DURING THE FIRST TWO DECADES OF THIS THIRD MILLENNIUM, LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS HAVE SHOULDERED NUMEROUS CHANGES IN PUBLIC SAFETY OPERATIONS
By William M. Toms, EdD, Associate Professor, Fairleigh Dickinson University, New Jersey
Some of the changes have been the result of technological advancements, while the genesis of other changes has been the result of social demands or needed tactical adjustments to counter adversarial intentions. The amount of change over these past 20 years has not always been met with nimble, unified law enforcement management practices.
Consider for a moment how law enforcement management practices have failed to uniformly adapt to the changing public safety landscape and how these management practices need to be rethought as they relate to the following law enforcement dilemmas:
These three examples provide a very brief snapshot of law enforcement challenges that necessitate an introspective review by law enforcement executives and domain leaders. This review needs to consider the associated law enforcement tasks and requirements of certain practices.
BODY-WORN CAMERAS AND POLICE REPORTS
The adoption of body-worn cameras by numerous law enforcement agencies necessitates law enforcement practitioners and efficiency researchers to examine the requirement of redundant written reports from officers who have recorded their actions often in high-definition. Written reports were regularly necessary for officers
to place their recollections of events on paper to support activities such as criminal arrests, involuntary commitments, uses of force, and other policing actions that involve lesser impacts on individual rights. Haphazard and disparate policies of police organizations and prosecuting entities all take different approaches regarding if and when officers can access their videos (or other officers’ videos) as a means of writing accurate reports. While officer recollections have always been important, such written reports currently serve as a mere memory test for officers, especially when not permit- ted to view associated videos before writing their reports. These written reports now actually have a diminished relevance when compared to what may be pristine body-worn camera video footage providing potentially incontrovertible “evidence” as opposed to “recollections.”
LAW ENFORCEMENT METRICS
While often well-established policies on high- risk operations (e.g., use-of-force continua, vehicle pursuit matrices) have existed for decades to guide officers in their uses of force in a variety of situations, numerous high-profile arrests and officer-involved shootings have underscored the need for different approaches to critical incidents.
The increased emphasis on officer-initiated de-escalation techniques and the use of other paraprofessionals to collaborate with officers in dealing with critical incidents (especially those involving persons experiencing an emotional crisis) require police departments to reexamine the metrics they rely upon to evaluate officers’ actions and productivity. Since these incidents often require officers to slow down and readjust how they handle persons involved in critical incidents, metrics that law enforcement “The amount of change over these past 20 years has not always been met with nimble, unified law enforcement management practices.”
managers typically focus on (e.g., officer response times to calls for service, clearance times from dispatched calls) can create inconsistent expectations for officers to handle things in a more expeditious manner. More specifically, the managerial expectation of officers to quickly clear calls is disconnected from officer performance standards that dictate that de-escalation and other critical incident techniques generally require officers to slow down, negotiate, or summon other professionals to what can be a chaotic scene. Thus, the scrutiny of officer response and clearance times by law enforcement executives utilizing measures of central tendency (typically by analyzing trends in mathematical mean, median, and mode against monthly or annual averages) is problematic because these measures undermine current best practices, training protocols, and messaging to officers working within complex operating environments. Since safe and successful outcomes of such events are what law enforcement and society expect and demand, the law enforcement domain needs to adopt metrics that focus less on measures of performance that are consistent with officer outputs and begin relying more on measures of effectiveness that are more closely aligned with desirable outcomes.
DIGITAL MAPPING
Numerous incidents have underscored the need for officers to be prepared to quickly dispatch, arrive at a scene of a commercial or public building, and enter the structure to render immediate aid to the building’s occupants.
Technology now exists for the owners or stewards of these buildings to collaborate with law enforcement and other public safety providers to create digital maps and floor plans, helping first responders safely enter and navigate the structure during critical incidents. Since law enforcement executives need to work with those charged with managing these buildings and appropriate government officials to accelerate such collaboration, outside assistance is needed through strategic collaborative efforts. Strategic collab- oration is defined as the “intentional, collective approach to address public problems or issues through building shared knowledge, designing innovative solutions, and forging consequential change.” An exemplar of this type of strategic collaboration to develop safer operating environments is offered in Virginia House Bill 741, which recently authorized funding for schools to work with a law enforcement agency and select a vendor to produce a “digital map” with accurate floor plans for every public school in the state. This type of assistance in developing more digital mapping capabilities to respond to incidents in buildings and structures must be pursued on a more organized basis. Schools should not need to allocate funds for critical mapping capabilities from the same bucket of money that they need to utilize to purchase new books for students nor should police departments be on their own to persuade or compel the owners of properties to pursue digital floor plans and then share them with public safety providers. This type of funding mechanism and collaboration between law enforcement agencies and schools as evidenced in Virginia must be pursued on a more systematic manner.
CONCLUSION
The law enforcement dilemmas and practices selected for discussion in this perspective impact numerous outcomes and persons. For example, a compilation of U.S. Department of Education and Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System data notes that approximately one-quarter of the U.S. population attends or works at a school (K-12 through college). Securing these buildings through strategic collaborative efforts as noted in the 2022 Virginia legislation improves the safety outcomes for approximately 80 million people. Similarly, improving the haphazard approaches and policies associated with body-worn cameras and analyses of police officer practices in high-risk events will improve numerous desirable law enforcement outcomes while securing the rights of many and, at the same time, strengthen the integrity of law enforcement operations.
Dr. WILLIAM M. TOMS has 25 years of experience as a New Jersey State Police officer, where he retired as a major. Currently, he is an associate professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s School of Public and Global Affairs and president of the Toms Professional Group LLC. He has trained thousands of federal, state, and local officers in programs throughout the United States.
This article was published on the Police Chief magazine on pages 72 and 72 of the September edition.