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Sandra R. Webb, Ph.D.Principal Advisor for Programs OperationsOffice of Community Oriented Policing Services
FY 16-17: Agency Priority Goal
Enhancing Public Safety
Priority Goal
Goal Overview
The three tenets of community policing are problem solving, community engagement, and organizational change. The Department of Justice (DOJ) supports community policing through a broad range of training and technical assistance activities. These activities are implemented along a continuum that starts with the initial contact with law enforcement and/or community members looking for new or promising practices to address problems in their community. Typically, these problems are addressed through outreach, publications, or awareness training. By working with the community to implement more complex needs for community policing, the community becomes involved in their own safety. This proactive approach consists of training law enforcement and the community together, community meetings/interventions, and trust building activities. When a community has significant trust issues or a law enforcement is in need of reform, the technical assistance and training becomes more in depth, site specific, and targeted to promote change. For those communities where there exists a strong bond and a vibrant community policing program, providing technical assistance and training will build upon that trust and increase the viability of the program.
Strategies
To achieve its goals in this area, DOJ is committed to forging stronger relationships between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve by bolstering trust where relationships have frayed or where communities wish to be proactive in this area. Communities will benefit by being stronger and safer through the strengthened relationships and the law enforcement tools and training available through DOJ. DOJ will provide communities with the guidance and tools through activities such as development and implementation of the 21st Century Policing Report recommendations (http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/PolicingTaskForce) , the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice (http://trustandjustice.org/), the Violence Reduction Network (https://www.bja.gov/Programs/VRN.html), and other community focused programs and training.
The 21st Century Policing Report recommendations seeks to provide meaningful solutions to help law enforcement agencies and communities strengthen trust and collaboration by focusing on building trust and legitimacy, policy and oversight, technology and social media, community policing and crime reduction, training and education, and officer wellness and safety.
The National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice highlights three core concepts that hold great promise for concrete, rapid progress.
- Reconciliation facilitates frank conversations between communities and law enforcement that allows them to address historic tensions, grievances, and misconceptions between them and recent relationships.
- Procedural justice focuses on how the characteristics of law enforcement interactions with the public shape the public views of the police, their willingness to obey the law, and actual crime rates.
- Implicit bias focuses on how largely unconscious psychological processes can shape authorities' actions and lead to racially disparate outcomes even where actual racism is not present.
The Initiative combines existing and newly developed interventions informed by these ideas in six pilot sites around the country which were selected in March 2015 - Birmingham (AL), Fort Worth (TX), Gary (IN), Minneapolis (MN), Pittsburgh (PA), and Stockton (CA). It will also develop and implement interventions for victims of domestic violence and other crimes, youth, and the LGBTQI community; and conduct research and evaluations. The initiative will be guided by a board of advisors which will include national leaders from law enforcement, academia and faith-based groups, as well as community stakeholders and civil rights advocates.
The Department, through the Bureau of Justice Assistance, initiated a comprehensive approach to violence in FY 2014 and expanded in FY 2015, through the Violence Reduction Network (VRN) which convenes DOJ law enforcement and grant-making agencies to collaborate with VRN cities on implementing their violence reduction strategies. By utilizing its existing training and technical assistance resources, the Department is working in partnership with police chiefs and local partners on effective approaches to accomplishing their violence reduction strategies. VRN local leaders are also given access to leading criminal justice researchers and practitioners.
Progress Update
For the FY 2016 4th Quarter, the Department, via the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) office, slightly missed its target for the number of law enforcement officers and community members engaged in technical assistance and training activities supportive of community policing to ensure police reform and produce an informed citizenry. For this quarter, 2,505 (96% of the quarterly target – 2,610) law enforcement officers and community members received training or technical assistance. The target was missed due to a lower number of registrations for training on the COPS Office learning management system and actual trainings made available in the field. Training providers attributed the lower number of registrations to budget constraints as well as participants on personal leave/travel during the summer months. The COPS Office anticipates training numbers to increase next fiscal year due to planned increases in the number of training delivery programs. For the fiscal year, technical assistance and training activities exceeded its annual target for this measure (10,440) by 129% or 13,500 individuals.
For the indicator, “Number of cases where the Department, via the Community Relations Service (CRS), conducts outreach activities to a Community”, forty-one separate outreach activities were conducted this past quarter to communities. For the fiscal year, a total of 250 outreach activities were conducted for this indicator. A case is considered outreach where there is no jurisdictional incident or tension that requires CRS to respond or provide services.
