"News of the Week"   Daily Local & Regional NewsWatch November 2018 - Week 2

Terri Lanahan ~~~~~~~~~~ Many thanks to NAASCA's Terri Lanahan, Butte, Montana, for her research into the news that appears on the LACP & NAASCA web sites.

How body cams protect police legally and physically

The research shows that legal and physical protections are major benefits of adding a BWC to a patrol officer's toolkit

Research shows that after implementing the use of body-worn cameras, law enforcement agencies witness a decrease in the number of frivolous complaints filed against cops by members of the public. In conjunction with this decline, some agencies have also witnessed a reduction in the number of assaults on officers when citizens realize their aggressive behavior is being recorded.

Several recent studies about the efficacy of BWCs exist, and they are accessible to law enforcement agencies. It is worth the effort for agencies to explore and review this existing body of research to inform critical management and training decisions. Whether it's a decision about BWC procurement, its utility or deployment, case law or data management, there is a good probability research exists to support an agency's next steps.

This article reviews two of the major benefits of adding a BWC to a patrol officer's toolkit.

LEGAL PROTECTION

Northwestern University applied one of the best types of research designs on BWCs. The researchers did a randomized controlled trial about the effects of BWCs on police activity and citizen encounters in Las Vegas. Randomized controlled trials are considered leading designs because they essentially remove selection bias.

This study revealed that “officers equipped with body-worn cameras generated fewer complaints and use of force reports relative to officers without cameras. BWC officers also made more arrests and issued more citations than their non-BWC counterparts. The findings of this randomized controlled trial raise the possibility that planning for the placement of BWCs on officers should consider the competing effects of improvement in civilian perceptions of police generated by reductions in complaints and use of force incidents and of public concerns about increased enforcement activity.”

Similarly, in a separate randomized controlled study in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, the researchers were seeking to answer whether “BWCs reduce the prevalence of use-of-force and/or citizens' complaints against the police.” Their findings revealed a reduction in complaints against officers, and “the likelihood of force being used in control conditions were roughly twice those in experimental conditions.”

PHYSICAL PROTECTION

Several studies have explored whether BWCs provide officer protection. The general notion is that citizens are less likely to assault officers if they know they are being recorded. In a study published in Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, the authors reviewed data from a randomized control trial at the Spokane (WA) Police Department. Specifically, the researchers reviewed “the effects of BWCs on use of force, complaints against officers, and officer injuries, using more than three years of official department data pre- and post-BWC deployment.”

The findings from this study revealed that “after BWC deployment, the percentage of officers with a complaint in each group declined by 50 percent and 78 percent (Control and Treatment, respectively); the percentage of officers with a use of force declined notably (39 percent) for one group only. The reductions disappeared after six months for the Treatment group. There was no relationship between BWCs and officer injuries.”

WHAT THIS MEANS

There are a few takeaways from this review for law enforcement.

First, there is an existing body of empirical research about BWCs available for all agencies to review and use. To truly bridge the gap between BWC theory and practice, law enforcement agencies must do their due diligence and apply the findings from this body of work versus relying on anecdotal data to inform decision-making. The ability to access this research and data to guide policy and practice is huge win for law enforcement.

Second, based on the selected studies reviewed for this article, it appears that BWCs offer agencies considerable legal protection.

Finally, based on this research, officers wearing BWCs are less likely to have citizen complaints filed against them.

CONCLUSION

This article referenced just a few bodies of existing empirical research on BWCs that support how the technology protects police officers legally and physically.

There are, of course, additional studies that show mixed results about BWCs and how agencies use them. There are several variables that agencies need to consider that may alter whether BWCs have an effect (e.g., officers' discretion about recording). It is also difficult to generalize behavior (officer and citizens) across communities given how varied police behavior across jurisdictions.

The bottom line is that there is a tremendous amount of research that supports a law enforcement agency's decision to deploy BWCs.

https://www.policeone.com/police-products/body-cameras/articles/481923006-How-body-cams-protect-police-legally-and-physically/

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Crime Stats

How military research has influenced police products and tactics

Law enforcement and the public they serve benefit every day from advances developed in military research

Editor's note: Uniforms and armored vehicles aside, U.S. law enforcement has much it can learn from military-level training and tactics that could transform operations from a leadership, organizational, and officer safety standpoint. This series, "Military methodologies: Organizational and leadership lessons for LE," looks at what lessons law enforcement should take from the military experience.

I awoke from resting on my memory foam mattress and drove to the coffee shop in a vehicle equipped with radial tires. I fixed a shelf this morning with a cordless drill. My last doctor visit I got my temperature taken with an infrared thermometer. All of these products were developed or vastly improved by research for space flight for NASA. I enjoy the benefits of the massive effort to explore space.

Often cited as one cause of reduced traffic and homicide rates, emergency medicine has been greatly informed by battlefield practices, including the enthusiastic return of the tourniquet.

Similarly, law enforcement and the public they serve benefit every day from advances developed in military research. When the public imagines the military at work, images from our favorite war movies are likely to come to mind with explosions, machine gun fire and the thud of helicopters. Certainly billions of dollars have been invested in the search for effective weaponry, but even modern warfare is dependent on individuals and teams of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.

Making their jobs safer and more productive has generated many products and processes that help improve safety for first responders and the public they serve safer.

ERGONOMICS

Soldiers aren't always lost on the front lines. Short- and long-term stress on the body can create back and joint failure, as well as fatigue. Police patrol officers typically carry 20-30 pounds of equipment and protective gear compared to 60-120 pounds for a soldier. Patrol duty can require long hours of activity where immediate access to weapons systems is essential.

A comprehensive study of load carriage in military operations cites a multitude of potentially lethal and disabling issues and summarizes that “Load reduction can be accomplished by tailoring the load to the specific objective and by using special load-handling devices.” A recent study in Wisconsin revealed that load-carrying vests, rather than police duty belts, produce less fatigue and discomfort.

TRAUMA CARE

Every police officer has watched seconds pass like hours waiting for EMS to arrive, sometimes as victims lay dying until a scene is rendered safe for unarmed first responders. Some changes in emergency care are happening.

Most departments have strict policies against using police vehicles to transport injured persons, fearing liability and a public that shortcuts the cost of an ambulance ride for a black and white. In Philadelphia, police practice “scoop and run,” getting victims into patrol cars and making a fast run to the closest trauma center.

Often cited as one cause of reduced traffic and homicide rates, emergency medicine has been greatly informed by battlefield practices, including the enthusiastic return of the tourniquet. New compresses, clotting agents and products like the XSTAT syringe developed in research for the battlefield is saving lives of officers and civilians. Between 30 and 40 percent of civilian deaths by traumatic injury are the result of hemorrhaging, according to the United States Army Institute of Surgical Research. Between 33 and 56 percent occur before the victim reaches the hospital.

More police officers are getting the kind of training that can save lives where a traumatic injury is discovered.

TECHNOLOGY FOR SCOUTING

Drones are nothing new to the military, starting with WWI balloons and WWII targets for fighter plan practice. The evolution of the use of unmanned aircraft should be a surprise to no one. A quick survey of topic headlines in PoliceOne.com's 2018 Guide to Drones in Law Enforcement shows uses for crime scenes, car crashes, emergency management, pursuits, surveillance and building searches.

What was once considered useful only for spotting marijuana grows has now become small and inexpensive enough to become a part of nearly every police agency. Some units are small enough to enter a home to provide eyes inside before a tactical entry. Others are large enough to deliver supplies to areas inaccessible or unsafe for wheeled vehicles. Some have infrared capability to spot suspects hiding in darkness, or a lost child in the night.

FATIGUE RESEARCH

Despite amazing stories of endurance under fire and hostile conditions, the human body has performance limits. Research and strategies to keep soldiers alert is increasingly being recognized for its relevance to police officers. A study of the efficiency of scheduling for air crews in the US Air Force to minimize errors and maximize staffing has implications for deciding best practices for police shift assignments. Police leaders are recognizing that fatigue has immediate consequences for tactical and technical failures, and long-term consequences for health and morale of their officers.

TAPPING IN TO KNOWLEDGE

“There is no knowledge lost in police work” has been a motto of this author from my earliest days as a trainer. When law enforcement fails to learn from lessons learned in other fields it is poorer for it. The difference in our military colleagues' mission and that of law enforcement may be greater than the similarities, but when it comes to saving lives we can often sing from the same sheet of music.

https://www.policeone.com/police-products/Police-Drones/articles/482086006-How-military-research-has-influenced-police-products-and-tactics/

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OPINION

Why the U.S. Needs Better Crime Statistics

Cities like Chicago and St. Louis, Missouri certainly have issues with crime, but measuring the most 'dangerous' city is complicated.

With 24.1 homicides per 100,000 people, Chicago's homicide rate is more than four times the overall U.S. rate.

President Donald Trump has long focused on Chicago as a hotbed for American crime. This came up yet again on Oct. 8, when he said that he had directed the Justice Department to work with local officials in Chicago to stem violence in a city overwhelmed by its high rate of violent crime.

