St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, Missouri

In 2016, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department began a partnership with the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the Missouri Department of Corrections Division of Probation and Parole, to deliver and evaluate a focused deterrence strategy for probationers and parolees at high risk of committing a firearm-involved crime. Participants in the intervention group received regular home visits from police and community corrections officers and were sanctioned for engaging in crime but rewarded for prosocial behavior. A National Institute of Justice funded randomized experiment found program participants were more likely to be employed, and as a result less likely to recidivate. The project highlights the value of police-researcher collaborations for rigorously evaluating programs and informing the field. The collaboration also produced an implementation guide for agencies to adopt this successful initiative. The partnership was enhanced by the dedication of Sergeant James Stagge and the late Dr. Richard Rosenfeld.

Leon County Sheriff’s Office, Florida

The Anatomy of a Homicide Research Project demonstrates the value of effective partnerships among law enforcement agencies and researchers. In collaboration with the Florida Sheriffs Association Research Institute, the Leon County Sheriff’s Office analyzed six years of homicide data to gain a better understanding of the commonalities between the people, conditions, and circumstances contributing to these incidents. The summary report incorporated recommendations for evidence-based strategies to address violence. This led to an ongoing collaboration with Florida State University and success in acquiring more than $1.8 million in funding to support violence intervention and prevention efforts. This includes $1.5 million from the U.S. Department of Justice through a Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative Planning and Implementation grant to build a strong network of community partners focused on violence prevention. This work includes the hiring of school-based navigators and life coach navigators to support students in Leon County’s alternative schools.

Kansas City Police Department, Missouri

The Kansas City Police Department (KCPD) has a history of innovation spanning over 50 years, beginning with the famed Preventive Patrol Experiment. This progressive viewpoint helped KCPD identify Risk-Based Policing (RBP) as a viable crime-fighting strategy to reduce violent street crime. Based on their research into Risk-Based Policing, KCPD formally partnered with the Rutgers Center on Public Security (RCPS) to design and implement its own Risk-Based Policing Strategy. 

Risk-Based Policing's uniqueness is evident when contrasted with reactive tactics (e.g., directed patrol, zero tolerance) that use a little more than stops or enforcement data as outcome metrics. This helps reverse policing's tendency to over-rely on enforcement; instead, RBP seeks harmony between prevention and response. 

The RBP implementation strategy was designed to be easy for all involved to promote buy-in and success of department members, and the broader strategy. As for the strategy itself, RBP helped KCPD lead collaborative problem-solving with teams inside and outside KCPD, such as municipal departments, non-profits, and non-governmental organizations. The strategy's results speak for themselves, but practitioners can find confidence knowing effective crime reduction and prevention is not only feasible, but also attainable, through RBP. 

Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards & Training 

Under the direction of Program Development Coordinator, Dr. Staci Yutzie, the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training (DPSST) began revising the 16-week (640-hour) Basic Police program curriculum. DPSST is the State of Oregon's sole certification body for police officers, and Basic Police is one of the nation's few centralized programs. Dr. Yutzie has overseen a shift in focus to the knowledge and skills leading up to the use of tactical skills. This approach emphasizes a better understanding of the impact of what an officer brings into the encounter, while also showing how intentional use of interpersonal skills can mitigate the need for tactical and force-related skills. Incorporated topics include emotional intelligence, implicit bias, research-based communication skills, legitimacy, and procedural justice. In addition, incorporating the science of learning into the revised curriculum, moving from the traditional PowerPoint training model to a facilitated, interleaved, spaced and variable training model. 

Dubai Police and the Khalifa Empowerment Program - Aqdar

To address the differences in learning and technology that has developed over recent years, the Dubai police in partnership with the Khalifa Empowerment Program – Aqdar have conducted an innovative implementation and evaluation of virtual training as an alternative to traditional field training. The Dubai Police were interested in increasing retention of information, decreasing cost of implementation, and bringing more advanced methods to the policing profession. The partnership began with researchers studying training in traffic accident investigations to pilot a virtual training program. A field study was done to gain greater understanding of the investigation process and identify current problems facing current training within the department. Next, the researchers conducted a pre- and post-test experiment to determine suitability and impact of virtual training on novice and experienced traffic accident investigators. The findings suggest that there is a statistically significant improvement in the performance of both novices and experienced investigators who were trained using the virtual training compared to those who were not. Results helped identify focuses of the traffic accident investigators and acceptance of the new technology as a learning tool. Positive results have led to the implementation of a similar virtual based training in crime scene investigations.   

Gulfport, Mississippi, Police Department

Since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of Gulfport, Mississippi, the Gulfport Police Department (GPD) has experienced recruitment challenges. GPD began questioning how the agency would sustain its workforce and called for a more proactive and studied approach to recruitment. GPD initiated a partnership with The University of Southern Mississippi’s (USM) School of Criminal Justice to examine officer recruitment and retention. Meetings were held and designed to strengthen researcher-practitioner partnerships between the university and local police leaders. The goal was to infuse the university’s criminal justice program with officers within the courses. Conversely, students from the university participated in newly formed internships and job-shadowing experiences, which allowed students and police officers to form professional relationships for a realistic job preview. The GPD and USM quickly developed a “clinical partnership” where students could see the material they were studying come to life in the form of policy and process. The students gained mentors and GPD command staff gained an advocate as USM referred students who could assist with research and evaluation.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, Police Department

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, Police Department (CMPD) and the University of Chicago Center for Data Science and Public Policy closely coordinated for three years to build and deploy the first data-driven Early Intervention System for police officers. Connected through the White House Police Data Initiative, an effort to bring together law enforcement and technologist to use data to improve policing, CMPD provided data, subject-matter expertise, and web development, while  provided machine-learning expertise. This project demonstrated a sophisticated use of data, science, and technology while addressing one of the most difficult problems for law enforcement – identifying and correcting problems in performance before they occur.