8% reported having obtained new drugs immediately after having their drugs seized by police. Odds of drug seizure were not significantly different between the two time periods (2019–2021 vs. 2009–2012) (AOR: 0.93; 95% CI: 0.64–1.35).

Conclusions

Despite the depenalization policy, the Vancouver Police Department has continued to seize illicit drugs from PWUD, even in cases where no arrest occurred. This policing practice may create health and safety risks for PWUD as it forces PWUD to increase the engagement with the unregulated illicit drug market. Our findings support calls for abolishing this often-undocumented discretionary policing practice that may exacerbate ongoing health inequities and interfere with peer-based overdose prevention efforts.

Harm Reduction Journal (2023) 20:117

Ben Grunwald and John Rappaport

“Wandering officers” are law-enforcement officers fired by one department, sometimes for serious misconduct, who then find work at another agency. Policing experts hold disparate views about the extent and character of the wandering-officer phenomenon. Some insist that wandering officers are everywhere—possibly increasingly so—and that they’re dangerous. Others, however, maintain that critics cherry-pick rare and egregious anecdotes that distort broader realities. In the absence of systematic data, we simply do not know how common wandering officers are or how much of a threat they pose, nor can we know whether and how to address the issue through policy reform.

In this Article, we conduct the first systematic investigation of wandering officers and possibly the largest quantitative study of police misconduct of any kind. We introduce a novel data set of all 98,000 full-time law-enforcement officers employed by almost 500 different agencies in the State of Florida over a thirty-year period. We report three principal findings. First, in any given year during our study, an average of just under 1,100 officers who were previously fired—three percent of all officers in the State—worked for Florida agencies. Second, officers who were fired from their last job seem to face difficulty finding work. When they do, it takes them a long time, and they tend to move to smaller agencies with fewer resources in areas with slightly larger communities of color. Interestingly, though, this pattern does not hold for officers who were fired earlier in their careers. Third, wandering officers are more likely than both officers hired as rookies and those hired as veterans who have never been fired to be fired from their next job or to receive a complaint for a “moral character violation.” Although we cannot determine the precise reasons for the firings, these results suggest that wandering officers may pose serious risks, particularly given how difficult it is to fire a police officer. We consider several plausible explanations for why departments nonetheless hire wandering officers and suggest potential policy responses to each.

129 Yale Law Journal 1676-1782 (2020)

By Rod K. Brunson and Ayanna Miller

The often-clandestine inner workings of the policing profession have been of considerable interest to scholars, policy makers, social justice activists, and everyday citizens. Technological innovations such as body-worn cameras, smartphones, and social media have allowed for increased public scrutiny of how officers carry out their duties. Recently, there has been intensified interest in the role of police and their suitability for addressing a wide range of important social issues. As various stakeholders consider impassioned calls for police reform, a comprehensive understanding of officer behavior is especially critical. Police observational research has historically used innovative methods to observe, document, and analyze police officer conduct. Herein, we investigate the evolution of police observational research and its many contributions and underscore the potential for future research.

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2023. 6:205–18

By Abdul Nasser Rad, David S. Kirk, and William P. Jones

Recent discussions of police violence in the United States and the corresponding lack of accountability have shone a light on a highly debated agent opposing police reform—police unions. Although police unionism continues to be an understudied area, a recent wave of empirical investigations, both qualitative and quantitative, have contributed to a nascent understanding of the ways in which police union mechanisms facilitate police misconduct and violence. Accordingly, in this review we first discuss the origins of police unionism in the United States, illustrating how historical forces, including racial animus, have shaped the existing landscape. Then, we highlight significant empirical work exploring the relationship between police unionism and misconduct. Thereafter, we review the potential intervening mechanisms, which are employed in ways to reduce disciplinary consequences of misconduct and excessive use of force, undermine oversight of the police, and limit police transparency. We end with a set of recommendations on future avenues for research.