With 24.1 homicides per 100,000 people – more than four times the overall U.S. rate – Chicago certainly suffers from serious problems. But, as of a Sept. 25, St. Louis, my hometown, is called by the FBI the most dangerous city in America with over 6,461 violent crimes reported in the city limits in 2017. That's an increase of more than 7 percent from the previous year.

St. Louis only ranks third for homicides in the U.S. by rate, but it's the No. 1 most dangerous city. So by what metric does the government measure "most dangerous" – and why is Trump's focus concentrated on Chicago and not St. Louis? As a statistician studying how people can manipulate numbers, particularly crime data, it is clear to me that the way crimes are currently counted in the U.S. can easily confuse and mislead.

Crime Statistics

Since 1929, the FBI has managed the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), a project that compiles official data on crime across the U.S., provided by smaller law enforcement agencies. For example, in Missouri, data is provided directly to the state by both the county police departments and the smaller municipalities. This information is then sent to the FBI.

With 18,000 different law enforcement agencies providing crime data to the FBI, there must be a standard metric of reporting. So all crimes are classified into only two categories: Part 1 and Part 2.

Part 1 crimes include murder, rape, robbery, larceny-theft and arson – the serious crimes. Part 2 crimes include simple assault, loitering, embezzlement, DUI's and prostitution – the less serious crimes.

Okay, makes sense. But here's the catch: None of these crimes are weighted. When a "beautiful, innocent 9-year-old child who was laying on the bed doing her homework" is murdered in Ferguson as a retaliation killing, it counts just the same as when an individual is arrested for shoplifting US$50 or more from the Dollar Store. This flawed metric allows for incredible confusion.

Take this example. You live in a nice neighborhood with a Kmart on the edge of it. "Serious" crime includes all the shoplifting from the Kmart; let's say 150 incidents in a year. It also includes all the murders and rapes; call it 20 incidents in a year. The Kmart closes. All of a sudden, your crime rate has gone from 170 to 20: an 88 percent decrease in crime.

Chicago mayoral spokesman Matt McGrath criticized Trump's comments to The Washington Post, saying, "Just last week, [the Chicago Police Department] reported there have been 100 fewer murders and 500 fewer shooting victims in Chicago this year, the second straight year of declines." And really, I crunched the numbers; all serious crimes are only up 6.88 percent since 2014.

But it isn't the serious crimes that make me look under my bed before I go to sleep at night. It's the violent crimes. Those are up 24.27 percent in Chicago between 2014 and 2017. Murder is up 59.53 percent. (Researchers are still trying to figure out what's caused the spike.)

This metric can be misleading. Former St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay touts "small gains" as overall crime numbers drop. Sure, the number of Part 1 crimes has actually dropped by 0.4 percent since 2014. But violent crimes in the city of St. Louis have increased 24.04 percent.

People can also get confused by the way crimes are sliced geographically. For example, in 2016, the city of St. Louis had a homicide rate of 59.8 per 100,000 people, while St. Louis County, which is separated from the city by a street, had a homicide rate of about 3.2 per 100,000. What combination of the two making up greater St. Louis gets reported in the news? Depends on the day.

New Measures

Here's what I know: The U.S. needs a better metric. How we measure crime has been contentious since the original FBI crime reporting document was released in 1929.

There are even issues with the counting itself. The FBI website removed data from Chicago's crime statistics in 2013, because the FBI deemed it to be underreported.

Hopefully, a more accurate metric comes in with the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System, scheduled to roll out in 2020. For example, if a criminal assaults someone in their home and steals jewelry as well, that's only counted as an assault under the UCR system. Under NIBRS, both the assault and theft would be counted.

But this system doesn't seem to address the key issue: weights. Murdering a child cannot possibly count the same as stealing from the Dollar Store. It is inconceivable that raping someone can count the same as illegal gambling. You serve different amounts of jail time based on the severity of the crime – why wouldn't crimes also be weighted?

Cities like Chicago and St. Louis most certainly have issues with crime. But how the U.S. measures "dangerous" must be made clearer. It does a disservice to our police and our communities by allowing this misrepresentation of the facts. Until then, politicians will be able to use this confusion to confuse the public, intentionally or unintentionally.

https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2018-10-12/the-us-needs-better-crime-statistics-to-measure-its-most-dangerous-cities

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Mental Health

How Police Shootings Affect the Mental Health of Black Americans

A recent study finds African-Americans show signs of "moderate to severe mental distress" following a police killing.

"POLICE KILL MORE THAN 300 black Americans – at least a quarter of them unarmed – each year in the USA. These events might have spillover effects on the mental health of people not directly affected."

That was the premise behind a study released in June in the Lancet, and its author says it's the first to look at "institutional racism."

Dr. Atheendar Venkataramani is an assistant professor in the department of medical ethics and health policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and a board-certified general internist at the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. The idea for the study, he says, came from personal experience. "Friends and patients of mine would often make statements that belied the trauma they had felt every time one of these incidents happened," he says. "More colloquially, people would make statements about how their anxiety rose or they had PTSD, how they felt incredibly defeated or depressed after one of these events happened."

Venkataramani wanted to understand the mental health burden of police shootings on people who weren't directly victims. There is research showing that personal experiences of racism correlate to an array of poor health outcomes, he says. "I was looking for a window into understanding how structural racism causes poor health for a population as a whole. People had not gotten into the weeds on this." So he did.

Venkataramani analyzed data collected between 2013 and 2016 from 103,710 black adults. They were interviewed in a national survey that asked if the interviewee felt his or her mental health was good that day. He then drilled down to the interviews taken just before or just after a police shooting of an African-American. The results: The shootings were shown to add 1.7 days of poor mental health annually per person. "That may not seem like a lot per person, but this is at the population level," he says. "The real number is there are about 55 million poor mental health days per year nationally among African-Americans" related to these events. "That is more than half as large as the burden on mental health from chronic physical diseases like diabetes."

This decline in mental health was seen in all black Americans, regardless of whether there was a relationship with the victim, and it revealed itself in many ways, including "reactions of anger, activation of prior traumas and communal bereavement," the study says. White Americans were also part of the study; for them, "mental health impacts were not observed," the study notes dryly. In other words, although they often reported being upset by the events, their experiences did not devolve into mental illness. "We can say that moderate to severe mental distress went up for African-Americans after a police killing," Venkataramani says more emphatically.

Violence in the Digital Age

Institutional violence, sadly, is nothing new. African-Americans and other minorities have lived with it since the land was settled by whites centuries ago. What is new, however, is the easily accessed and ubiquitous records of these events on TV, social media and cellphone videos.

"People are traumatized by watching these videos because you are watching somebody who looks like you have violence against you by the police, which is state-sanctioned by default, and there are no consequences for it," says Dr. Ruth White, a clinical associate professor in the Department of Social Change and Innovation at the University of Southern California. "If you feel you are also vulnerable for this treatment and there will be no consequences, that is a total set up for trauma. Not necessarily expecting it every day, but not knowing if it could happen to you." Such ongoing stress is a known risk factor for mental illness, including depression and anxiety.

The lack of consequence for officers is arguably the most troubling aspect of institutional violence, White says. In the predigital past, there was often no hard evidence to corroborate the stories that minorities knew to be true. "But now, even with evidence, it hasn't changed the outcome," she says. "We have a consciousness of it in ways we never did before. Social media can share what happens in your neighborhood with the rest of the world. That level of consciousness makes it even more traumatizing, even if the actual risk hasn't increased where you live, because our world is not just about where we live anymore."

Venkataramani is digging even deeper into these weeds, collecting data on, for example, how institutional racism affects children and whether killings recorded by police body cameras are more salient than other killings. He stresses that his research has no anti-police bias. "It is not obvious that all [these events] are malicious or that all cops are racist," Venkataramani says. "But we know from decades of work that society can be unfair even when individuals are not unfair themselves. This research was thought to be some kind of liberal paper, but it doesn't imply anything about the competence or intent of police, only that societal structures can have negative impacts that change lives in detrimental ways."

https://health.usnews.com/health-care/patient-advice/articles/2018-10-12/how-police-shootings-affect-the-mental-health-of-black-americans

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Pod Cast

Pause Before You Post

How one Calif. SRO is helping kids be safer on social media Inappropriate posts can have an adverse effect on a kid's future many years down the line

Young people are on social media for many hours a day — posting on sites and apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter.

Social media posts — even those that have been deleted — live forever, and inappropriate posts can have an adverse effect on a kid's future many years down the line. Furthermore, many online interactions can turn ugly.

Too often, a social media post can influence young people to contemplate dying by suicide.

In this podcast segment, Doug Wyllie sits down with Brentwood PD Officer Mitch Brouillette, who serves as the SRO at Heritage High School, to discuss a program he created — Pause Before You Post — aimed at keeping kids safer online.

https://www.policeone.com/community-policing/articles/482089006-How-one-Calif-SRO-is-helping-kids-be-safer-on-social-media/

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Tribal Access Program

COPS Office Increases Tribal Access to Critical Crime Information with $1.5 Million in Support

The Office of Community Policing Services (COPS Office) recently provided $1.5 million in support of the Justice Department's Tribal Access Program for National Crime Information (TAP) to enable 25 additional Indian tribes to join the program, thereby increasing total participation to 72 tribes by the end of 2019.

