Read the Office of the District of Columbia Auditor’s press release
San Antonio is the seventh largest city in the United States, and the police department has 2300 sworn officers.
Read the Office of the District of Columbia Auditor’s press release
San Antonio is the seventh largest city in the United States, and the police department has 2300 sworn officers.
The Prince George’s County Police Department is the fourth largest law enforcement agency in the State of Maryland. More than 1,500 police officers and 300 civilians provide a full range of law enforcement services to nearly 900,000 residents and business owners.
“People will look back at this year and say this was a real turning point,” said Alexander Weiss, a consultant who has advised police departments in Chicago and New Orleans, in reference to police accountability.
Read the entire article that reports on how a single protest slogan changed everything, by Claire Bushey.
On November 19 Alex Weiss provided a briefing for the board of trustees and the community in Shorewood. You can read the final draft report here.
“Weiss says, ultimately the trick with specialized units is to keep them focused “and that you make sure that what they do is consistent with the overall crime-control mission.” – Posted on wbez.org By Elliott Ramos
Alex Weiss chosen to teach for the Management Advancement for the Public Service at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at Ohio State University.
Alexander Weiss Consulting chosen to conduct an organizational study for the Shorewood Wisconsin Police Department, a suburb of Milwaukee.
One group suggests that the police lack legitimacy, and thus they should be dissolved so that a new public safety model can emerge. It may take some time to determine what that model looks like in practice. The other approach suggests that funds currently allocated to policing would be better served if they were devoted to public health, mental health, education and housing. Some communities, including Boston, Los Angeles and New York, already have taken steps to accomplish this transfer of funds, although policymakers do not as yet have a complete understanding of the costs of providing these types of services on a 24/7 basis.
While both of these strategies can help to instruct our conversation about the future of policing, I would like to focus on the second model. That is, I want to discuss how reduced funding for the police might affect performance.
For several years I have studied police staffing and deployment in many communities. Included in this group are several agencies operating under a “consent decree,” including New Orleans, Baltimore, Chicago, Albuquerque, N.M., and the Puerto Rico Police Bureau.
4. Police agencies should focus on reducing demand for services. Police departments respond to many types of calls that could be handled in other ways. For example, police departments devote significant resources to answering burglar alarms, the vast majority of which are false. Some agencies have an approach to alarms called “verified response,” in which the initial response is done by the alarm company and not the police. Communities adopting verified response have seen significant reductions in demand.
5. Departments should greatly reduce the use of two-officer patrol cars. Some agencies continue to make extensive use of two-officer patrol cars. While the safety effects of that approach are subject to debate, the extra cost is not. While a fraction of police calls for service require that two officers respond, that percentage rarely exceeds 50%. More often it is the case that this approach results in two officers being assigned to a call that only requires one.
It is important to point out that even before the events in Minneapolis, most communities were facing significant fiscal challenges as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. There likely would have been large cuts in funding for public safety, and thus this may be an important time to think critically about how we want to keep our communities safe and what it will cost.
In the days ahead, many units of government will ask how many police officers are required to ensure public safety. Put another way, what number of officers would help an agency most cost-effectively meet the demands placed on it? This is a fundamentally different question from how many officers does a community want or can a community support. Yet answering the need question effectively frames a discussion about want and affordability.
Alexander Weiss is the former director of the Center for Public Safety at Northwestern University. He is the author (with Jeremy Wilson) of “Performance-Based Approach to Police Staffing and Allocation,” published by the Office of Community Oriented Police Services, United States Department of Justice.