Annual Review of Criminology, 2023. 6:181–203

By Tamara D. Herold, Ph.D. Robin S. Engel, Ph.D. Nicholas Corsaro, Ph.D. Stacey L. Clouse

The gang and gun violence reduction project implemented in Las Vegas consisted of three components: hot spots deployment, focused deterrence, and place network investigations (PNI). This report focuses on a program review and process evaluation of the PNI initiative. The PNI strategy, also known as PIVOT (Place-based Investigations of Violent Offender Territories), is grounded in crime science theory and research, which consistently finds that crime is highly concentrated, and patterns of crime concentration generally persist in the same locations over time despite repeated police intervention (Andresen, & Malleson, 2011; Braga, Andresen, & Lawton, 2017; Weisburd, Bushway, Lum, & Yang, 2004, Wilcox & Eck, 2011). The strategy was designed and first implemented in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is based on the assumption that historical, or persistent, hot spots are the result of deeply entrenched crime place networks used by active offender groups. The PNI strategy requires police investigations to uncover crime place networks, and a local PNI Investigative Board to focus existing city/county resources to alter crime-facilitating place dynamics (Madensen et al., 2017). In early 2018, the LVMPD Command Staff, in consultation with the Director of Crime Analysis, selected a pilot project site within the bureau’s Northeast Area Command (NEAC) for PNI implementation. A specific condominium complex, small strip mall that housed a convenience store, and nearby multi-family unit housing was selected to serve as the primary focus of the intervention. The NEAC Captain assigned her FLEX (Flexible Deployment) team to implement the PNI strategy and serve as the primary investigative unit. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) / University of Cincinnati (UC) Center for Police Research and Policy arranged to provide technical assistance and training to LVMPD’s PNI investigative unit. An introductory training for investigators and internal/external partners was conducted in April 2018. On-going training and assistance were provided on a bi-weekly basis in the form of on-site meetings or telecommunication with strategy experts and police personnel involved in Cincinnati’s PNI implementation from May 1, 2018, until the end of the evaluation period (April 30, 2019). In order to better understand the process and influence of the pilot PNI program in Las Vegas, officials from LVMPD partnered with researchers from the Center for Police Research and Policy, along with academic partners from the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) to conduct a program review and process evaluation of the PNI initiative. Using bi-weekly investigative activity summaries and LVMPD reported crime incident data, this study addresses the following specific research questions: 1) What types of activities were conducted by the LVMPD PNI investigative unit in the targeted violent hot spot? Given that PNI is a recently developed strategy, LVMPD and other agencies interested in adopting the PNI strategy could benefit from systematic documentation of investigative and enforcement activities conducted by investigative units 2) What successes and obstacles were experienced by those responsible for implementing the PNI strategy in Las Vegas? For the purpose of this evaluation, 11 specific implementation dimensions (or general steps) were identified based on the process used to conduct previous place network investigations in Cincinnati, Ohio. The current assessment attempts to describe the general degree of program fidelity achieved by the LVMPD during PNI strategy implementation. 3) What was the impact of the LVMPD PNI strategy on gun-related crime in the targeted area? While the analysis presented within this evaluation is mostly exploratory in nature, given the relatively short intervention period and low overall crime numbers, it offers insight into how the PNI strategy, as implemented by the LVMPD, could impact violent crime targeted areas.

Cincinnati: UC Center for Police Research and Policy University of Cincinnati 2020. 35p.

By Deepak Premkumar, Thomas Sloan, Magnus Lofstrom, and Joseph Hayes

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the criminal justice system was affected by public health measures such as the statewide shelter-in-place order, as well as state and local directives that altered interactions between law enforcement officers and the public, resulted in the early release of inmates, and modified bail procedures. This report takes a first step toward investigating California arrest trends during this period (through mid-2021). Like the rest of the nation, California experienced overall decreases in crime in 2020, likely due to fewer people leaving their homes, but there were increases in some crime categories, including homicides. The causes of the trends we have identified are hard to discern, given the highly unusual and challenging context of the pandemic.