The support, which will be used to provide integrated workstations and/or software as well as training to the additional tribes, will enable their criminal justice and civil agencies to easily access and contribute to national crime information databases.

This can enhance their ability to protect and serve their communities in many ways.

In addition to providing access to data in areas such as missing persons, stolen property, and registered sex offenders, users can quickly conduct fingerprint checks, locate kidnapping suspects, enter orders of protection, obtain criminal histories and perform other important tasks.

https://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/11-2018/tribal_access.html

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CRIMINOLOGY CAREERS BASICS

How Police Are Different Around the World

by TIMOTHY ROUFA

While criminal justice and law enforcement share a lot in common across nations, there are also plenty of key differences. If you're used to what law enforcement looks like in the United States, you may be surprised to learn just how different the structure, organization and even practices of police agencies around the world can be.

A Rose by Any Other Name

For the most part, the functions of police organizations - and the jobs of police officers - are the same or similar from country to country. Whether you're in Russia, New Zealand, the United States or Argentina, police officers are responsible for maintaining public order; ensuring safety and security and preventing and investigating crimes.

Same Mission, Different Design

The differences become apparent when you begin to look at how those organizations are constituted, the equipment they use, and the ways in which they go about their jobs.

Perhaps the most striking difference in policing between the various nations is the structure and organization of the police system itself. These differences are broadly categorized as centralized and decentralized. These terms refer to the number and authority of police organizations within a country and the specific role of those agencies.

The System in the United States

The United States reflects a decentralized system in which there are multiple levels of law enforcement and police services, all of which are essentially independent of each other. In the U.S., every political subdivision has the ability to provide police services, so that almost every city, town, village, county, and state has at least one and possibly multiple law enforcement agencies, all of whom operate within their own chains of command.

While these organizations often cooperate and operate in concert with each other, they also perform overlapping and duplicative services and are not formally responsible for one another. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that there are approximately 17,000 different police forces within the U.S., making the nation perhaps the most decentralized country in the world with regard to policing.

In contrast to the decentralized model seen in the U.S., Sweden employs a completely centralized police force, in which only one agency - the Rikspolis - is responsible for providing law enforcement, policing and investigative services to the entire country.

Various Levels of Centralization

While the U.S. and Sweden are the opposite extremes, many countries demonstrate varying degrees of centralization. In Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are responsible for providing policing to every province with the exception of Quebec and Ontario, which provide their own provincial police forces. Other nations have regional or state police forces that are separated by geography or by roles and responsibilities.

Rules of Law

Besides the way in which law enforcement is organized, the next big difference is the way in which the criminal justice system is executed. Similar to the American criminal justice system, every nation has some semblance of court, corrections and law enforcement component, but the authority of officers to make arrests, conduct searches or even make traffic stops with or without reasonable suspicion or probable cause differs significantly.

Police in the United States cannot even temporarily detain a person without having at least reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime. They cannot make an arrest unless they have probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed and that the person they are arresting committed it.

By contrast, in many countries in Europe and elsewhere, you can be arrested just on suspicion of a crime. For this reason, arrests in and of themselves are not as devastating as they are in the U.S., where arrests are only made when a person is going to be charged with a crime. Court procedures, too, vary widely from nation to nation, as do individual rights with regards to the legal system.

Different Procedures, Same Goals

Though they may operate differently and they may be organized in a variety of ways, the goal of police officers, and indeed the criminal justice system, is essentially the same regardless of what country you're in.

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/how-police-are-different-around-the-world-974595

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Connecticut

Regulation of Police Technology Creates Frustration

The city council is weighing a measure that would give the panel final say over all surveillance efforts in Hartford.

by Sydny Shepard

A city council proposal to more closely monitor new law enforcement surveillance technology is creating frustrations in Hartford, Conn. With police planning to deploy drones throughout neighborhoods, the council wants a say over what equipment, monitoring and data retention officers use.

Under a proposal that the American Civil Liberties Union helped draft, city agencies would need permission for all current and new methods of surveillance, including unmanned aerial devices, license plate readers, body cameras, video and audio recording systems, facial and voice recognition software and gunshot detection hardware.

"This ordinance, as currently presented, would significantly slow our progress utilizing new technology to enhance public safety," Hartford Police Chief David Rosado told the Hartford Courant. "We have and will will continue to work with city council members and other stakeholders as we try to come to a consensus on how to best move forward."

In order to comply with the proposal, the agencies would have to submit reports highlighting the technologies' impact and must disclose policies governing their use. This has created much frustration with law enfacement due to the amount of surveillance programs run by police.

Police officials estimate there were at least 30 programs, some with hundreds of individual pieces. More than 900 cameras have been strategically placed throughout the city, and authorities are in the process of adding another 210. Two drones have been ordered and 325 officers will wear body cameras beginning in 2019.

The council measures require police to seek approval for all existing programs within 120 days. Council members then have 180 days to make a decision and if no decision is made, police must halt the use of the technology.

Proponents of the council's measures say it is meant to boost transparency and encourage public input. While both police and fire departments have come up with policies governing the use of technology, council members said they want residents to offer feedback.

"We're talking about community policing and community input," Council Minority Leader Wildaliz Bermudez said. "This is a good way to be able to have those conversations that are needed.

https://securitytoday.com/articles/2018/11/16/regulation-of-police-technology-creates-frustration.aspx?m=1

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American Policing

VIEWPOINTS

21st Century Policing: Leadership, Vigilance, Collaboration

by Vincent J. Bove

It has been an honor to address issues during the course of five years of published works for the Epoch Times, which in my opinion are critical to America.

Along with the many topics that have been covered, policing, built on iron-clad partnerships with the community has been underscored.

These partnerships must be built on the pillars of leadership, vigilance, and collaboration, and are only productive when trust is the foundation.

American Policing: Reviewing Issues and Responses

Based on the extensive amount of material covered over these five years, a review to summarize the articles is now in order.

Here follows highlights from a select group of ten articles. Hopefully, this summary will ensure that police-community partnerships have the encouragement needed to continue building bridges of trust.

“A unity of effort between the police and community is the foundation for protecting America and critical for securing our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces.

“Protecting our communities and the morale of the nation demands unwavering shared responsibility, the lifeline of public safety.

“America must be fully committed, without reserve or excuse, to building bridges between the police and community as our way of life demands this collaboration.

“Failure to share responsibility is not an option as without cohesiveness the results will only be distrust, discord, and disorder.”

As a follow up to this article, just this past weekend, New York City experienced the first weekend without a murder in 25 years.

Based on this statistic, and the importance of Neighborhood Policing, I communicated information to the New Jersey Attorney General on Oct. 16, 2018 which included the following:

“Neighborhood Policing, an outstanding step-up from community policing, deserves implementation in agencies and communities throughout New Jersey. We should enhance collaboration with the NYPD, fine-tune this model for New Jersey, and provide the necessary leadership.”

“America's law enforcement professionals are in critical roles of protecting and serving our communities.

“We must recognize, appreciate, and support them in their challenging work. We must also realize our shared responsibility and do everything in our power to forge iron-clad police-community partnerships.

“These partnerships must be built on an ethical code, essential not only to law enforcement professionals, but on every community member privileged to call America home.”

“Policing is critical to American society and must perpetually stand on the pillars of ethics, trust, collaboration, and moral courage.

“When these principles are honored, police-community unity is forged, and America's way of life is protected from discord, lawlessness, and turmoil.

“Yet, one would be oblivious, irresponsible, and naïve to miss the challenges policing in America is experiencing.

“The spotlight on policing illuminates the critical need for trust. Society will thrive when trust is the catalyst for police-community partnerships.”

“America's police and communities are being challenged to unify to remedy our drug crisis.

“An entire generation of America is suffering from the drug pandemic and we must unify to prevent continual heartbreak to families.

“As we rise to the occasion with moral courage, we must remember that the police and the people are one.

“We must forge iron-clad police-community partnerships to take back our communities from the drug pestilence.

“The reality of the drug crisis is a matter of family tragedies, heartbreak, and death. Our drug crisis also inflicts suffering on the morale of our nation.

“We will be on the path to reawakening the nation when, as ethical protectors, we dedicate ourselves to unity.

“America is suffering, and we must all respond to take back the nation from the scourge of the drug crisis.”

“During the last few years, there have been incidents, controversies, and protests throughout America that must serve as a clarion call to renew, restore, and rejuvenate police-community unity.

“A policing incident in any community can spark intense repercussions throughout the nation. Any breakdown of trust between community and police demands an urgent, unwavering, and complete dedication to remedy the problem.

“Police-community collaboration will only be possible when leadership builds bridges of trust.

“These ideals will become reality when human contact, with respect as the foundation, is enhanced between police and the community.”

“There has always been corruption in government, but this is no excuse for unethical behavior to continue.

