fbinaa_jul-sept-2020-Final-digital-v2.FINAL
While the specifics of police reform are still unknown, it is becoming clear that use of data will be a cornerstone of those efforts. Law enforcement decision-makers will need data and insights to establish a new generation of policies, training, police recruits, and approaches that reduce use of force incidents, complaints against officers, operating costs, and litigation risk, while promoting transparency and accountability to build public trust and legitimacy.
I t is often said that while policing has changed, police officers haven’t. As policymakers and law enforcement leaders act ex- peditiously to meet new police reform requirements, it’s critical to understand the scope of the policing problem and potential cascading effects of new reformmeasures. In this data-driven society, technology will more than ever be necessary to drive and inform policy development and pro- gram development. However, these technological approaches should not focus just on negative outcomes, but also positive behavioral and performance indicators that support officer readiness, wellness, and long-term culture change. THE CURRENT STATE OF EARLY INTERVENTION SYSTEMS Reform efforts at the municipal, state, and federal levels indi- cate the expanded use of early intervention systems (EIS) , which are used to identify officers at risk of being involved in adverse incidents such as unnecessary or excessive use of force. As citizen complaints, use of force incidents, and accidents occur, current EIS combine the incidents to assign each officer a risk score. Using past incidents to identify officers, who may have crossed the line is important and should be part of any serious reform effort. Current EIS can help agencies intervene when offi- cers meet predetermined thresholds to remand those officers to training, counseling or other measures. But there are too many stories of police officers with a long history of complaints and abuse that only come to light publicly when the incident shows up on social or news media. This erodes not just public trust, but also legitimacy of authority. However, before most adverse incidents occur, there are often missed opportunities to prevent them from occurring. Cur- rent systems, by design, gather insufficient indicators and have inflexible business rules that fail to identify anomalous patterns of adverse behaviors as well as positive acts by exemplary model officers. Capturing and analyzing the aggregate of adverse and positive behaviors and performance provides a foundation for true reform that fosters generational change in policing. Currents EIS have not maintained pace with societal and policing chang- es. Moreover, they have failed to prevent the various adverse incidents that have contributed to the call for police reforms. INTEGRATING MRE DATA TO CREATE A HOLISTIC VIEW OF AN OFFICER Pre-service and ongoing in-service training provide police officers the guidelines for mechanical and legal application of force. Even more important is the ability to deescalate situations and proportionately apply the use of force on citizens. Officers
must make split-second “reasonable” decisions under rapidly evolving and intense circumstances. But thoughts drive actions, and police officers encounter a variety of stressors, which impact their physical and mental health. Regardless, officers are re- quired to have situational awareness and an enhanced presence of mind to apply critical thinking to protect all involved from injury or death. Early intervention systems have laid the groundwork for more comprehensive strategies that support officer readiness and wellness. This is accomplished through a holistic approach that incorporates the data sets collected by current early intervention systems and combining them with information on training, evaluations, commendations, absences and leave, as- signment history and other behavioral and performance data. CONTINUOUS ANALYSIS OF INDICATORS OF PERFORMANCE & BEHAVIORAL INDICATORS TO DRIVE INTERVENTIONS The goal is not just to find officers more at risk of misuse of force, it is to assess officer readiness. Are they ready to perform their duties up to expectations, or even exceed expectations? Or do they need counseling or training? Such a holistic system supported by continuous analytics can track an officer’s per- formance and behavior over time. As counseling, training, and incident dispositions are concluded, those results are fed into the models to make themmore robust with a more complete view of readiness and risk. A continuous monitoring approach also allows for an of- ficer to grow and change. For instance, a rookie officer may not have the emotional intelligence, stress management, and calm demeanor of a seasoned veteran or supervisor. But as they grow into the job and demonstrate the ability to de-escalate situa- tions, a holistic system would take that maturation into account. PUTTING THE SPOTLIGHT ON EXEMPLARY PERFORMANCE It is understandable to be apprehensive when a brighter light is shown on a profession where split-second decisions can mean the difference between safety and harm, life and death. But in this unprecedented push for police reform, there is an op- portunity to not only root out those who damage the public trust but highlight those that uphold the best traditions of honor and service. A holistic system captures the trainings, actions, citizen feedback, commendations and other performance and behav- ioral indicators that reveal patterns of exemplary performance. Is
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