Arrests began to fall precipitously in early March 2020, driven by reductions in misdemeanor arrests. Felony arrests briefly experienced significant declines but rose to around 10 percent below January 2020 levels by fall 2020. Though some COVID-related criminal justice policies and measures expired after a few months, California experienced persistent declines of 5 percent for felony arrests and 40 percent for misdemeanor arrests until at least July 2021—resulting in a rare near-convergence of these two arrest types. The reductions were largely among lower-level offenses related to drugs and driving.→

Californians staying home appeared to be a key driver of arrest trends during 2020, through reduced social interactions and police-public encounters. Changes in the number of people walking, driving, and using transit are consistent with initial decreases and subsequent rebounds in arrests during this period. The mobility-arrest relationship was not as close in 2021, when arrests did not fluctuate as much.→

In general, percent changes in arrests were similar across racial/ethnic groups. After the murder of George Floyd, there were 9 to 15 percent more misdemeanor arrests across all races compared to the preceding weeks. However, felony arrests of Black Californians spiked by 43 percent during this period—relative to increases of less than 10 percent for other races.→

Reductions in police stops and formal enforcement also contributed to declines in arrests. The state’s largest local law enforcement agencies made 35 percent fewer stops until at least the end of 2020. They also altered their handling of the stops they did make: officers were proportionally more likely to let people go without formal enforcement in the first few months of the pandemic, and later transitioned to citing and releasing stopped individuals in the field.→

Pandemic policies raised concerns about a “revolving door” effect—whereby people are repeatedly detained and released. Re-arrests as a proportion of arrests are a key indicator of this effect. In the months before COVID, about 40 percent of weekly arrests were re-arrests within a 90-day period; after holding steady during much of the pandemic, this share dropped sharply to 32 percent in June 2021. However, the felony re-arrest share increased from 29 percent to 32 percent before the June 2021 decline. Further study of re-arrests in relation to specific policies is warranted.→

Declines in arrests contributed to a 30 percent reduction in new admissions into jail and a 17 percent reduction in the jail population that persisted until at least December 2021. While it is clear that multiple factors contributed to a sustained decline in bookings and jail populations, the impact of any one policy is difficult to quantify.

San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California, 2023. 35p→

By The St Louis Cty Police Dept

Spurred in part by a 2021 grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA BWCPIP Grant # 15P BJA-21-GG-04437-BWCX), Missouri’s St. Louis County Police Department (SLCPD) expanded and refined its body-worn camera (BWC) program, acquiring an additional 100 BWCs to expand deployment to all sworn personnel. Concurrently, SLCPD developed helpful applications around their BWCs, integrating cameras from multiple sources into one readily accessible platform. Overall, the officers at SLCPD who spoke to CNA during a site visit in October 2022 feel the BWC system makes their jobs easier and increases personal safety. Department investment in the technical infrastructure as well as staff resources has allowed creative uses of the cameras and their data with practical results. Commitment and support from both the officers and the department leadership has led to a successful deployment of the camera systems. The integration of BWCs with automated license plate readers (ALPRs), Missouri Department of Transportation highway cameras, and other sources allows users to access video data from multiple sources. This integrated system, managed by the SLCPD Camera Systems Unit (CSU), turns SLCPD’s BWC system into an application that improves operations, efficiency, and officer safety. While automation helps efficiency in the field, the technology still adds labor hours and costs to handle the processing and storage of footage. According to SLCPD, the benefit of increased officer safety and the evidentiary value of BWCs are worth the operational and maintenance costs. The BWCs and their features have been used in several critical incidents to date. The footage often makes investigations more efficient because of the added digital evidence and saves time spent testifying in court. SLCPD has also used BWC footage in press releases, highlighting officers’ actions in the field.