“The dignity that represents America demands renewal, and our police, so vital to the integrity of government and security in our communities must rise to the occasion.

“Every law enforcement official who takes the sacred oath to protect and serve must be fully dedicated to society as an ethical guardian.

“There can be no compromise by law enforcement officials of ethical values. Law enforcement must be totally and wholeheartedly committed to their sacrosanct duty, never faltering with the responsibilities bestowed upon them.”

“Police-community collaboration is critical to renewing the values of America and the lifeline of public safety throughout the nation.

“America must rise to the occasion with an unwavering commitment to facilitate police-community collaboration, the lifeline of public safety.”

“When our teachers and police collaborate to enhance security, character, and the preventive system of education, we will inspire our youth to carry the torch of America's decency.

“The school resource officer (SRO) is a priceless component of violence prevention and character education for our schools. This initiative also promotes a positive image of law enforcement to our nation's youth.

“Our schools should do everything possible to have an SRO program and law enforcement should be fully committed with the most qualified, trained, certified, and dedicated professionals available.”

The nine principles of American policing include the following:

“Moral courage must be encouraged, as police must be empowered make decisions that are legal, ethical, and moral.

“Patriotism is mission-critical. Honoring America, our flag, and our military personnel must be part and parcel of the police officer's creed and take place at every police event.

“Police interventions must always be proportional, constitutional, and uphold quality of life issues deserved by all communities.

“Police require a discerning recruitment process, education credentials, and ongoing training/certifications, including constitutional policing, diversity, civil rights, race-relations, violence prevention, community policing, crisis management, ethics, leadership, gangs, private security, and use of force.”

“Community policing must be central to reawakening the nation. It deserves full dedication from every member of law enforcement (not just selected members assigned to a community policing unit) and from all members of every community.

“Endless rhetoric, political appointees, and self-serving commissions will only be a waste of time.

“America deserves action, leaders of character, and police–community cohesiveness so we may live the legacy of justice destined for our nation.'

Final Reflections

As expressed through this selection of articles, a unity of effort, or “mutual responsibility” as emphasized by the NYPD, is critical to safeguarding America.

It is my hope that our nation will have the unwavering commitment to police community collaboration, as this unity is essential to the health of our nation

https://m.theepochtimes.com/21st-century-policing-leadership-vigilance-collaboration_2700883.html/amp

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Texas

Austin residents chime in on CPD's consent decree

Community hones in on police interaction with youths, cultural sensitivity

by CONNOR S. CARYNSKI

A top Chicago Police official says the department is willing to do whatever it takes to work with residents and improve training practices.

"There's no us versus them in this," Kevin Johnson, deputy chief of the Education and Training Academy, said at a recent community forum. "We need your ideas, and we need your help.

"Whatever we can do to solve our problems, that's what we need to do. We can't point fingers anymore, we need to put on paper what we can do to make our community safer."

The forum, held Oct. 25 and hosted by the 25th Police District, was required under the pending CPD consent decree to allow community input on the ways officers are trained.

The decree, drafted by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office, is designed to reform training, hiring, use of force, community policing and other practices.

Hosted at the Heritage International Community Church at 5320 W. North Ave., about 40 community members selected three areas of police training they would like to see adjusted and drafted comments to be considered during the decree's determination.

Community members chose to focus on police interaction with youth, cultural sensitivity training and awareness, and how police approach citizens.

One proposal from the community to reform officer training included providing officers with additional training on how to approach citizens with respectful language and tones. Other suggestions included additional programs for officers to maintain their mental health and more opportunities for officers to build relationships with young people through school-visit programs.

Suggestions from the community will be brought to U.S. District Judge Robert M. Dow Jr. as he considers the decree for approval.

Earlene Green, an Austin resident since 1979, said over her time in the neighborhood she has seen the relationship between police and community become less friendly. Green said she was happy for the opportunity for residents to give their input about how officers are trained.

"This was great," she said. "It was a chance to voice your opinion and say how things have changed over time, and the thing I really liked was that the other participants really listened. It seemed like we were all on the same page on some of these issues."

One suggestion Green said she proposed in her group was the implementation of a curriculum designed to teach young people about how to behave when being stopped by the police. She said many people have never been taught how to interact with officers and can appear aggressive or hostile when they really aren't doing anything wrong.

Deputy Chief Rick Contreras, who helped organize last week's forum, said he was happy with the suggestions his team has received and looks forward to their implementation.

"It's a good exercise of people's rights when they have the chance to add their input to these matters," Contreras said. "The people here are going to see how they've changed things here today when they start seeing the difference out on the streets."

When asked whether he had noticed negative attitudes from officers about the implementation of the consent decree, particularly within the Fraternal Order of Police union, Contreras said no one likes change, but if officers want to do their jobs, they will do so within the new mandates.

During other forums held elsewhere in Chicago, some officers have voiced concerns that its approval will inhibit officers from doing their jobs.

Contreras said more community meetings will be planned through November and potentially through December.

http://mobile.austinweeklynews.com/News/Articles/11-6-2018/Austin-residents-chime-in-on-CPD's-consent-decree-/

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Georgia

Representatives from Israeli National Police Force visit LPD

Dozens of representatives from the Israeli National Police Force visited the LaGrange Police Department this week as a part of the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange, or GILEE.

The LaGrange Police Department is proud to be one of the Georgia Law Enforcement Agencies chosen to host and provide training to several Law Enforcement Executives from the Israeli National Police Force.

GILEE is a joint project with Georgia State University, local, state, federal and international law enforcement as well as public safety agencies.

“The Israeli National Police representatives were extremely engaged in our department's tactics and procedures as well as our successes in community policing,” said LPD Lt. Eric Lohr.

“We look forward to continuing this collaborative relationship in the future.”

GILEE's mission is to enhance law enforcement executive development and international cooperation for the provision of better law enforcement services and public safety through the protection of civil rights.

https://m.lagrangenews.com/2018/11/02/representatives-from-israeli-national-police-force-visit-lpd/

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OPINION

Austrailia

Choose Respect team encourages community to think before posting on Social media can be a great and powerful tool for good.

Social media can be a great and powerful tool for good.

That is not often acknowledged or highlighted but it is undeniably true. When people have fallen on hard times, social media has allowed communities to rally behind them.

To highlight positive public education campaigns like ours it is incredibly invaluable.

And it can be a vital means to stay connected for those who are isolated or housebound.

However, as we all know, it can also be a terribly damaging platform and hotbed for misinformation.

One that can, in thoughtless or unkind hands, devastate lives, businesses, careers, self esteem and relationships.

For this reason, we launched a social media campaign this year titled ‘Words Can Wound'.

It is a reminder to all of us to stop and think before we post.We can all get swept up in the emotion and upset when we read about controversial topics, but too often, we don't pause before posting or sharing. Many times, words posted in such haste can hurt.

We never know what personal battles someone reading our words may be facing.

Those few words on social media could further wound during a vulnerable time and that's why we all need to do our bit to make this realm a kinder place to be.

Let's be wiser and let's get all the benefits we can out of social media.

Let's reach out when we are sad, let's show others we care, let's highlight injustices using facts and let's promote positive communications.

Let's create a ripple effect of kindness from here in Bunbury and watch it grow.

While we may not be able to get through to the trolls and those with malicious intentions, we can all work together to make a difference and to encourage those around us to do the same.

It is important to remember that the majority of people in our community are good-hearted and, while it may not always feel like it, that too is reflected on social media if we scratch the surface.

So please, stop and think before you post or share.

Always ask yourself is it true, is it kind, is it necessary?

To show your support share our #chooserespect hashtag and our posts on Choose Respect Bunbury.

https://www.bunburymail.com.au/story/5722319/social-media-think-before-you-post/

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Canada

Four-legged partner helps Strathcona County RCMP bring human face to policing

by Kendra Slugoski

in Sherwood Park are saddling up and hitting the open road. They are using horses to help bring a human face to policing, and so far their patrols are getting a lot of attention. Kendra Slugoski reports.

The last thing people behind the wheel in Sherwood Park expected to see on Thursday morning was a horse waiting at a red light.

Even in the pouring rain, people pulled over to take pictures.

Const. Jenn Burgoyne, with the Strathcona County RCMP, says she is used to this reaction.

For the past year, she's been riding her own horses out on the open pavement.

Burgoyne is a member of the RCMP Mounted Riders program. Typically, horses are used for ceremonial events and the RCMP Musical Ride, but for Canada's 150 celebration, Burgoyne saw an opportunity to use horses for community policing.

“At first I was a little surprised at how excited people were to see the horse,” Burgoyne said.

“We've got people that say their friends called them or they saw it on social media that the horses were out, and they came out driving around just to find the horse.”

Other members in the detachment and eight horses have been used for the neighbourhood patrols.

Burgoyne said she exclusively rides her four-year-old Canadian mare, Aloise.

“Her and I are pretty close,” Burgoyne said. “She absolutely loves her job.”

Within seconds of trotting into the Home Depot parking lot, people flocked to the pair.

“When you're driving around you don't get a chance to really talk to people in your car as much as you'd like to.

