The potential impact of expert systems in urban police services

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 37-38).by Jacqueline Kee, Richard C. Larson

"911, Is This an Emergency?": How 911 Call-Takers Extract, Interpret, and Classify Caller Information

Policing in America is in crisis. Much of the nation is outraged by the level and distribution of encounters and arrests, infringements on civil liberties, and excessive uses of force by the police. Prior scholarship typically has attributed these problems to features of officer-initiated policing—specifically police officers’ decisions in who to stop and when to arrest. By contrast, reactive or call-driven policing has not received comparable scholarly attention. Yet, in many places roughly half of all police-work involves responding to the public’s calls-for-service. In these cases, a series of interactions take place between 911 callers, 911 call-takers, and dispatchers before the police arrive at the scene, all of which can produce information that shapes police responses. This dissertation is squarely focused on the role of 911 in American policing. It aims to answer the question of how 911 call-takers mediate caller demands and impact policing in the field. To answer this central research question, the author worked for two years as a 911 call-taker in Southeast Michigan, which allowed her to analyze the kinds of problems callers report, the decisions that call-takers must make, the challenges and dilemmas that they face, and the ways in which training and organizational norms shape the call-taking process. Using a mix of quantitative, qualitative, and conversation analytic methods, this dissertation reveals that the process through which private citizens’ requests become police responses is complex and presents unique challenges to policing. The chapters aim to show how the contemporary 911 system has come to offer the public wide latitude over the scope of police work. By dissecting the day-to-day duties of 911 call-takers, the chapters shine a light on two critical call-taking functions. First, the author reveals an overlooked call-taker function—risk appraisal. Through unpacking precisely how call-takers appraise risk, namely through extraction, interpretation, and classification of caller information, this dissertation provides a framework to evaluate call-taker actions. Second, the author complicates the previously documented gatekeeping function by showing how organizational rules and norms can constrain the ability of 911 call-takers to limit the public’s heavy reliance on the system. Taken together, the chapters find that call-takers exercise discretion when performing these critical functions and their actions impact police responses. This dissertation puts forth recommendations aimed at encouraging police agencies to reconceptualize the call-taking function in an effort to enable call-takers to more intelligently deploy discretion. Recommendations include developing protocols and criteria that empower call-takers to prevent inappropriate requests from receiving police services, training call-takers to assess risk in more sophisticated ways, distributing call-taker best practices to peers, and using technology to assist call-takers in preserving caller uncertainty. The author hopes that these findings and recommendations will help improve police encounters with the public and spur readers to strongly consider 911’s role in policing in the future.PHDPublic Policy & SociologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163046/1/jgillool_1.pd

SURVEY OF EXISTING I&R SERVICES AND A NEBRASKA 211 SYSTEM COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS

In June, 1999, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (NHHSS) and the United Way of the Midlands requested that the University of Nebraska Public Policy Center coordinate a feasibility study of a statewide Information and Referral (I&R) system for health and human services. Because several I&R systems around the country make use of the 2-1-1 three digit number for I&R information, and there are a number of states investigating reserving 211 for statewide I&R services, this report uses the 211 nomenclature although there has been no state Public Service Commission designation of 211 for this purpose in Nebraska. This report defines, describes, and calculates the anticipated quantifiable and non-quantifiable costs and benefits of implementing such an I&R/211 system

Communications Policy for 2006 and Beyond

In this Article, the Authors propose sweeping changes to the current telecommunications regulatory regime. With impending reform in telecommunications laws, the Authors argue that an important first step is the creation of a bipartisan, independent commission to examine and recommend implementation of more market-oriented communications policy. Through maximizing the operation of the markets, the authors argue that communications policy will better serve its goals of increasing business productivity and consumer welfare through the better services and lower prices. Important steps to achieve optimal market operation include deregulating retail prices where multifirm competition is available, minimizing the cost of public property inputs, overhauling universal service, assigning greater jurisdictional authority to federal regulators, and significantly reorganizing the FCC. The Authors argue that the timely implementation of these policies is crucial for achieving United States telecommunications policy goals

Communications Policy for 2006 and Beyond

In this Article, the Authors propose sweeping changes to the current telecommunications regulatory regime. With impending reform in telecommunications laws, the Authors argue that an important first step is the creation of a bipartisan, independent commission to examine and recommend implementation of more market-oriented communications policy. Through maximizing the operation of the markets, the authors argue that communications policy will better serve its goals of increasing business productivity and consumer welfare through the better services and lower prices. Important steps to achieve optimal market operation include deregulating retail prices where multifirm competition is available, minimizing the cost of public property inputs, overhauling universal service, assigning greater jurisdictional authority to federal regulators, and significantly reorganizing the FCC. The Authors argue that the timely implementation of these policies is crucial for achieving United States telecommunications policy goals

A Model for Emergency Service of VoIP through Certification and Labeling

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) will transform many aspects of traditional telephony service, including the technology, the business models, and the regulatory constructs that govern such service. Perhaps not unexpectedly, this transformation is generating a host of technical, business, social, and policy problems. In attempting to respond to these problems, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could mandate obligations or specific solutions to VoIP policy issues; however, it is instead looking first to industry initiatives focused on the key functionality that users have come to expect of telecommunications services. High among this list of desired functionality is user access to emergency services for purposes of summoning fire, medical, and law enforcement agencies. Such services were traditionally required to be implemented (and subsequently were implemented) through state and federal regulations. An emergency service capability is a critical social concern, making it particularly important for the industry to propose viable solutions for promoting VoIP emergency services before regulators are compelled to mandate a solution. Reproducing emergency services in the VoIP space has proven to be a considerable task, mainly due to the wide and diverse variety of VoIP implementations and implementers. While technical and business communities have, in fact, made considerable progress in this area, significant uncertainty and deployment problems still exist. The question we ask is this: Can an industry-based certification and labeling process credibly address social and policy expectations regarding emergency services and VoIP, thus avoiding the need for government regulation at this critical time? We hypothesize that the answer is “yes.” In answering this question, we developed a model for VoIP emergency service compliance through industry certification and device labeling. This model is intended to support a wide range of emergency service implementations while providing users with sufficient verification that the service will operate as anticipated. To this end, we first examine possible technical implementations for VoIP emergency services. Next, we summarize the theory of certification as self-regulation and examine several relevant examples. Finally, we synthesize a specific model for certification of VoIP emergency services. We believe that the model we describe provides both short-term and long-term opportunities. In the short term, an industry-driven effort to solve the current problem of VoIP emergency services, if properly structured and overseen as we suggest, should be both effective and efficient. In the long term, such a process can serve as a self-regulatory model that can be applied to social policy goals in the telecommunications industry, making it an important tool to have as the industry becomes increasingly diverse and heterogeneous

Public Safety Communications and Spectrum Resources: Policy Issues for Congress

This report discusses pieces of legislation passed by Congress that are intended to help surmount failures in public safety radio communications such as (1) insufficient interoperability among radio systems, a problem that hampered rescue efforts on and after September 11; and (2) insufficiently robust networks, a shortcoming revealed after Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005