Clayton, MO: St. Louis Police Department, 2023. 5p.

Contributor(s): National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Committee on National Statistics; Katrina Baum Stone, Rapporteur

From April 25-26, 2023 the Committee on National Statistics of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a workshop to identify challenges in and opportunities for measuring suicide in the law enforcement occupation. Experts in the field met to identify ways to improve the measurement of suicide by current and former police and corrections officers, dispatchers, and other sworn and civilian personnel, in public and private organizations. This proceedings provides a synthesis of key themes identified during the workshop.

Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 2023. 126p.

United States. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency

From the document: "The federal government, critical infrastructure, and state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) governments greatly depend upon open source software (OSS). OSS is software for which the human-readable source code is made available to the public for use, study, re-use, modification, enhancement, and re-distribution. OSS is part of the foundation of software used across critical infrastructure, supporting every single critical infrastructure sector [hyperlink] and every National Critical Function [hyperlink]: one study found that 96% of studied codebases across various sectors contain open source code, and 76% of code in studied codebases was open source. Therefore, to fulfill CISA's [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's] mission of understanding, managing, and reducing risks to the federal government and critical infrastructure, we must understand and protect the open source software that we rely upon. [...] CISA recognizes the immense benefits of open source software, which enables software developers to work at an accelerated pace and fosters significant innovation and collaboration. With these benefits in mind, this roadmap lays out how CISA will help enable the secure usage and development of OSS, both within and outside the federal government."

Washington. D.C United States. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency . 2023. 8p.

United States. National Aeronautics And Space Administration

From the document: "Recently, many credible witnesses, often military aviators, have reported seeing objects they did not recognize over U.S. airspace. Most of these events have since been explained, but a small handful cannot be immediately identified as known human-made or natural phenomena. These events are now collectively referred to as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAP [Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena]. A vital part of NASA's mission is exploring the unknown using the rigorous process of the scientific method. This means scrutinizing our assumptions and intuition; transparently and diligently collecting data; reproducing results; seeking independent evaluation; and finally, reaching a scientific consensus about the nature of an occurrence. The scientific method challenges us to solve problems by impartially evaluating our own ideas, by being willing to be wrong, and by following the data. [...] This report offers a vision of how NASA could contribute to understanding the phenomena and how the agency's approach will complement the whole-of-government effort to understand UAP."

Washington. D.C. United States. National Aeronautics And Space Administration 2023. 36p.

United States. Department Of Homeland Security. Office Of Intelligence And Analysis

From the document: "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Intelligence Enterprise Homeland Threat Assessment reflects the insights from across the Department, the Intelligence Community, and other critical homeland security stakeholders. It focuses on the most direct, pressing threats to our Homeland during the next year and is organized into four sections. We organized this assessment around the Department's missions that most closely align or apply to these threats--public safety, border and immigration, critical infrastructure, and economic security. As such, many of the threat actors and their efforts cut across mission areas and interact in complex and, at times, reinforcing ways. Going forward, the annual Homeland Threat Assessment will serve as the primary regular mechanism for articulating and describing the prevailing terrorism threat level, which has previously been done through our issuance of National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) bulletins. In the future, the issuance of NTAS bulletins will be reserved for situations where we need to alert the public about a specific or imminent terrorist threat or about a change in the terrorism threat level."

Washington. D.D. United States. Department Of Homeland Security. Office Of Intelligence And Analysis. 2023..