“It simplifies everything, it really does.”

Aloise stood calmy as people approached to say hello and give her a pet.

“She loves the attention from people when they come up and start petting her.”

Over the past year, Aloise and the other horses have visited elementary schools and seniors' homes.

Other RCMP detachments from across Alberta have been calling Burgoyne and requesting the officers and horses visit their communities.

There's no word yet if the program will extend beyond 2017.

Until the New Year, weather dependent, you may be stuck behind a horse in traffic or even see them in your neighbourhood.

“People don't really know where they're going to see us pop up.”

https://globalnews.ca/news/3878062/horses-mounties-rcmp-mounted-riders-strathcona-county-horse/

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United Kingdom

Unique community policing sees crime rates plunge in Bourke

Maranguka project credited with cutting major offences by 18% and domestic violence and drug offences by 40%

by Lorena Allam

The rates of major crime, domestic violence and drug offences have all dropped in the far western New South Wales town of Bourke, five years on from a groundbreaking, community-led campaign to address the underlying causes of crime.

Bourke is one of the most disadvantaged communities in Australia, with high long-term unemployment and family violence, and the highest rate of juvenile convictions in NSW.

The Maranguka project is a local initiative, the largest of its kind in Australia, based on redirecting the resources spent on policing and punishment to projects that help prevent offending behaviour.

Figures released on Monday by Maranguka show that in Bourke between 2015 and 2017 rates fell by:

18% for major offences

34% for non-domestic violence related assaults

39% for domestic violence related assaults

39% for drug offences

35% for driving offences

Rates of reoffending also dropped significantly. There was a 72% reduction in the number of people under 25 arrested for driving without a licence.

A key initiative under the Maranguka project has been to help more than 200 mostly young people obtain a driving licence. Eight off-duty police officers volunteered in the licensing program, “helping young learner drivers get their hours up,” Inspector Andrew Hurst of Bourke police said.

While he couldn't pinpoint the causes, Insp Hurst said there had been a noticeable improvement over the past 12 months, as collaboration between the community and police has increased.

“We're working a lot more closely around youth engagement and family violence. The closer we work together the better,” he said.

“The collaboration is geared to problem-solve rather than us using arrest as the only tool in the kit.”

Insp Hurst said it's his third time in Bourke since being stationed there as a young constable in the 1990s, and “things have changed significantly since then.”

“We have more ability to connect services to people who need them, rather than arresting people who have underlying issues.”

The emerging evidence is confirming that justice reinvestment initiatives “empower communities to develop local solutions to our local issues,” Maranguka executive director Alistair Ferguson said.

“Our experience in Bourke demonstrates that governments should be getting behind justice reinvestment initiatives in other communities.”

Ferguson and Just Reinvest NSW were among a coalition of more than 35 human rights, justice and community organisations who wrote to the federal government last month, pleading for action on the rising numbers of Indigenous people in prisons.

They called on the government to respond to the recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission's Pathways to Justice report, which was tabled in parliament more than six months ago.

The report recommended that the government establish a national justice reinvestment body, support justice reinvestment trials around the country, and develop national criminal justice targets.

The former attorney general George Brandis commissioned the report in 2016, saying the over-representation of Indigenous people in jail was a “national tragedy”.

Maranguka began in 2013, when members of the Bourke Aboriginal community approached Just Reinvest NSW.

A community strategy for change was developed and began in 2015, guided by the Bourke tribal council and supported by philanthropic and corporate partners.

The chairwoman of Just Reinvest NSW, Sarah Hopkins, said it was time for governments to fund justice reinvestment.

“Over previous decades, we have seen the imprisonment rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men, women and children increasing dramatically,” Hopkins said.

“The experience in Bourke demonstrates that the solutions to this national crisis lie in community-led initiatives.

“We need to build communities, not prisons.

https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/09/unique-community-policing-sees-rates-plunge-in-bourke

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Missouri

Community policing is unpopular with officers because it lacks 'action,' Police Chief Burton says

by Claire Colby

Columbia Police Chief Ken Burton told the Citizens Police Review Board Wednesday night that the recent announcement about changes to the department's community-oriented policing program — the Community Outreach Unit — reflects staffing challenges and a lack of interest among patrol officers in the ho-hum work of community policing.

Burton's comments came after several days of confusion about the future of the Community Outreach Unit.

On Nov. 13, the Missourian reported details of a leaked internal email from Deputy Chief Jill Schlude to police in which she outlined the reasons for disbanding the Community Outreach Unit and reorganizing community-oriented policing as the Community Response Unit.

“Unfortunately our current staffing numbers cannot sustain the current model of 14 officers and two sergeants working in very small focus areas,” she wrote in the email.

She described the department's plans to replace the current model of employing 14 officers for the Community Outreach and Downtown units with eight different beats across the city with one officer each and two sergeants to oversee the program. This would allow six officers from the Community Outreach and Downtown units to return to patrol beats, she wrote.

Burton spent more than an hour addressing the conflicting narratives about the new model at the Police Review Board's meeting Wednesday.

"It appears that there's a lot of confusion out in the public about the Community Outreach Unit. I'm not sure who they spoke with to get the story started, but apparently it started the rumor that we were doing away with community policing," he said.

"Nothing could be further from the truth. What we are proposing is a new iteration of the current unit," he told the board.

But Chad McLaurin, a member of Race Matters, Friends, who spoke after Burton at Wednesday's meeting, expressed doubts about what Burton had said and his leadership generally.

"What the chief described when he first got up there — when he made a distinction between policing and community-oriented policing — tells me that he is absolutely not the person to lead the change in that organization," he said.

He said Race Matters, Friends, "has a lot of problems" with the administration of the police department and the city manager. "We have a lot of problems with the politics involved here that go far beyond the average police officer trying to conduct their job in the field."

Not enough 'action'

Burton told the board he thinks the Community Outreach Unit has had difficulty retaining officers because police officers are attracted to the work for the "action."

"The people that are police officers signed on to be police officers, OK? They want to do police work as well as engage in community policing. If you're on the Community Outreach Unit, you're doing nothing but … just community policing," he said. "You're not doing any kind of enforcement action and things like that. So people tend to get bored with it."

A member of the board asked for clarification, wondering if by "action" he meant things like car chases.

"Absolutely," he said. "That's why police officers become police officers. They want to go in and handle the calls and recover stolen cars and catch burglars and do all of the things that police officers do."

And yet, despite the reduction in staff, Burton repeated that the program is not "going away."

"That's where all the confusion lies. It's just taking on a different form," he said. "What we want to do is take eight officers and two sergeants and assign each one of those eight officers to one of the beats in the city. They'd be assigned to that area to do the exact same thing the COU unit is doing right now but only in those four small neighborhoods. It's an attempt to have community policing go citywide."

City Manager Mike Matthes touched on the same talking points in a brief conversation with the news media Thursday. He said the changes would allow the department to implement community policing in a larger part of the city without spending more money.

When asked if this updated model would be less effective, Matthes said that it would be "a lot more effective in the parts of town it isn't now," but that it would "do less in the neighborhoods where we have it now."

The Community Outreach Unit was created in 2015 to patrol three neighborhoods with high rates of police calls. That included a "central strategic plan" neighborhood located around Douglass Park, a "north strategic plan" neighborhood around Lange Middle School and an "east strategic plan" neighborhood that included areas around Indian Hills Park.

In the new model, which Matthes said will continue to be called the Community Outreach Unit, eight beat officers will also continue to work part-time in downtown Columbia.

Burton provided an example of how that would work when he spoke to the review board on Wednesday.

"When we need them downtown, like during football games and things like that, they'll engage in those activities," he said. "When they're not doing that, they can work together on problems that are identified by citizens that citizens want us to work on."

Burton added that there will be collaboration across the eight beats. The officers will be the point of contact for residents on their beat, but they will regularly work with other officers across beats.

"They'll have eight people that they can draw from, and so they won't all be in their own beat every day," he said. "They'll be working all over the city, working on problems that have been highlighted by either citizen interaction, where they found out something needed to be worked on, or citizen requests."

These outreach officers will take fewer calls than a regular patrol officer, he said.

"What we're trying to do is what was asked in that report, expanding community policing," he said, referencing a 300+ page report released by community policing leader Sgt. Robert Fox in August.

In an ideal world, Burton said, the community-oriented policing program would have three times as many officers as the current plan allows.

"If I were king, I would have three of these officers in every beat, so about 24 officers," he said.

The proposed new plan will allow for officers in beats with historically lower rates of crime to assist in areas with more problems. The Community Outreach Unit was started in 2015 as a way to direct more officers to "hotspots" within the community. The new program would divert police officers from these identified hotspots.

"There are parts of the city where the biggest concern for the people that live in that neighborhood is parking issues. We're not going to spend a lot of time there, right?" he said. "But we are going to have a liaison, so that when you have a parking issue in your beat, even though that doesn't happen very often, you'll have an officer that you can contact."

'Problem-oriented policing'

This proposed model also encompasses problem-oriented policing, Burton said.