For the indicator, “Number of CRS trainings provided to law enforcement partners”, the Department, via CRS, provided 10 separate trainings to law enforcement partners this quarter. Trainings can include: Law Enforcement Mediation Skills Program; Responding to Allegations of Racial Profiling; Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Cultural Awareness Program; Hate Crimes Program; Rumor Control; Self Marshal Training; and Transgender Law Enforcement Training. For the entire fiscal year, a total of fifty-eight trainings were provided by CRS for this indicator
This Priority Goal also includes four milestones:
Milestone #1: Enhance and implement the CRI-TA effort by developing and maintaining a continuum of technical assistance options – from its knowledge products on all aspects of community policing to convening experts on best practices, peer to peer exchanges, on site assessments and collaborative reform efforts with state and local law enforcement. For this quarter:
• DOJ, through COPS, initiated the intake process for the Commerce City (CO), Memphis (TN), and Ft. Pierce (FL) CRI-TA sites.
Milestone #2: Develop and implement the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice (National Initiative), a multi-faceted effort research and technical assistance project designed to improve relationships and increase trust between communities and the criminal justice system.
• For this quarter, DOJ, through the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) completed the Procedural Justice I training for all six pilot cities and is moving forward on Procedural Justice II training. A few sites have already completed this training and are preparing for Procedural Justice III training during Fall 2016. Currently, Minneapolis (MN), Stockton (CA), Birmingham (AL) and Chicago (IL) are preparing for Procedural Justice III training.
• Reconcilliation activities also continue in Minneapolis (MN), and activities are forthcoming in Pittsburgh (PA), Birmingham (AL), Stockton (CAL), Gary (ID), and Fort Worth (TX).
Milestone #3: Implement and administer a comprehensive approach to violence reduction, through the Violence Reduction Network (VRN) which leverages the vast array of existing resources across DOJ components to reduce in some of the country’s most violent cities.
• The Phase II FY 2015 sites (Compton (CA), Flint (MI), Newark (NJ), Little Rock (AR), West Memphis (TN) updated their Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) plan and were assessed by OJP staff. Summary reports for the FY 2014 sites are scheduled for completion this quarter.
Milestone # 4: Provide quarterly examples of how the U.S. Attorney Offices collaborates with federal, state, local and tribal partners to strengthen relationships with the communities they serve and to enhance law enforcement capabilities to improve public safety. Quarterly examples include:
• In September 2016, EOUSA published The Violent-Crime Gazette, a quarterly electronic newsletter to USAO antiviolence contacts. Included in this Gazette edition was: information about the FY 2016 Project Safe Neighborhoods grant awards; Supreme Court cases related to violent crime and firearms prosecutions; data on national violent-crime trends; and a guide to promoting employment opportunities for former offenders. The Gazette was posted to EOUSA’s Violent-Crime SharePoint site.
• In September 2016, EOUSA helped coordinate the field meeting of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee Violent and Organized Crime Subcommittee (VOCS) in Chicago (IL). During the meeting, the VOCS United States Attorneys met with several individuals from the greater Chicago/Northern Indiana region on numerous anti-violence/anti-recidivism initiatives, including: an in-school gang-prevention class for middle- and high-school students in Hammond (IN); behavioral therapy and decision-making classes for juveniles detained at the Cook County, IL, Juvenile Temporary Detention Center; ATF’s integration of multiple tools and investigative leads (e.g., NIBIN, e-Trace, NICS, street leads from police intelligence) to target trigger-pullers in Chicago; and Chicago’s Ceasefire violence-reduction strategy, developed by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The VOCS also learned from the USAO-ND-IL and its law-enforcement partners about several factors that have driven violence in Chicago, and how law enforcement has responded to increases in shootings and homicides. EOUSA is working with the VOCS to determine how some of the initiatives discussed during the Chicago meeting can inform national antiviolence policy.
• During FY 2016 Q4, EOUSA, in partnership with the Bureau of Justice Assistance, approved or referred training for USAO law-enforcement partners in D-CO and ED-TX. These trainings, provided by the National Gang Center and the Community Corrections Institute, provided instruction to local officers on recognizing gang membership (D-CO) and effectively managing community supervision of probationers/parolees (ED-TX).
Next Steps
MILESTONE #1:
By September 30, 2017, DOJ will enhance and implement the Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance (CR-TA) (http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/technical assistance.pdf) , which the COPS Office developed and maintains a continuum of technical assistance options—from its knowledge products on all aspects of community policing to convening experts on best practices, peer to peer exchanges, on-site assessments and collaborative reform efforts with state and local law enforcement. The Collaborative Reform process is a voluntary police reform effort that a single agency can request to address either organizational systemic or serious issues that they are committed to resolving. While not preventing a consent decree from the Civil Rights Division, the Critical Response Technical Assistance process gives an agency the opportunity to work with its community in both the assessment and technical assistance to make long term reform. This process has been used in Las Vegas (NV), Spokane (WA), Philadelphia (PA), Baltimore (MD), St. Louis County (MO), Fayetteville (NC), Salinas (CA) and Calexico (CA).
Quarterly milestones:
• Q1/FY 2016 – Implement the pre-site designation intake process for at least two new sites.