By Karen Bullock , Iain Agar , Matt Ashby , Iain Brennan, Gavin Hales , Aiden Sidebottom and Nick Tilley

Knife crime remains a major concern in England and Wales. Problem-oriented and public health approaches to tackling knife crime have been widely advocated, but little is known about how these approaches are understood and implemented by police practitioners. To address this knowledge gap, this article draws on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 44 police personnel to consider the processes and challenges of applying problem-oriented and public health approaches to knife crime. Findings show that knife crime was seen as a complex social problem which would not be solved by ‘silver bullets’; prevention was prioritised and the limitations of enforcement were widely acknowledged; there was an emphasis on understanding and responding to vulnerability and risk; discussion of ‘holistic’ and ‘whole systems’ approaches was evident (but these concepts were rarely defined); and the problem of serious violence was viewed as a shared, multi-agency issue that the police could not tackle alone. Various challenges were also evident, most notably around analysis of the drivers and patterns of knife crime and the evaluation of knife crime interventions. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for knife crime prevention and the implementation and advancement of problem-oriented and public health approaches to policing

Crime Science, 12(2): 2023

By Andy Higgins and Ruth Halkon

Public support and approval sit at the heart of the British policing model and are critical dependencies for effective policing. Although citizen attitudes have slipped out of formal policy focus over the last decade, a complex combination of factors – most obviously the recent set of misconduct scandals and cultural failings exposed within the Metropolitan Police in particular – have pulled questions of trust, confidence, and police legitimacy back into the spotlight. The first data to emerge from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) following its hiatus during Covid, confirms a consistent deterioration in public sentiment towards the police, which has begun to spread into more ‘relational’ dimensions (of fairness and respectfulness), not just appraisals of service quality. The downturn in London is particularly stark. These conditions and their causes require action from police leaders and policy makers, and a range of ‘issue based’ reform efforts, reviews and change programmes are underway. Additionally, however, the strategic-level questions these shifts pose, about the future working relationship between police and public, demand that concerted attention should also be given to contact – the way that citizens experience ‘everyday’ interactions with the police, across a variety of contexts, and the attitudinal traces these episodes leave behind. Personal contact is what citizens consistently say affects their trust and confidence in police, and its impact can ripple beyond those directly involved, through ‘vicarious’ transmission (e.g., reports from family and friends) and media (and social media) coverage. It also seems to be an aspect of service delivery amenable to policy and practice change, drawing on a well-established evidence-base about what is likely to be effective. But contact is also an area of considerable flux and disruption. Right across society, technology is precipitating radical shifts in the way citizens communicate with each other and interact with businesses, organisations, and government services. Online commerce and service provision, social media, videoconferencing, artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbots, and advanced analytics are all contributing to a much more complex and plural contact environment. These developments are shifting public expectations and promise real benefits in terms of the speed, efficiency, convenience, and choice available to citizens in their everyday lives. The pace of change, however, is such that the wider social implications are difficult to comprehend. Policing, of course, is not immune to these shifts and technologically enabled developments such as in online crime reporting, self-service portals, social media engagement, Body-Worn Video, live chat and video-link responses are increasingly coming to augment and meditate the public experience of dealing with the police. At a strategic level, the service seems optimistic about the potential for these and future innovations to generate mission critical efficiencies, optimise effectiveness, enable the sector to keep pace with public expectations, and promote public trust and confidence – although the mechanisms through which the latter might occur remain largely under-theorised. This report begins to address the interconnections between those two trajectories: the deterioration in police/public relations (and associated imperatives on policing to halt and reverse this), and the technological transformation of police/public contact. More specifically, it asks: what are the implications, opportunities, and risks for public confidence (and related attitudes) arising from the introduction of new technology into police/public contact experiences? Our investigation proceeds in three parts: • First (in Section 2) we revisit and summarise what is already known about the way police/public contact impacts on public confidence (and related attitudes) from research conducted in more ‘analogue’ times and contexts. • Second (in Section 3) we ask: what evidence is emerging, what is promising and what can be hypothesised, about how various forms of technology might impact on public experiences of contact, and the lasting impressions these leave behind? We present six promising mechanisms and one pressing risk. • Third (in Section 4) we conclude by considering the strategic implications for policing and present eight recommendations. Our analysis is informed by a literature review, analysis of survey data collected by the London Mayor’s Office of Policing and Crime (MOPAC), a survey of police contact management and community engagement leads, a roundtable discussion, and interviews and discussions with relevant experts and stakeholders.