"Problem-oriented policing requires the officers look at things critically, and they try to solve the problem, reduce its effects or make it somebody else's problem," he said. "For instance, what's bothering you in your neighborhood may not be a police matter at all. Maybe it's code enforcement. Officers will be taught that they can go to code enforcement and get your problem solved for you instead of you having to do it."

Problem-oriented policing requires figuring out what the problem is, analyzing it, responding to it and then assessing whether or not the response was successful. That means also analyzing crime data and making comparisons to see whether policing is having an impact.

Overall, Burton said policing has lost some of the "luster" it once had.

"We're not getting the applicants that we did," he said. "It's just not that glamorous a job anymore. There's so much more that goes with it that people are hesitating. They can make more money elsewhere, doing something else."

McLaurin expressed support for the hard work that police do and emphasized that the organization's criticism was not directed at individual officers. "They're out there, they have a tough enough job," he said. "But what we do take exception with is that Chief Burton is not setting the tone of leadership necessary to have an effective police force."

Race Matters, Friends, has been calling for Burton's resignation since the summer of 2017, in response, in part, to his disavowal of racial profiling in traffic stops in Columbia. Burton has said he plans to continue as chief until his contract ends in the spring of 2019.

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/community-policing-is-unpopular-with-officers-because-it-lacks-action/article_00f1cdb6-e9ba-11e8-b2d3-a34a485d76cc.amp.html

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California / Jamaica

Former Cop Wants to Build Trust Between Communities and Police

Fulbright Scholar Roberto Rivera looks to Jamaica as a model of restorative justice

by Tess Eyrich

Roberto “Bobby” Rivera spent 20 years as a police officer in Southern California before a medical injury prompted his early retirement in 2011. What he couldn't have predicted at the time was that the injury that ended one career would also open a door to global research.

Now a doctoral candidate in the sociology department at the University of California, Riverside, Rivera channeled his prior experience in law enforcement into studying criminology. Through his research, he seeks to build a framework for more holistic approaches to policing that consider the larger environments in which crimes occur rather than just the crimes themselves.

“I had numerous Ph.D. offers around the country,” Rivera said of his academic journey. “As a scholar, I wanted to move away from traditional theories of criminology, such as the broken windows theory. I had read Alfredo Mirandé's book ‘Gringo Justice' and was influenced by his critical examination of criminology. He, along with other professors from the Department of Sociology, made it quite easy for me to choose UCR to pursue researching alternative policing methods.”

Rivera described holistic policing as a process in which law enforcement perceives and engages those policed with respect and understanding, noting that such a model is an ideal method to focus on human potential and achievement rather than social disorder.

In January 2019, he'll begin a 10-month term as the Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Jamaica. With the University of the West Indies at Mona as his base, Rivera will conduct in-depth ethnographic research geared toward better understanding Jamaica's success as a model of restorative justice.

Restorative justice differs from retributive justice in that it views crime as a violation of relationships between individuals rather than as a violation of the law or the state. Communal in nature, it emphasizes rehabilitation through personal accountability and encourages offenders to take responsibility for their actions by seeking reconciliation with both victims and communities, usually in mediated discussion sessions.

Rivera said that although criminal justice practices in the U.S. traditionally have skewed toward retributive, police departments are increasingly starting to examine and incorporate alternative methods used around the world.

In Jamaica, restorative justice techniques have been in practice since 1994. The country has historically had high levels of violence, resulting in a “traumatized population with lower levels of trust in the criminal justice system,” Rivera said.

In response, the country's Ministry of Justice piloted its National Restorative Justice Programme in 2012 and formally passed the Restorative Justice Act in 2016. As of this year, the ministry announced that more than 200 restorative justice sessions had taken place across the island, with 1,662 people benefiting from the sessions and plans in place to expand the system to schools, among other environments.

“Restorative justice, for me, is a system where everyone has an equal opportunity to access a criminal justice system that's fair and impartial,” Rivera said. “To go to Jamaica gives me the opportunity to research and advance areas that I'm concerned with, and to see if we can bring back any of Jamaica's more successful methods to the U.S.”

During his time in the country, Rivera plans to interview at least 30 Jamaican criminal justice practitioners as well as 30 community members, including local representatives from social services and mental health, alcohol, and substance abuse programs.

His main aim is to return to the U.S. with the foundation for a new methodology of holistic policing that prioritizes improving trust between law enforcement officers and the communities they serve. In the future, he hopes to use his Fulbright research to influence policymaking that could see restorative justice practices become more common stateside.

Underscoring his research is a belief that current tensions between police officers and marginalized communities in the U.S. could be greatly improved by increasing trust between the two parties.

“We now have issues of higher arrest rates, higher sentencing rates, and mass incarceration of people of color,” Rivera said. “We have the highest rate of incarceration of any other country in the world. How did we do that? Who benefits from it?

“For many in law enforcement, the prototype of a good police officer is someone who goes out and makes a lot of arrests,” he added. “But the reality is that mindset — and associated behaviors — isn't working for communities of color, and profound changes are needed within police practice.”

Rivera said fostering trust between police forces and racial minority communities, in particular, will help ensure the safety of those communities for years to come.

“When people who live in communities of color lack trust, they become much less likely to report crimes or to come forward and communicate with law enforcement,” he said. “Maybe they're afraid of being deported, maybe they have a loved one who's incarcerated, or maybe they've experienced police brutality in their communities or against them personally. But once that trust is eroded it usually never comes back, and the effects become generational.”

https://www.blackpressusa.com/former-cop-wants-to-build-trust-between-communities-and-police/

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Brazil

How Brazil's Bolsonaro can apply global lessons learned in fighting crime

by Michael E. O'Hanlon

What should incoming President Jair Bolsonaro do to advance his anti-crime agenda in Brazil? His tough-on-crime rhetoric has done much to catapult him to the Brazilian presidency. Yet his actual ideas for fighting crime, including giving police and army units greater prerogatives to use force and employing the army in street patrols, seem incomplete at best. Some of his proposals also imply the use of extralegal measures that could bear too much similarity to the abusive practices of President Rodrigo Duterte's policing policies in the Philippines, to take one undesirable example.

It is true that Brazil's crime rates are horrible, and a major shakeup in approaches to public safety is needed. It is also true that Brazil has already tried one of the key ideas recommended below, a variant of community policing, the Pacifying Police Unit (Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora, or UPP) program—though it wound up under-resourced in terms of both law enforcement and its associated economic and social programs.

Still, Bolsonaro would do well to bear in mind principles that have been learned in creating successful strategies to fight crime around the world. Several are highlighted in a 2017 study, “Securing global cities: Best practices, innovation, and the path ahead,” that I co-authored with former U.S. Army Chief of Staff and Iraq commander General Raymond Odierno. Below, in short, are the core findings of our research, which examined a range of major challenges to the world's cities, including “normal crime,” transnational criminal organizations and drug cartels, terrorism, and massive disasters. Not all the principles are equally relevant to Brazil's core problems today, but it is still useful to summarize all of them in case the situation evolves. It is also worth emphasizing that the general concept of community policing must be adapted to the circumstances of a given country; in Brazil, this will admittedly be a challenge, yet it is important not to give up, or to think there is an easier way.

CONTINUE TO REFINE COMMUNITY POLICING

Community policing is foundational in the urban security enterprise. It has helped drive major reductions in crime rates not only in many U.S. cities, but also in other countries from Latin America to Europe and beyond. It is also crucial in the fight against transnational crime and terrorism, largely for the intelligence it can provide when communities feel engaged in helping ensure their own safety. The concept includes methods such as: decentralized organization of police with delegation of authority; stable assignments of officers in certain beats and neighborhoods, to foster relationships and communications; an emphasis on crime prevention rather than response (for example, patrolling more heavily in places and at times when crime is otherwise most likely to occur); analytics designed to identify and highlight patterns of crime, allowing for targeted strategies at the local level to address high-risk areas; and encouragement of assistance from the broader community—including local businesses—in identifying dangers as well as solutions to crime. Other simple tactical innovations have helped too, such as enhancing confidence and safety in public places like parks. Close cooperation between police and prosecutors is also important for ensuring that the latter are invested in cases, and that the former understand what kinds of evidence will hold up in court. Finally, sentencing as well as prison conditions need to be designed with the goal of lowering future crime rates. Ultimately, community policing and related activities need to shore up the rule of law and citizen security as preeminent concerns

BREAK DOWN STOVEPIPES

Collaboration is needed to share intelligence and to address cross-jurisdictional threats, particularly for the purposes of stopping terrorism, but also for taking on organized crime and transnational criminal networks. Police forces need to work closely with national-level intelligence or security agencies, like MI5 in the United Kingdom and the FBI and CIA in the United States. This means, for example, determining which agencies take the lead on surveillance and on arrests, which are responsible for tracking any given suspect, how to obtain security clearances for some police officers, and how regular beat-patrol policemen can help provide information about suspected terrorists through their normal jobs, even without extensive specialized training. Information sharing also requires compatible and secure cyber systems across different agencies—necessarily imposing further demands on resource requirements for the public safety mission. In a number of countries, a recent history of terrorist attacks has motivated authorities to cut through bureaucratic resistance and demand cooperation in these ways. Sometimes, however, authorities have acted even in the absence of a major catastrophic experience, though this takes decisiveness and foresight, and excellent leadership. Either way, once established, collaborative mechanisms and patterns of behavior need to be institutionalized and perpetuated.