• Q2/FY 2016 – Release reports on the progress made in Spokane, Fayetteville, and Philadelphia on the accepted recommendations.
• Q3/FY 2016 – Release initial assessment reports from Salinas and Calexico teams.
• Q4/ FY 2016 – Continue work on at least 6-8 active sites from the intake process through design of the scope of the assessment.
MILESTONE #2:
By September 30, 2017, DOJ will develop and implement the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice (National Initiative), a multi-faceted effort research and technical assistance project designed to improve relationships and increase trust between communities and the criminal justice system. By focusing on relationships with police and law enforcement agencies, the National Initiative looks to apply research findings and strategic interventions around each of the core concepts that have shown to result in improved safety for officers, reduction in violent crime and homicides, improved perceptions of police legitimacy, greater public cooperation with police, and strengthened relationships with communities of color. It also aims to advance the public and scholarly understandings of the issues contributing to those relationships.
Quarterly Milestones:
• Q1/16 – Completion of pre-intervention surveys and data collection in pilot site communities; begin implementation of activities to support procedural trust, counter implicit bias, and facilitate reconciliation in pilot site communities. Provide technical assistance through the OJP Diagnostic Center for communities requesting assistance on procedural justice, implicit bias, or racial reconciliation.
• Q2/16 - Q4/16 Implementation of activities in pilot site communities to support procedural trust, counter implicit bias, and facilitate reconciliation in pilot site communities, including training for command staff and officers on these core concepts, and analysis of police policies to determine whether they are aligned with these core concepts. Provide technical assistance through the OJP Diagnostic Center for communities requesting assistance on procedural justice, implicit bias, or racial reconciliation.
MILESTONE #3:
Through September 30, 2017, the Department will continue to implement and administer a comprehensive approach to violence reduction, through the Violence Reduction Network (VRN) which leverages the vast array of existing resources across DOJ components to reduce violence in some of the country’s most violent cities.
Quarterly Milestones:
• Q1/16 – Conduct a diagnostic assessment of FY 15 VRN sites to determine the cities’ primary violence challenges, identify areas of strength and opportunity, assess collaborative and individual agency efforts to reduce violent crime, develop VRN Resource Delivery plan.
• Q2/16 - Develop a VRN resource delivery plan for each FY 15 VRN site that enhances their existing violent crime strategy to increase public safety.
• Q3/16 - Track the delivery and effectiveness of training and technical assistance to the FY 15 VRN sites from DOJ programmatic offices (OJP, OVW, COPS) and federal law enforcement agencies (FBI, DEA, ATF, USMS).
• Q4/16 - Assess FY 15 VRN sites implementation of the DOJ programmatic and federal law enforcement resources to supplement their current violent crime strategy.
• Q1/17 - Conduct a diagnostic assessment of FY 16 VRN sites to determine the cities’ primary violence challenges, identify areas of strength and opportunity, assess collaborative and individual agency efforts to reduce violent crime, develop VRN Resource Delivery plan.
• Q2/17 - Develop a VRN resource delivery plan for each FY 16 VRN site that enhances their existing violent crime strategy to increase public safety.
• Q3/17 - Track the delivery and effectiveness of training and technical assistance to the FY 15 and 16 VRN sites from DOJ programmatic offices (OJP, OVW, COPS) and federal law enforcement agencies (FBI, DEA, ATF, USMS).
• Q4/17 - Assess FY 15 and FY 16 VRN sites implementation of the DOJ programmatic and federal law enforcement resources to supplement their current violent crime strategy.
• Q4/17 –Convene executive leadership and key stakeholders from the fifteen VRN sites to participate in focused discussions and explore violence reduction strategies directly with national practitioners and researchers and DOJ representatives, including U.S. Attorneys at annual VRN Summit.
MILESTONE #4:
The Department, through EOUSA, will provide quarterly examples (Q1-Q4, FY16 and FY17) of how the U.S. Attorney Offices collaborates with federal, state, local and tribal partners to strengthen relationships with the communities they serve and to enhance law enforcement capabilities to improve public safety. Information regarding these successful collaborations will be disseminated to the USAOs through the Tribal Liaisons ListServe, the EOUSA Native American Issues SharePoint site, the Violent Crime SharePoint site (which provides resource support to Project Safe Neighborhoods and Anti-Gang Coordinators), training at the National Advocacy Center (NAC), and through other training formats, such as periodic EOUSA Webinars.
Expand All
Performance Indicators
Number of law enforcement officers and community members provided technical assistance/training
Other Indicators
Number of cases where CRS conducts outreach activities to a community
Number of CRS trainings provided to law enforcement partners in the area of community
Contributing Programs & Other Factors
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS)
Community Relations Service (CRS)
Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA)
Office of Justice Programs (OJP)
No Data Available