London: Police Foundation, 2023. 57p.

By New York University School of Law, Policing Project

In response to the Gideon’s Army report indicating racial disparities in traffic stops, and the shooting of Jocques Clemmons, the Nashville Mayor’s Office asked the Policing Project to help develop strategies to address the disparities and improve community-police relations in Nashville. The Policing Project is an organization devoted to front-end democratic accountability to assure just and effective policing. The Policing Project talked with dozens of Nashville residents about their experiences with policing. Based on those conversations, we proposed to conduct a thorough assessment of the costs and benefits of using traffic stops to address crime. And we suggested that the City create a Steering Committee to guide work around community-police engagement and policing in Nashville. We conducted the traffic stop data work in collaboration with the Stanford Computational Policy Lab (SCPL), whose researchers performed the analysis. (The SCPL team’s more detailed report is included here as Appendix B.) The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) provided the necessary data, and has from the beginning shown a strong commitment to re-evaluating its traffic stop strategies and developing alternatives that can achieve public safety with fewer social costs. As the SCPL report shows, and as we summarize below, there are indeed notable racial disparities in traffic stops in Nashville. These disparities are higher for traffic stops around non-moving violations, such as broken taillights or expired tags. Disparity, however, is not necessarily evidence of discrimination. Any number of neutral factors, including officer deployment patterns or differences in rates of offending, may explain these and other disparities in the criminal justice system. MNPD explains these racial disparities in traffic stops on the ground that officers go where the crime is, and that in Nashville, high-crime neighborhoods tend to have larger minority populations. The SCPL analysis bears this out. However, even controlling for crime, unexplained racial disparity still remains. More importantly, the SCPL report shows that traffic stops are not an effective strategy for reducing crime. In particular, MNPD’s practice of making large numbers of stops in high crime neighborhoods does not appear to have any effect on crime. We make a number of recommendations, including that MNPD: • reduce the number of traffic stops • acknowledge black residents have been disproportionately affected by MNPD’s stop practices • monitor racial disparities on an ongoing basis • redeploy officer resources toward more effective crime-fighting tools • consider adopting a Neighborhood Policing strategy • post its department policies online • conduct a review of certain key policies such as use of force • conduct a review of training around use of force, traffic stops, and procedural justice • adopt a body camera policy with attention to transparency regarding the release of body camera footage In addition, we suggest that Nashville engage in a public process of strategic planning around public safety, bringing together the voices of the community and MNPD officials in doing so.

New York: Policing Project, 2023. 27p.

By Uttara M Ananthakrishnan, Jason Chan, Yicheng Song

One of the most acute social justice problems in the United States is the direct conflict between police and minorities. Media coverage of police brutality instances not only allow such inequitable practices come to light, but is an important step towards the reform of inappropriate policing. However, it is theoretically unclear whether the reporting of excessive use of police force on minorities can have a tangible impact on subsequent policing outcomes. In this paper, we aim to answer the question of whether and how digital news on police brutality is effective in shaping subsequent police actions. To address this question, we construct a cross-sectional dataset of news reports of police violence and police traffic stop records. Under a difference-in-difference framework, we find that news reports on police brutality reduces police stops of minorities. Additionally, we find that news with sad frames are more effective in effectuating change in policing behaviors. Finally, we learn that the impact of news reports are less effective in minority-dominated areas and high-crime areas.

SSRN 2022. 40p.

