Beginning officers and deputies raise their right hands and swear in as ready to save the world, but spend much of their time writing offense and car crash reports with the mantra of keeping the report simple and not getting emotionally involved. It is difficult to reverse that culture without a leadership and management disruption to those practices.
Since humans are subjective, they tend to subjectively share information and intelligence. In law enforcement, this does nothing except increase the risks to officer safety and potentially aid the offenders, who benefit from this antiquated style of communication.
Intelligence-led policing achieves full value only if information 1 is provided in real time and not delayed; 2 has a synchronous feedback loop; and 3 has a sense-making capability.
These three components help to de-randomize communication efforts and allow agencies to increase their offender intelligence while effectively managing their areas of responsibility. It is this de-randomization of daily activities through a good intelligence-led process and supportive technology that allows officers, detectives, and analysts to become more precise and surgical in the strategic space of the agency.
Using objective technologies to help script actionable priorities is key to trust building. This approach helped Tampa reduce adult and juvenile arrests far below the statewide averages.
It is one thing to lower crime, but it is another thing to do it while exponentially lowering arrests. If there is any doubt regarding this concept, observe officers on a special event deployment and note how they gravitate to each other as opposed to being spread out by assignment.
So, why fight this inclination? In Tampa, what was originally 42 patrol zones were broken down into 31 zones covering three patrol districts each having two, 5-zone sectors, and one special zone that was a geographical space annexed years ago in the far northeast section of the city limits.
These slightly larger zones, balanced by calls for service, total crime rates, investigative time involved, offender density, and response times, allowed a person squad to have two patrol units for each zone.
Most zones were technically manageable, and, during the annual strategic planning sessions, the commanders would get a zone breakdown of effort so when people are off or at training, they knew which of the five zones should keep the two patrol cars as a necessity. During the plateau period of , one thing that was measured by the Tampa Police Department was time to arrest.
It became very apparent that the faster a case was closed by arrest, the greater the impact on crime reduction by crime type. This led to an effort where squads of officers that were formerly street anti-crime and street-level narcotics units were merged into a street-level undercover layer that did high-speed follow-ups on the top four crimes that plagued the city.
Having this unit to fill the gap between the patrol units and the detectives allowed cases to be solved much faster and, more importantly, established area accountability zone versus functional responsibility drugs. This deployment of resources created a prioritization model that allowed the most important problem to be addressed in each neighborhood.
While working high-crime areas and drug holes were important, the approach was too generic and did not offer the equitable outcomes of all neighborhoods benefitting from holistic crime reduction and quality-of-life improvements. While many agencies might not have the capability or resources for this enhanced undercover personnel layer, a well-informed officer can be empowered to perform follow-ups by leveraging information sharing technologies. As the agency began gaining momentum in the next phase of crime reduction, it became more important to de-specialize detectives and assign them to areas versus offenses.
The only exceptions were detectives for homicide and sex crimes, where the intimacy of the victimization and witnesses and prosecution factors are elevated; otherwise, detectives worked all crimes in their specific zones. This aligned them with patrol and the newly created undercover street units, also assigned by geography, to work as a layered team. It proved fruitful, leading to community rapport and better crime prevention tactics. Once crime reduction, deployments, planning cycles, and community-policing tactics become normalized, how does an agency sustain these efforts over the next set of administrations?
The answer lies in technology. These changes are healthy and normal for an agency, but technology can remove the subjective nature of what these activities do when it comes to collecting and sharing information and intelligence about a neighborhood, which is exactly what community policing is designed to accomplish.
The more the police know and understand about a neighborhood and crime, the more crime they can prevent—and the more crime the police can prevent, the more the community, as a whole, can thrive. Crime will always morph and try to come back. However, if an agency has a solid and attrition-proof business intelligence system in place, it will not only prevent such a rise, but it will bring about gains in officer safety and community trust.
After developing an actionable and sustainable mission, vision, and value statement, coupled with a solid strategic plan that achieves equitable outcomes, the utilization of intelligence-led processes supported by the right technology can lead to objective, equitable change in crime rates.
Overcoming years of silo-driven information and intelligence can be as simple as allowing function to follow form. Implementation of a speed-meets-distribution and feedback model allows for the sense-making process of keeping small problems small and reducing crime everywhere.
Equity in Community Policing. John Bennett, Chief of Police Ret. The Journey The Beginning After self-benchmarking in early , Tampa discovered that its crime rates were extremely high when compared to the statewide average and other large city averages both in and outside Florida. The Middle By —about five and one-half years into the crime reduction journey—all the success came to a screeching halt in a single balmy August.
Concept 1 : Measure small, and keep small things small. Listen Now. Share Now on:. A social worker and member of the Prevention and Protection service help a homeless man in Paris in Sign up to watch, and learn, with us. Should local police departments have sophisticated military gear? How one city provides public safety without a police department.
Policing the streets with military hardware. Study finds that police officers moonlight regularly to earn extra income. How police departments got billions of dollars of tactical military equipment. Also Included in. Tags in this Story. Share this Story. Latest Episodes From Our Shows. Read More. Best says that her department has a focus on engagement rather than enforcement. Best and her team are constantly talking to their officers and staff about the common vision of the department and what it will take to get there.
On social media, the Seattle Police Department uses this phrase as a hashtag to engage with the Seattle community and show the public how the role of police officers has changed over time. Police officers are on the front lines of conflict, and they are being asked to do more than ever before. Best sees the need to emphasize training on potential pain points such as implicit bias training, approaching people in crisis, and directing people to the services they need.
The Seattle Police Department has seen tangible improvement by implementing these areas of training. This speaks to the engagement of the police and community regarding complex issues. Best and her department use a data-driven approach to making decisions on everything from training to community engagement efforts.
Best likes to say that data informs the majority of the decisions they make. From data on the time of day certain crimes occur to surveys about public safety concerns, they are leveraging data to create a safer Seattle.
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