ESTABLISH CLEAR STRATEGIES AGAINST ORGANIZED CRIME

In dealing with narcotics traffickers and other sophisticated, often transnational, criminal organizations, priorities are needed to sustainably reduce violence. Authorities can preferentially target those gangs, groups, or organizations that are the most violent. This latter tactic can weaken the worst of the worst, while also deterring the excessive use of violence by other organizations. Another key choice in attacking criminal networks and terrorist organizations is whether to target just the top leadership of these organizations, or instead to develop a more patient strategy emphasizing action against mid-level operatives. Evidence suggests that the latter approach is usually more effective. There can be times when removing one key leader makes a big difference (arguably this was true for Pablo Escobar in Colombia, the Shining Path movement in Peru, and to some extent al-Qaida). But it is generally important to extend targeting down a layer or two in an organization.

EXPLOIT NEW OPPORTUNITIES FROM TECHNOLOGY

Technology can aid criminals in protecting the content of their communications from authorities. Technology also creates new vulnerabilities, notably in the cyber realm. But it offers great advantages to police forces and other security organizations too. Helpful technologies include inexpensive closed-circuit TV, facial recognition technology, license-plate readers, smart phones and GPS trackers for police cars, acoustic gunshot detection systems and other advanced sensors, and unmanned aerial vehicles. Yet where technology has been effectively deployed, it has not been at the expense of officers on patrol. We found no examples of cities that were successful in fighting crime and terrorism unless they simultaneously maintained or increased police personnel and focused intensively on the quality and training of those personnel.

PROMOTE SOCIAL COHESION

To gain support from communities and address the root causes of crime and terrorism, authorities must promote social cohesion as a central element—not an afterthought—of the urban security effort. The neighborhoods and demographic groups most affected by crime and violence must be treated as essential allies. Moreover, education and employment opportunities must be expanded in urban areas suffering from lack of opportunity and hope in order to address the root causes of crime. Our research has uncovered several creative ideas—for example, using fire departments or national army outreach efforts in places where police departments may not be easily trusted, and engaging formerly incarcerated individuals or rehabilitated former members of violent gangs or groups to reach out to disenfranchised communities. The private sector can make inclusion a priority in hiring and retention policies. Public-private partnerships can also help steer private funds and energies to programs that promote inclusion.

PREPARE FOR “BLACK SWAN” EVENTS

Beyond dealing with omnipresent threats, it is crucial to be as ready as possible for one-time catastrophes. Most cities may never experience truly horrific events, but it is important not to take solace in such probabilities, and to prepare for disasters before they occur. Those catastrophes could be purely natural. They could also become complex emergencies that superimpose themselves upon, or help to create, violent or anarchic security conditions. They could take place in cities already suffering significant violence; they could also produce shocks that create a breakdown in order. Given the growth of megacities, they could also easily affect 10 times as many people in a single incident as have been directly threatened by the world's 21st century natural catastrophes to date. The private sector can have a role here too—as in Manila in the Philippines, where a consortium of utilities and other companies has organized to help authorities in emergencies, with a single point of contact and clear coordination channels.

ENHANCE PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS

This theme is so central to our findings that it is interwoven throughout all six of the above principles, and hard to separate out from any of them. The “Securing Global Cities” paper attests to many examples of where it is working already—and argues strongly for expanding such efforts in the future. The importance of public-private collaboration bears emphasis in any summary of the core principles of the urban security enterprise.

President-elect Bolsonaro has been a divisive figure in Brazilian politics, but as he begins his presidency, he will have an opportunity to help unify the country if he can deliver on his promise to take on crime. That is an important priority for Brazil, to be sure, but it is also a daunting challenge. To be successful, he will need to emulate and implement best practices from around the world. Fortunately, many ideas and approaches have by now been tried in enough different places and settings that we are beginning to know a lot more about what works. I hope Bolsonaro will take the time to study and to learn.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/11/13/how-brazils-bolsonaro-can-apply-global-lessons-learned-in-fighting-crime/amp/

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PERSPECTIVE

Harms or Enable More of the Same?

by Josiah Bates

Oluwadurotimi Oyebola, 16, was enjoying a warm day after school in Brownsville, Brooklyn on September 21. He was playing basketball with his friends at a local park.

Without warning, while he was on the court taking some jump shots, a couple of gunshots were fired. Oyebola was hit in the head and killed.

Police said at the time that Oyebola, known as Timi, was not the intended target and that the shooter was likely trying to hit someone else.

A memorial was held for Timi on October 1. The junior high school student was noted for his academic achievements at Brooklyn Ascend High School, and was a member of the basketball team.

On October 3, 14-year-old Aaron Nathaniel was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, after surveillance footage apparently showed him shooting into the park.

Technological evidence might turn out to be conclusive in this case. But the investigation also deployed specialized officers whose methods are based on relationship-building and intelligence-gathering in the local community—and whose existence is ever more prevalent, if controversial.

Resurgence of an Old Idea

The Neighborhood Coordinating Officers (NCOs) who work in Brownsville are part of the New York Police Department's (NYPD) wider program for community policing, which was introduced in 2015. The 73rd precinct, which includes Brownsville, was the first precinct in Brooklyn to get these officers.

According to the NYPD, community policing is “a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies that support the systemic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder and fear of crime.”

In plainer terms, NCOs are meant to walk around their neighborhood and build face-to-face relationships with community members, being familiar and approachable in order to earn trust. In working to make communities safer, they're supposed to address a wide range of concerns beyond violent crimes.

The idea of community policing is not new. It came to prominence in the 1990s. As journalist Mark Obbie writes: “The idea was simple: Walking a beat and chatting up residents would build stronger relations and avoid the sort of anger that the not-guilty verdict for the officers who beat Rodney King uncapped in Los Angeles in 1992.”

A 1994 editorial for the New York Times stated:

“Community policing is the most promising trend in urban law enforcement. It aims to involve police departments in crime prevention, not just crime reaction, by assigning more officers to street patrol, exposing them to neighborhood concerns and training them to identify troubled individuals and bring in social service agencies to provide help.”

That same year, the federal Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) was created in order to disperse $8.8 billion in funding created by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. “By the end of the 1990s,” writes Obbie, “most police departments across the nation, flush with billions in federal grants, employed community-oriented-policing specialists and proclaimed it a part of their core mission. Then, as “federal money shifted to antiterrorism policing after 9/11, community-oriented policing morphed in many places into the same tactics it was meant to displace.”

The model saw a resurgence around 2015, when, in the wake of protests in Ferguson, Missouri—after Darren Wilson, a white cop, shot dead Michael Brown, a black unarmed teenager—the Obama administration published recommendations from its “Task Force on 21st Century Policing,” in which “community policing” featured heavily.

Higher Headcounts, Demographic Disparities

Police departments from Los Angeles to New York, Philadelphia and Minneapolis adopted procedures in line with the recommendations. Usually the measures increased police presence; in February 2015, for example, the New York City Council added 1,000 new cops to the NYPD, saying that “a higher headcount” was required “to carry out more community policing.”

But it's unclear if this increase, or any aspect of community policing, is meant to address the gaps between the demography of a community and that of its police force, which became a prominent theme in coverage of Ferguson. The St. Louis suburb was two-thirds black, but its police department was overwhelmingly white—only three of 53 officers were black. A 2015 investigation by the New York Times found that in hundreds of police departments across the country, whites on the force were overrepresented by more than 30 percent compared with the communities they served.

Some experts and advocates say that, rather than addressing concrete issues such as demographic disparities, community policing is merely a euphemism for “more intensive and invasive policing of minor disorderly behavior that serves to criminalize mostly people of color without dealing with the underlying causes of this behavior like poverty, homelessness, problematic drug use, mental health issues, and more.”

“It's tricky because it takes so many forms and it is so vaguely defined.”

Alex Vitale, a professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College and the co-author of the above quote, says the term “community policing” is simply unclear. “It's tricky because it takes so many forms and it is so vaguely defined,” he told Filter. We can't draw conclusions about its effectiveness because we do not know what it means.”

Professor Vitale asserts that crime reduction cannot and should not be the only metric for evaluating policing methods. “We can put a police officer on every corner and you might see a reduction in crime, but it's not a result of ‘community policing.'”

Some community leaders in New York, however, feel that the NCOs have been a valuable addition. “I've had very positive experiences with the NCOs,” said Anthony Newerls, the president of the 73rd precinct community council. “I think the officers have shown great initiative in building relationships with people.”

Shaka Mandela, an electrician who has lived in Brownsville his whole life, broadly agrees. He says that he sees something in these officers that he hasn't seen previously. “They talk to people, they interact with folks,” he told me. “I know they're only doing it so people will talk to them when things go down, but it's still nice for the community.”

