The Implementation and Evaluation of a Gang Violence Reduction Strategy

The IACP/UC Center has partnered with researchers from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) in the implementation and evaluation of an innovative gang violence reduction strategy that uses components of focused deterrence, hot spots policing, and place-based investigations.  This intervention focuses on addressing both high-risk people and places.

Additionally, with the assistance from LVMPD’s analytical section, the Center has examined patterns of calls for service, incident reports, and gang intel (e.g., FI cards) in Las Vegas to identify street segments that are at high-risk of gang member involved violence.  Beginning in September 2018, LVMPD will dedicate specific patrol officers’ time to focus on the areas of Las Vegas at highest risk for violence.

Simultaneously, the Center is assisting LVMPD in conducting place-based investigations that allow for the identification and dismantling of infrastructures that support criminal networks and criminal activity.  LVMPD is leveraging their resources to assist place owners/managers of locations within criminogenic place networks to suppress criminal activity by changing the physical and social characteristics of their locations.

To evaluate this multi-faceted violence reduction strategy, the Center will conduct an impact assessment on crime outcomes. This will include the measurement of changes in crime at persistent violent locations as well as city-wide changes in overall shootings, homicides, and gang/group specific homicides.

An Evaluation of Implicit Bias Training

The IACP/UC Center has partnered with the John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety to evaluate an implicit bias training for the New York City Police Department (NYPD).  The goal of this research is to better understand how implicit bias training influences officer attitudes, knowledge, skills and enforcement disparities.

Racial and ethnic disparities in law enforcement outcomes are a topic of national debate, yet the factors which give rise to these disparities are not well understood.  Many, including the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, point to implicit bias as one factor which explains disparate treatment and recommend training on the topic.  Although many law enforcement agencies have trained on implicit bias, there is no scientific evaluation of implicit bias training on police and policing.

This randomized experiment will determine the effectiveness of the training in raising officers’ awareness of and knowledge about unconscious bias, providing officers skills to manage their unconscious biases, and reducing the disparities in enforcement actions against different racial and ethnic groups.

An Investigation of Officer Decision-Making and Use of Force

The IACP/UC Center has partnered with researchers from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) to examine officer decision-making and use of force in arrest situations.  This work is being completed in collaboration with the Tulsa, OK Police Department (TPD) and the Cincinnati Police Department (CPD).

The goal of this work is to provide a better understanding of how and why police officers use force or desist in their use of force in encounters involving arrest.  Relevant information on officers, citizens, incidents, and neighborhood context will be used to assess how and why some arrests turn violent when most do not.

This research aims to identify policies and practices for law enforcement agencies that may reduce the need for police use of force, lower the rate of injuries or deaths to citizens in police encounters, and reduce the likelihood of officer injury in their interactions with the public.

An Examination of the Predictors of Case Clearance

The IACP/UC Center has partnered with the Knoxville Police Department (KPD) in an evaluation of KPD’s investigatory process.  This evaluation will examine the impact of solvability factors and investigatory efforts by KPD on the likelihood of case clearance for burglary and robbery offenses.  Solvability factors refer to the pieces of information about a crime that can provide the basis for determining who committed the crime. 

While research regarding the productivity and effectiveness of police investigations in solving crime was conducted in the 1970s and 80s, few recent studies have evaluated the process of police investigatory work.  It is possible that improvements in investigatory technologies since the 1980s (e.g., computers, license plate recognition, CCTV, DNA analysis) have enhanced the effectiveness of police investigations.  However, many agencies – similar to KPD – report clearance rates that are stable or have declined over time. 

The IACP/UC Center seeks to reinvigorate this line of research with the hope that this work can help inform police investigatory practices and further enhance both the effectiveness and efficiency in policing.

A Problem Analysis of Domestic Violence

The IACP/UC Center has partnered with the Tulsa Police Department (TPD) to conduct a problem analysis regarding domestic violence in the City of Tulsa. A problem analysis is a systematic examination of the underlying conditions of local problems police are tasked with solving. This process is critical to developing solutions that fit the police problem in a community.

The problem analysis was completed in mid-2018 and resulted in some important findings for the TPD. One important and unintended finding was the discovery of substantial measurement error within the domestic violence data coding—but these inconsistencies led the agency to identify important patterns on which to focus their efforts. The problem analysis also revealed that many of the promising practices implemented in other agencies to combat specific types of domestic violence problems were somewhat inapplicable to the specific problem patterns identified in Tulsa. This demonstrates that evidence-based solutions which are readily available in other jurisdictions may not necessarily fit the crime problems in a different setting.

A problem analysis is an extremely helpful process to conduct when considering implementing an evidence-based solution to a problem. It is vital to start with the problem rather than solutions, because what works in one jurisdiction may not fit a specific problem in another locale.