LVMPD Gang Violence Reduction

To combat the increase in gang member involved violence, the LVMPD has developed a three-prong crime reduction strategy that includes the following components: 1) focused deterrence, 2) hotspots, and 3) place-based interventions. The first component – focused deterrence – includes the uses of offender notification meetings to direct intensive enforcement and deterrence messaging on identified gang members (see Braga and Weisburd, 2012). The second component – hotspots – involves the deployment of saturation patrols to specific locations identified as hotspots with persistent violence problems that generate a disproportionate amount of crime (see Braga, Papachristos, and Hureau, 2014). The third component – place-network investigations – targets the criminogenic place networks at crime hot spots using situational crime prevention to alleviate the conditions at these locations, which contribute to why they have stable levels of violence over extended periods of time (see Clarke, 1995). To evaluate the impact of these various components on incidents of violent crime, a mixed method approach will be used. The first component will be evaluated using a randomized controlled trial (RCT) design to determine the influence of offender notification meetings on levels of re-arrest of gang members, as well as the impact on overall violence. The second component will also be evaluated using a RCT design to assess reductions in violent crime in treatment hot spots (i.e., street segments). A quasi-experimental design and additional qualitative techniques will assess the effectiveness of the situational crime prevention strategies

Understanding Domestic Violence Patterns: A Problem Analysis Conducted for the Tulsa, Oklahoma Police Department

This study documents a problem analysis based on a series of statistical analyses conducted on five-years of domestic violence data reported to the Tulsa, OK Police Department (2013-2017) and victimization data gathered by the Family Service Center in Tulsa

Examining Police Reforms in New Jersey: Statewide Evaluation of Changes to Use of Force Policies and Training

The State of New Jersey is implementing several measures to dramatically change police-citizen encounters by enhancing police accountability and altering use of force policies, training, and data collection. In December 2020, the Office of New Jersey Attorney General (ONJAG) announced the first revision to the statewide “Use of Force Policy” in two decades. This new statewide policy overhauled the responsibilities of law enforcement officers when interacting with civilians. Among other changes, the new policy requires the use of de-escalation by officers, prohibits physical force against subjects except as a last resort, and establishes an affirmative “duty to intervene” that requires all officers – regardless of rank, title, or seniority – to intercede if they observe another officer engage in illegal or excessive force against a civilian. In accordance with Attorney General Law Enforcement Directive 2020-13, agencies within New Jersey will be required to amend their policies to comply with the minimum requirements of the new state model policy, effective December 31, 2021. To supplement these policy changes the ONJAG released Attorney General Law Enforcement Directive 2021-7, requiring all law enforcement officers in the state to complete 8 training modules on the statewide use of force policy, 12 hours of de-escalation training, and 8 hours of peer intervention training. Officers are required to complete all trainings by September 30, 2022 (note that this deadline was previously April 2022, but has been extended). In addition, the over 39,000 sworn officers within the approximately 550 police agencies in New Jersey are now required to submit all use of force reports to a state-maintained online database within 24-hours of the incident. Portions of this database became public in April 2021, allowing users to search use of force reports. The UC research team will work collaboratively with the ONJAG to conduct the largest known evaluation of police reform (550+ police agencies, 39,000+ sworn officers). Specifically, we will assess the impact of changes to police use of force policies, training, and data collection, generating evidence regarding implementation and impact across agencies of varying size and demographics. Ultimately, our work will help reach an understanding of whether the combined suite of reform efforts in New Jersey achieve—or make progress towards—the desired ends of improving the nature of police-citizen encounters, measured by the frequency and severity of use of force incidents, citizen and officer injuries, and citizen complaints. To accomplish this goal, our research design relies on a mixed-method approach, where quantitative analyses will be supplemented with qualitative research to collect insights from key stakeholders regarding implementation issues and lessons learned to share with other agencies and communities

Examining Burglary and Robbery Case Clearance Rates for the Knoxville (TN) Police Department

This study documents a multi-faceted examination of incidents of residential burglary and individual robbery reported to the KPD from 2013 to 2017, including descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses. The goals of this research are four-fold: (1) describe trends in reported residential burglary/individual robbery incidents over time, (2) describe case characteristics in reported residential burglary/individual robbery incidents, (3) identify case-level characteristics of residential burglary/individual robbery incidents that predict case clearance rates, and (4) identify neighborhood-level characteristics that predict case clearance

NYPD Implicit Bias Training Evaluation

The IACP/UC Center partnered with the John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety to evaluate an implicit bias training for the New York City Police Department (NYPD). The goal of this research was to better understand how implicit bias training influences officer attitudes, knowledge, skills and enforcement disparities. This randomized experiment sought to determine the effectiveness of the training in raising officers’ awareness of and knowledge about unconscious bias, providing officers skills to manage their unconscious biases, and reducing the disparities in enforcement actions against different racial and ethnic groups. The Final Report for this study is posted and available for public download