Can Community Policing Be Credited for Falling Crime Rates?

Former Dallas police chief David Brown has no doubt that community policing has been beneficial where adopted—although he also advocates the establishment of federal standards to rationalize and improve implementation. “I think there is a strong argument that community policing reduces crime,” he said. “New York is exhibit A. This is the best example that crime has decreased under community policing.”

The NYC crime rate has been steadily declining over the last few years. 2017 saw just 290 murders, the lowest since the 1940s. This apparent success of the NCO program—although isolating NCOs as the cause is impossible—has prompted other cities to try and mimic it.

Chief Brown concedes that there's no way to measure relationships, but he believes that falls in crime rates in communities where police departments have adopted this model can be attributed to it.

But Vitale emphasizes that there is simply no metric to measure the specific impact of NCOs. “We don't have any actual evidence and we don't know what they're actually doing,” he said. “Show me an example of how an NCO has helped a community without doing police work.”

Los Angeles is another city that has gone through a period of change in its police department, trying to improve relations and reduce the number of police-involved shootings.

“Community policing is kind of…a cover for the incredible militarization of the police.”

Aaron Roussell, an assistant professor of sociology at Portland State University, spent five years in Los Angeles studying the LAPD's community policing protocols. He says there is no correlation between crime reduction and policing, and suggests that community policing might have a negative purpose. “Police departments capitalize on the idea that policing reduces crime. Community policing is kind of…a cover for the incredible militarization of the police.”

In his research, Roussell found that the community board meetings that the police would hold were comprised of the same kind of people: usually older men and women, civil rights activists and business owners. “These spaces didn't represent the real demographic of the community.”

The LAPD disagrees. “We try to make sure we have a wide array of people at our community board meetings,” a spokesperson said. “We want to make sure we are reaching the entire community with our efforts.”

According to the California State's Attorney's office, 157 people died during encounters with the police in the state in 2016, of whom one third were in LA County. That total fell to 78 in 2017.

While crime rates are down across the country, Roussell argues that those rates, including murder statistics, are misleading. “Every time a cop kills someone, that does not make it into the crime rate,” he told me. “Murders that happen in prison aren't accounted for, either.”

Should We Aim for More Police Involvement, or Less?

Roussell believes that to reduce harms, rather than trying to get more involved in communities, police departments should instead look at what they can cut back on.

“Social workers should have a bigger role in these communities, and police do not like to be social workers.”
“I think the place to start would be to make a list of all the things police do and people should pick what they want to retain and the other stuff could go out to other agencies,” he said. “Social workers should have a bigger role in these communities, and police do not like to be social workers.”

Sergeant Steven Shank of the Detroit Police Department would disagree. He oversees a team of NPOs—Neighborhood Police Officers—in the downtown area of Detroit. He describes elements of his job as finding housing for homeless people and taking senior citizens to the movies through his original “Senior Scams and Cinema” program, which includes cut-price tickets and an anti-fraud presentation.

He feels he has gained trust among the large homeless population in his area. They know, he told Filter, “that you're not there to lock them up for trespassing…right away.”

For so long, he said, no one has been connecting this population to healthcare or housing services. But now? “Well now, it is my concern. I'm the neighborhood police officer; I'm gonna be the one who's gonna see [a homeless person] again, and my heart can't let him be out there like this.”

Formerly homeless people have defended him against criticism from those suspicious of the police, he added. “Don't talk to Shank like that,” they say, “I'm in an apartment right now because of him.”

“The relationships are priceless,” Shank said. “No [other] type of policing out there creates that type of bond.”

No one can argue with the benefits of connecting homeless people with housing and care, or helping seniors. But what is the specific benefit of having a police officer doing those tasks, as opposed to a social worker or other professional who doesn't carry a gun?

“The main thing,” said Sergeant Shank, “is seeing the officer in that different light. Being able to see the officer as not just an enforcer locking people up, taking them to jail.”

“If I were to have to go out and do my job…whether I lock someone up or have to defend some other citizen with my firearm, [because of] the relationships you've built, [people say] ‘I hear people in the media are saying this, saying that. That might be true of someone else, but not my Officer Shank. I've seen his heart. I've watched him pour out himself in this community.'”

“It takes the target off your back, as a police officer.”

“See how it fights that negative target?” Shank concluded. “It takes the target off your back, as a police officer.”

His words mirror language in the Obama administration's original recommendations, which advocated for community policing in part because it “makes officers safer.”

Many will object to any notion that police, rather than specialized outreach workers with extended training in mental health, ought to take on more social-work roles—or that it's possible for the police to do so without further increasing criminalization of targeted populations. Many others will contend that more socially conscious policing—which takes many different forms, such as law enforcement-assisted diversion (LEAD)—can be a real-world way to reduce the harms of criminalization.

Either way, as the Trump administration pushes “tough on crime” strategies—Trump this week recommended stop-and-frisk as the solution to Chicago's violence—it has never been more important for citizens to pay attention to what the police are doing.

In Brownsville, police may have apprehended the suspect in the shooting of Timi, but locals still question the role of NCOs.

“They're out here doing their police work to try and find this kid, even the NCOs,” Shaka Mandela said. “In that case though, what makes them any different than a regular cop, you know?”

Federal Indictment Targets South Bay Street Gang Involved in Drug Trafficking, including Smuggling Meth into a California State Prison

by Nicola T. Hanna, United States Attorney
Central District of California

LOS ANGELES – Authorities have arrested eight members and associates of the East Side Torrance street gang on federal narcotics trafficking and firearms charges stemming from an investigation that led to a number of seizures, including 20 pounds of methamphetamine that was discovered in a Torrance apartment complex.

A federal grand jury indictment targets the leadership and key members of the gang, which distributed methamphetamine and other drugs out of the South Bay and the Harbor Gateway area of Los Angeles. The indictment alleges the gang trafficked pound-quantities of methamphetamine to Colorado, and also smuggled methamphetamine and heroin into Kern Valley State Prison in Delano, California.

Various defendants allegedly possessed firearms to maintain control of their gang “territory,” to control drug trafficking, and to retaliate against rivals, the indictments allege.

The seven-count indictment charges 10 defendants in a conspiracy to traffic methamphetamine, heroin and other illegal drugs. In addition to the eight arrested today, two defendants are currently in state custody.

The indictment unsealed today is the result of a three-year investigation by the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Torrance Police Department.

“Street gangs bring the twin plagues of narcotics and violence to their neighborhoods, endangering everyone who lives there,” said United States Attorney Nick Hanna. “This case is the product of an excellent working relationship between federal and local law enforcement authorities, all of whom are committed to increasing public safety in every community.”

“Street gangs such as East Side Torrance are responsible for pushing drugs onto our streets and putting our citizens in serious danger,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge David J. Downing. “Nevertheless, the coordinated enforcement action that occurred this morning illustrates how effective our law enforcement alliances are in disrupting and dismantling these criminal organizations.”

“Today's arrests targeted the leaders of a criminal enterprise who used firearms and the threat of violence to run a drug distribution network from the South Bay of Los Angeles to Colorado and even inside prison walls,” said Paul Delacourt, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office. “Today's arrests are the results of a collaborative effort among federal and local partners to target the most violent gangs that continue to plague our communities.”

“The Torrance Police Department is dedicated to working with our state and federal partners to ensure our communities are safe and that offenders are brought to justice,” said Torrance Police Chief Eve R. Irvine.

The lead defendant in the indictment – Carmen Merejil, a.k.a. “Caveman,” 52, of Carson – allegedly directed the drug trafficking operation and used his East Side Torrance gang associates to sell large amounts of methamphetamine, heroin and other drugs in the gang's territory. Merejil also allegedly directed the trafficking of large quantities of methamphetamine to a distributor in Delta, Colorado for redistribution there. Finally, Merejil and other defendants are alleged to have packaged and smuggled controlled substances into Kern Valley State Prison, where an incarcerated East Side Torrance street gang member distributed the drugs and sent money back to Merejil and other defendants.

In March 2016, law enforcement seized more than 20 pounds of methamphetamine – along with cocaine, MDMA and other drugs – from a stash house maintained by Merejil and his associates. Authorities also intercepted nearly two ounces of methamphetamine that had been smuggled into Kern Valley State Prison. Other large quantities of methamphetamine were seized from other alleged co-conspirators at various points during the investigation, including the seizure of nearly one pound of methamphetamine by agents executing a search warrant in Colorado.

The defendants taken into custody this morning are scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon in United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles. The defendants currently in state prison are expected to be arraigned in federal court in the coming weeks.

If convicted, each of the defendants would face decades in federal prison. The charge of conspiracy to distribute more than 50 grams of methamphetamine carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life without parole.

An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The investigation targeting the East Side Torrance gang was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Torrance Police Department.

During the investigation, substantial assistance was received from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the Redondo Beach Police Department, the Hermosa Beach Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Gregory Lesser and Shawn Andrews of the Violent and Organized Crime Section.

from: Ciaran McEvoy, Public Information Officer
ciaran.mcevoy@usdoj.gov

http://www.usdoj.gov