Our foundation workshop is designed specifically for community and neighborhood associations and groups who are interested in more productive and transparent relationships with their local police or sheriff’s department.
This finding in the Pew Research Report, Behind the Badge, was the most shocking of the report’s significant findings. We expected some dissonance on this issue but nothing like this. This was, and remains, the clarion call for the services that we provide in POLICING WITH OUR COMMUNITY©. This one statistic drove us to create mechanisms to expand our efforts to better educate the public on the organization, management and administration of police agencies with a more in-depth look at the new ways that citizens are attempting to interact with the police. This includes traditional crime prevention activities but in new roles where citizens participate in hiring, training, planning, crime reduction and oversight of the police function.
Our foundation workshop and is designed specifically for community and neighborhood associations and groups who are interested in more productive and transparent relationships with their local police or sheriff’s department.
These workshops focus on issues of accountability and transparency as well as constitutional policing and promising policies and practices.
These workshops describe the new “Neighborhood Watch” where citizens and police managers work jointly on community based violent crime reduction efforts where deputies and officers work in partnership with citizens to reduce the crimes which are most prevalent in their communities.
We discovered this workshop inadvertently. Starting as a trial with a university public policy class, we found an immensely engrossing conversation and a thirst for more discussion of the law enforcement function in our society. As we have held this same discussion in HBCU criminal justice classes, we have encountered a vibrant and community focused learning opportunity and maybe recruited a future police leader along the way.
This workshop lists the law enforcement policies and procedures that are in flux. We talk about evolving best practices in police operations, investigations, management and administration. We close with a session devoted to “hiring a new police chief.”
In the engagement process, we try to hold a PWOC Workshop for the command staff with a few municipal and community leaders. This is largely to have them understand our process and provide an overview of the subject matter that we will discuss. Ultimately, they will assist the strategic planning and decision process and ensure accountability for program accomplishments.
If the department agrees, we like to conduct two workshops with sworn members from the same sector, district, or precinct. We then conduct two workshops with community members from the same sector, district or precinct. All participants are asked to read the Executive Summary of the President’s Task Force Report on 21st Century Policing.
From these workshops, we invite fifteen department members and fifteen community members to a Community Speak workshop where we set the stage for a collaborative strategic process to “operationalize” their vision of community engagement. Participants use The President’s Task Force Report, Implementation Guide.
This workshop is the stand-a-lone version of our engagement workshop. It’s for community groups and associations interested in partnerships with their local agencies but have no community engagement plan or proposal.
We always suggest that community groups, HOAS, neighborhood associations, local clubs, businesses, schools, and churches attend and support the local community-based activities held by the department or agency.
Our attention was drawn to this space in police-community largely based on this finding in the Pew Research Report, Behind The Badge
Our primary goal is to improve public understanding of police policy and practices. Our Citizens’ Police Academies have demonstrated a clear public interest in the inner workings of law enforcement organizations.
A key aim of Community Engagement is to have law enforcement officers work side by side in areas we describe in PWOC – Our Perspective We believe those community members who participate in crime reduction and crime intervention (“Citizen CompStat” or “Citizen Comstat”) should have an orientation to the subject matter and best practices in this area and not what they see on TV.
Likewise, the areas of civilian oversight, community advisory boards or committees, police reform, and police accountability is complex. We offer a space to understand both best practices and emerging concepts. This is critical for those who sit, serve or work in these areas but also for community members who are participating in the strategic planning of their own community engagement processes.
Just as we try to do in our law enforcement workshops, our primary objective is to help participants understand the differences in community policing and community engagement.
This four-hour workshop is tied to an understanding of community-based crime reduction and crime intervention. Our polling assesses participants’ knowledge of crime analysis, crime intelligence, and predictive or scientific-based policing.
We showcase community-based programs like Operation Ceasefire or Place Network Investigations (PNI). We can’t stress the importance of citizen participation in this kind of effort. We ask law enforcement to partner with community- based crime reduction efforts they have previously viewed with suspicion and rejection.
While not a prerequisite, the PWOC workshop sets the stage for this workshop to be a more productive and provocative session.
This four-hour workshop was designed specifically for community members who sit on citizen review boards or commissions and neighborhood advisory groups. The work here is focused on the processes both internally and externally that ensure the law enforcement organization is responsive to the community’s vision of quality constitutional and democratic service.
We talk about issues of accountability and transparency as well as constitutional policing and promising policies and practices.
While not a prerequisite, the PWOC workshop sets the stage for this to be a more productive and provocative session.
The discussion is centered around the Professional Standards and Risk Management functions of the agency. We talk about what key performance indicators should be in place to promote transparency. Likewise, at a minimum, an organization needs to measure and catalog its use of force, citizen complaints, traffic stops and field interviews. We also want the cops to understand how and why it’s so important to address this with citizens,
Most review boards only address citizen complaints while few also see internal misconduct. The key performance indicators should include public disclosure of the patterns of subpar performance and what the organization does about it.
Finally, the public should be full participants in a mediation process for low-level citizen complaints. This has become an invaluable tool to adjudicate low level complaints without a full administrative investigation.
For the pre-read for this workshop, we offer Police Accountability in the USA-Gaining Traction or Spinning Wheels?
This is a workshop where we learn from each other – together.
We like for the participants of this workshop to have had our Police Use of Deadly Force session or a similar simulator experience. It serves as a basis for better understanding of the skills necessary to practice restraint in the face of danger. It emphasizes the decision-making that resides within the question of, “Is this force necessary versus is it within policy?”
In officers’ use of force reports, they are being asked, “What were your actions to de-escalate the situation prior to resorting to your use of force?”
They are also being asked, as a part of their reporting or in an administrative investigation, “What did you do to interrupt the improper or unlawful actions of another officer on the same scene with you?”
These are relatively new aspects of modern-day law enforcement accountability. As scrutiny of the police is now more focused with the introduction of body-cam video, we believe that the public should be more knowledgeable with policy, tactics, training, and protocols as we watch video together.
The clicker and simulator give us the opportunity to look inside these issues in real time. We assess how well participants “read the room” and how they assess their options under stress.
After participants collect their breath, we then collect their impressions of the exercise and, as always, what they learned.