By Brian Rappert, Otto Adang, Aline Daillère, Jasper De Paepe (UGent) , Abi Dymond, Marleen Easton (UGent) and Stephen Skinner

The use of force by the police and other law enforcement officers has long been a significant topic of concern, especially when it results in death. This issue and the controversies around it have recently been highlighted by a series of high-profile deaths in 2020. Police Lethal Force and Accountability assesses the frequency of deaths, and the availability and reliability of information regarding deaths, associated with the application of force by law enforcement agencies in four jurisdictions: Belgium, England & Wales, France and the Netherlands. By adopting a common set of considerations for assessing the policies and practices within these individual jurisdictions, this report enables comparisons to be made across them. In doing so, we look to provide those in policing agencies, campaigning groups, government ministries and others, with sound information with which they can identify priorities to ensure uses of force are being accurately recorded and investigated. By enabling those concerned to understand how uses of force are recorded and addressed in comparison with other jurisdictions, we hope this report will help them to build a stronger case when holding public institutions accountable and identifying points for improvement. As documented, while deaths from the use of force appear relatively rare across these four jurisdictions when compared to countries such as the US1 , the procedures 1 In the US, roughly 1,110 police killings have taken place annually over recent years, see https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/national trends, (accessed 4 December 2020). and policies for recording, investigating and disclosing details associated with deaths are wanting. The availability of official information on the number of deaths associated with the use of force, its reliability, and the extent of details collected on those that die at the hands of the state vary from country to country. While there are elements of good practice, the procedures and policies are often lacking in critical respects. As a result of such deficiencies, it is difficult to assess many important dimensions of policing, including whether some communities are disproportionality subjected to the lethal use of force. Ultimately, reducing the extent of police force requires addressing underlying societal conditions associated with employment, health, housing and education. However, more can be done by law enforcement agencies, as well as by their oversight bodies and government ministers. Assembling data and evidence that is accessible, relevant and useful to those concerned with lethal force is a necessary step to enhance accountability for, and possibly prevent, deaths. In the context of democratic societies, the police and police-related bodies not only need to act on what they know in order to learn lessons, but also to demonstrate they are doing so to the populations they are meant to serve. Every death associated with the use of force by law enforcement officials should be recorded, recognised and investigated. No one’s death should go unacknowledged and unexamined.

Exeter, UK: University of Exeter, et al. 2020. 63p.

John A. Shjarback

Objectives: To quantify nonfatal injurious police shootings of people and examine the factors associated with victim mortality.

Methods: We gathered victim-level data on fatal and nonfatal injurious police shootings from four states that have such information publicly available: Florida (2009–14), Colorado (2010–19), Texas (2015–19), and California (2016–19). For each state, we examined bivariate associations between mortality and race/ethnicity, gender, age, weapon, and access to trauma care. We also estimated logistic regression models predicting victim mortality in each state.

Results: Forty-five percent of these police shooting victims (N = 1,322) did not die. Black–white disparities were more pronounced in nonfatal injurious police shootings than in fatal police shootings. Overall, Black victims were less likely than white victims to die from their wound(s). Younger victims were less likely to die from their wound(s), as well as those who were unarmed.

Conclusions: Racial and age disparities in police shootings are likely more pronounced than previous estimates suggest.

Policy implications: Other states should strongly consider compiling data like that which is currently being gathered in California. Absent data on nonfatal injurious police shootings–which account for a large share of deadly force incidents–researchers and analysts must be cautious about comparing and/or ranking jurisdictions in terms of their police-involved fatality rates.

PLOS ONE, Nov. 2021. 14p.

By Susan McVie*, Kath Murray, Victoria Gorton, Ben Matthews

This report examines data on Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) issued in England and Wales under the Coronavirus Regulations between 27 March 2020 and 31 May 2021 in relation to illegal travel and movement, social gatherings, and failure to follow instructions. It focuses on who received fines, where and why they were issued, and how patterns of usage varied over time as the restrictions changed. It also examines how policing changed over time, looking at three distinct time-periods defined by patterns of enforcement during the pandemic and related policy and legislative change. Overall, the analysis in this report provides valuable insights into the profile and patterning of police enforcement during one of the most tumultuous periods in recent history. The report was commissioned by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) as part of its commitment to openness

Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, Law School, 2023. 104p.